You can dress up your lead riffs and your chord and rhythm playing too with slides and slurring. A slide is a great way to begin and end a lick or phrase - forming the perfect transition between what came before and what follows. Sometimes all you need is a short 1 fret slide into a note to give the phrase you play a dress up. Other times a long, dramatic slide gives a memorable and distinctive sound to a riff.
The Slide In A Nutshell
The concept of slides or slurring on the guitar sounds simple enough - simply move your fretting finger (or fingers) along the neck (for one or more frets) until you reach the desired destination tone.
Sliding up and down just one fret usually accomplished fairly easily - more practice and patience is needed when attempting to slide for greater distances along the guitar neck. The part that requires finesse is stopping your sliding action precisely at the desired destination.
Watch Out For...
Guitar players new to sliding have a tendency to over shoot or under shoot the fret they want to stop sliding at. This is especially true for longer slides. So to get good, practice paying close attention to stopping your slide exactly where you need to.
Your sliding isn't limited to single notes. You can also slide chords - either entire chords or parts of chords if you do it right. Any chords that don't have open strings are good for sliding - this includes anything from a full bar (barre) chord to a simple 2 note diad.
Slide How Far?
A lot of times the slide you do is dictated by the notes of the song you happen to be playing. But sometimes you're just adding some sliding on your own to dress things up a bit. So what slides sound the best? A great sounding interval for a longer slide is the note five frets either up or down. Another popular long slide interval is the octave - twelve frets up or twelve frets down the neck.
Having the added sustain that is produced by higher distortion settings helps the slide go smoother and sound better.
