My interest in playing slide started with George Harrison. Guitar solos like the one in My Sweet Lord featured slide to great effect, and I wanted to get that sound. Learning to play slide involved a lot of experimenting on my part. I bought a big metal slide and started sliding around. The first thing I had to figure out which finger to put it on. The right answer is whichever one works for you. If you watch proficient slide players, you’ll see that different players prefer to wear their slides on different fingers, so it’s really personal choice. I’ve linked up some videos for you in this post featuring George (above) and Eric Clapton (below). They’re both using their pinkies, but peronally I use my ring finger. They’re famous and I’m not, so maybe you’ll want to consider that when you’re figuring out which finger to learn to use for slide playing.

Using your little finger for the slide leaves the other fingers free to do some fretting, so it’s a more versatile approach. Because I admire George and Eric’s slide playing so much, I’ve really tried to emulate their little-finger technique, but it just doesn’t work for me. I struggle to sound in tune, but with the ring finger I’m much more capable of playing in tune.

The other thing you have to sort out is what kind of slide to use, metal or glass? They have different tonal qualities, but again, it’s a matter of your personal choice. I used metal for years, but lately I’m using glass.

Finally, you’ve got to develop your fretting hand technique so that you’re kind of in tune, and not pressing too heavily on the slide and grounding out on the frets. I find that to play in tune, I have to aim to stop the slide right on top of the fret, as opposed to just behind it as your finger would be placed if you were fretting the note with your finger instead of a slide. Once you get that down, work on adding some vibrato (a little shaking of the slide on longer held notes), and you’ll sound cool as these guys.