slide guitar playing?

[kirky]

i'm gonna tune in open g, but down a whole step...open f? what's the best slide to buy and what are you tuning to?

[dunwichamps]

i use metal and open g on my tele

[Chovie D]

my advice is to learn some basic licks in standard tuning ( in addition to the open tunings), enough so you can take a solo.
why? so you can bust out a slide solo any time you want without having to rely on having a specially tuned guitar.

slide preference is gonna be personal. i prefer metal, and i have a ceramic one I like alot too.

I use Jimmy Pages tuning for slide
open A chord (E / A / E / A / C# / E from bottom to top).

You can play alot stones and zep stuff in this tuning without the slide too.

[RacerX]

Open E (E B E G# B E) on the LP Junior, Open D (D A D F? A D) on the lap steel ("C" was just too low; not enough string tension). That way the patterns are the same.

For slide on the LP Junior, I mostly use a Dunlop brass radius slide, but I also have a thick-walled pyrex one and a thinner-walled Coricidin bottle style from Dunlop. The radius style is nice for maintaining contact across a radius fretboard w/ minimal pressure, and the brass makes it the "heaviest" sounding slide I use.

Alternate between the Shubb/Pearce and the Steven bars on the lap steel depending on the feel I want/how much single note shit I'll be playing.

[Chovie D]

I tell yall bottleneck is really challenging. I wish I was better but theres only so many hours in a day and I need ALL of them to smoke weed.

my favorite bottleneck player is derek trucks. i like mick taylor alot too, but not sure how much of that is juts because i love those stones songs.
Heres a decent lesson in trucks style single string style.
The concepts are relatively simple, the execution is not so simple.
Key concepts here are:
single string pentatonic scale
dont pick every god damned note
dont vibrato every god damned note (hint, the last note in a phrase is a good choice )
they make it look so easy and fluid. wish it were that easy.

same concepts work well on lap steel too 

[RacerX]

Thanks, dude! I've really improved a lot at the bottleneck style over the past few months, but I still need all the help I can get.

After trying a bunch of options, I've settled into playing Rod Price style, with the slide on my middle finger. I've figured out the blues boxes in the open E tuning, and now shit's starting to really flow because I can use a lot of my favorite non-slide licks.

Still flat pickin' tho, throwing the occasional right hand pinky rake. 

[Chovie D]

all this stuff was pointed out to me. I didnt just check out Trucks and notice all that.  I recently had an incredible lesson from a master steel player and he pointed out all this stuff to me and some other shit thats just been game changing.
real simple ideas, but I can tell its gonna take a couple years of practice to get em to sound like that.

have fun

[fallen]

If you can get used to using the slide on your pinkie and your other fingers for muting behind the slide it really helps. I'm still kind of stuck with using the third finger.

Make sure you get a small enough slide that will stop at the second knuckle so you can still bend your finger.

A really great cheater way to learn open G slide is to start with 4 strings. G-D-G-B. Basically take your low E and high E strings off. Learn a bunch of licks and then add your high E (D) back on.

[chille01]

I'm by no means great at it, but when I DO do it, it's in open G with a Dunlop glass slide on my pinkie.  I can't get in to a metal slide... just sounds harsh to me.  When I use one that is.  Plenty of other guys make it sound great.

[Ranbat]

I tend to favor open E or G. I play with the guitar lying flat on my lap and also lying flat standing up. I use mostly glass and the occasional brass. Just bought a ceramic slide and will be trying it out soon. I am mostly acoustic.

[RacerX]

If you're using an open tuning, learn yer new chord shapes so ya can play some fucking rhythm guitar.