Slide (guitar)
A
slide is an object held in the hand and used in place of a
fret to shorten the sounding length of the string(s) of a
guitar.
Slides include
bottlenecks,
steels, and various objects such as knives, a railway line as legend has it was used by the inventor of
steel guitar, or
Jimi Hendrix once famously used his lighter. The type of slide used and the playing position are closely related:
* A
bottleneck is best suited to conventional positions.
* A
steel is best suited to lap and table positions.
* Railway lines and teeth require still other playing positions.
Slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to be played in this manner. These include:
* All
steel guitars.
* Many (perhaps most)
resonator guitars, particularly
Dobros and their descendants.
*
Lap slide guitars, particularly
Weissenborns and their descendants.
The terminology is neither generally agreed nor consistent.
Slide guitar is often used as a synonym for
bottleneck guitar, but
lap slide guitar generally means acoustic non-resonator slide guitar.
Steel guitar often means
electric steel guitar, or in particular
genres may be more specific still:
* In
country music,
steel guitar is often understood to mean
pedal steel guitar.
* In
Hawaiian music,
steel guitar generally means
table steel guitar or
electric lap steel guitar, while
Hawaiian guitar means
slack string guitar.
In most genres,
Hawaiian guitar can mean any sort of steel guitar, or may mean specifically
electric steel guitar.
In many genres,
dobro has been used to mean any resonator steel guitar, rather than all instruments produced by the
Dobro company, or even all
resonator Dobros. However since
Gibson acquired the
brand name in 1993, they have adopted a policy of restricting its usage to some instruments manufactured by them, with a particular resonator design.
Bottleneck
The older type of slide is a
bottleneck, and is used in a similar position to that used in playing conventional (spanish) guitar, but often with the instrument tilted a little away from vertical to allow the player to look down on the strings. Necks of glass bottles cut and polished are the traditional bottlenecks; Specially made glass bottlenecks are now commercially available, as are bottlenecks made from metals, particularly nickel-plated brass, and also bone, stone, and synthetic materials. Advanced players may use several different bottlenecks for different sounds.
Steel
The
steel is a slide used in
steel guitar position. Knives, scissors, and many other objects were used in the early days of the development of steel guitar playing. Commercially available steels are almost universally used now, particularly nickel-plated brass. While there is some variation in weight and quality, a player will normally find a steel they like and use it exclusively, changing only when they change instrument; Lighter steels for example tend to be used on
lap steel guitars than on
pedal steel guitars.
*
Slide guitar.
*
Lap slide guitar.
*
Resonator guitar.
**
Dobro.
*
Steel guitar.
**
Lap steel guitar.
**
Table steel guitar.
**
Pedal steel guitar.
