Slide Guitar: Open D Major Tuning - RiffNinja.com

Slide Guitar: Open D Major Tuning

The easiest way to play slide guitar is to first adjust your guitar to an open tuning - in this particular lesson we're going to use Open D Major tuning for our example.

Be sure to checkout my course Essentials of Slide Guitar - this short lesson is only scratching the surface of what I covered in there!

The reason I've chosen to use an open tuning is because a slide isn't like your fingers; you can't bend it into a new shape for every chord you change to. As a result, it is easier to adapt the tuning of our strings so that they work well in a straight line. In other words, we're going to tune the guitar so that when we strum all six strings without any fingers on the frets, it will create a great sounding D major chord.

Then, we can simply add the slide at any point on the fretboard and create another major chord.

D Major tuning is simply D A D F# A D.

Leave a Reply 9 comments

rob Reply

awsome now i can play like derek trucks what a slide god reminds me of ONE OF THE GREATEST DUANE ALLMAN

Jim Lowe Reply

Good reference to tune from.

Dave Reply

Hello:
Open tuning is a good place to start. I use the same tuning. But, In the key of “E” (E,B,E,G#,B,E) I’d like to Get Beyond The standard Open, 5th fret, 7th fret thanks……

Nick Reply

Ok, you make it look easy,but for the person who has never used a slide, I would like to know how to hold it, witch finger do I use to deaden the other strings can you help?

    Jonathan Boettcher Reply

    Everyone develops their own slightly unique style, but one way of doing it would be to put the slide on the second or third finger, which gives you fingers on either side to help deaden the strings you need to.

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Diane Reply

Can a person who is a beginner at regular guitar learn how to play slide on an acoustic guitar? Or does this require an electric guitar? Is it better to learn regular guitar first?

    Jonathan Boettcher Reply

    Hi Diane, the more you know about guitar, the better… that said, due to the nature of slide, I would say you could actually go straight into it if you really wanted to.

Anorld Mutoya Reply

good reference to tune, i need more to start

Dave Murray Reply

Thanks Colin, my first lesson on playing slide, I am using a nickled plated resonator guitar for learning on does that make any difference for the lessons, as I see you are using a electric guitar, cheers Dave ,

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