SOTU 313 Seventh Year Celebration

Right so here's what I was actually working on today. A White Stripes song that got me wanting to play slide since the first time I heard it. Never got my head round playing slide before now. Tried it on guitar and was awful, just like the rest of my guitar playing, I've tried it just by barring on my normal ukes but couldn't get the sound Right, so I decided to persevere today and while it still needs a lot of work it at least sounds like slide playing.

This one's extra tricky as you alternate between slide and normal fretting all the way through. In Open A again.




It's by the White Stripes naturally. From their first album.
 
Rob's Open C video prompted me to do one for open A7. Tune C up to C# and you have an A7. Bar fret 5 to get D7 and fret 7 to get E7. If I have time I will revisit the tuning and make a quick video or two for year 7 of the Seasons.
 
Well you see back in the day when I played the juke joints
and the whisky was flowing fast and the women were even faster
at the beginning o' the evenin' ma fingers be all co-ordimicated,
but when the booze got the betterin' o' me them there falanges
would not work proper no mo'. So to extrapicate masel' frum that
there situmacation ah would break the neck off a whisky bottle
and slip that there thing over ma coke sniffing finger and play
masel' sum bottleneck blues. Open tuning be for them there times
when yous is drunk and the communimacation beteen the brainbox
and the digits be shot to hell. Simples cos yous just gotta lay that there
bottleneck on them there strings and slide like s** off a hot shovel.

Oh, what a colourful life you have led, Rob! Having finally worked out how to do open tuning, what I want to know is, where do you find a "bottle neck". There seems to be a dearth of slides on Amazon, eBay and even music stores. And how do you find one that actually fits the neck of a uke (or does a guitar one fit the bill)? And how do you know what size fits your finger? Perhaps I just need to stick my finger in the neck of a bottle and, if it fits, smash the bottle!
 
Oh, what a colourful life you have led, Rob! Having finally worked out how to do open tuning, what I want to know is, where do you find a "bottle neck". There seems to be a dearth of slides on Amazon, eBay and even music stores. And how do you find one that actually fits the neck of a uke (or does a guitar one fit the bill)? And how do you know what size fits your finger? Perhaps I just need to stick my finger in the neck of a bottle and, if it fits, smash the bottle!

Careful there Val. We will have no bloody fingers this season! The thing is, as we've seen here today, you dont even need a slide. You can always just use your finger. In the old days they used slim (Considine) pill bottles. Ive even heard you can use a lipstick cover. Im sure you have one of those lying around :)
 
Last edited:
the great thing about ukes is the neck is narrow enough to allow you to use a short slide all the way across the strings - i find a short slide easier to handle. i also prefer the sound of a metal slide, to glass. on ebay various sellers have handy packs of 2 metal slides, one long and one short, so you can find which works best for you. i have very bad slide technique, and put the slide on my middle finger and grip it in place with the adjacent fingers. ideally one should really have the slide on the pinky, so you can mute the slide-string rattle with your other fingers, also it frees the other fingers for playing notes and wotnot. as ladeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees we should have no trouble with slide sizing - if you feel it's too loose, you can put some paper or card inside to give it a more grippy fit. but all this is finesse - in an emergency, if you find yourself quite slideless, you can use a pen or pencil or the edge of a ruler
 
Careful there Val. We will have no bloody fingers this season! The thing is, as we've seen here today, you dont even need a slide. You can always just use your finger. In the old days they used slim (Considine) pill bottles. Ive even heard you can use a lipstick cover. Im sure you have one of those lying around :)

Lipstick cover ... right! (Might just be able to find one of these!)
 
the great thing about ukes is the neck is narrow enough to allow you to use a short slide all the way across the strings - i find a short slide easier to handle. i also prefer the sound of a metal slide, to glass. on ebay various sellers have handy packs of 2 metal slides, one long and one short, so you can find which works best for you. i have very bad slide technique, and put the slide on my middle finger and grip it in place with the adjacent fingers. ideally one should really have the slide on the pinky, so you can mute the slide-string rattle with your other fingers, also it frees the other fingers for playing notes and wotnot. as ladeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees we should have no trouble with slide sizing - if you feel it's too loose, you can put some paper or card inside to give it a more grippy fit. but all this is finesse - in an emergency, if you find yourself quite slideless, you can use a pen or pencil or the edge of a ruler

It may have been Rory Gallagher who used a spark plug extractor as a slide
My favourite exponent of the slide is Kelly Jo Phelps. He takes Irene Goodnight to another level.
 
That was great WeeRob. Thanks for sharing that!

One of the best things about the seasons are the fine musical teachers along the way. There will always be things we can learn and there are so many generous folks willing to step in and teach. Today has brought along some great enthusiasm. I appreciate all those that have jumped right in and brought my midnight idea to life. I got a message from Fred and he says one of his ideas for a season was open tunings. How about that!

20 songs on the first day is a fantastic start! We've gotten some fine noodles, originals, old blues, 8 bar blues, gospel blues, slide blues, country gibberish blues :) and much more. The discovery that open tuning is easy and fun is always a plus!

There are so many different styles of the blues. Sub genre's include boogie-woogie, blues rock, country blues, classic female blues, jazz blues and much much more. You could take each day of this week and bring a different sub genre if you like. And, remember you can bring anything other than blues in G if you want. No reason not to celebrate in some way with us!

Ive added the playlist. Please remind me if Ive forgotten to add you to it. All comments will be on YT and I will add some type of an end of the day review here on the thread.

Thanks All and goodnight Irene :)
 
* just watching ryan playing notes, he's got the slide on his index finger, and it's all awesome! so, you know, just ignore everything i say o_O

Ah that's just because it was uncomfortable on my ring finger. If I do that more often I may need a shorter slide.

There's a guy who goes to a few of the open Mic nights I go to who uses to very small slides, one on his thumb and one on his pinky. Both only come up to the first knuckle but he uses the effect really well.
 
Blues version of a U2 song in an open G variant, tuned dGBD, similar to a 5 string banjo missing out the short string drone g and substituting it with re-entrant "d " so I could use banjo chords and picking. This made the strings a little low tensioned ,but mellow....oh and yes bottle neck glass slide (pill bottle type)....Toontrack drumtrack, recorded in Cubase 5 .Sorry to those like Pa B whom like them short and sweet, but it goes on forever ...just like this intro......And I had to edit it in Movie Maker as my Serif Movie Plus 5 has thrown a sulk and stops playing the vids halfway through. What next....oh yes the fillum.......yer 'tis.......


 
I did have time to do something after all :D. This is a bit of a blues/jazz classic. Many many versions by the great n good, with many variations in the lyrics.
 
Top Bottom