Standard Tuning Slide Part 2

This follows up on the previous slide guitar post with a useful way to play major stuff.  The last post focused on playing minor pentatonic stuff on the top two strings.  Unfortunately, there's no good way to play a major third on the top two strings.




Luckily, the G and B are tuned a major third apart.  So, if we play the root on the G string we can get the major third.  Look at this position in the key of A:

This is just an A major arpeggio at the second fret, with the root note played at the second front on the G string, with the major 3rd one string up on the B and the 5th one string down on the D.   Up at the fifth fret, we've got the 5th and root an octave up, on the B and E string, respectively.  If you want to play most of the standard open tuned Elmore James-type licks, you'll have to change positions, which you don't need to bother with in open tuning, but it's not too big of a deal.  Most of the Elmore James licks involve alternating between the root and fifth on the top two string and then resolving down to the third and root.  You can approximate this extremely well by starting off on the top two strings at the fifth fret and then sliding down to the third on the second fret.   If you want to add some notes outside the A major arpeggio, you can move down two frets on the B and G strings (which will be open if you're in A, but not in any other key).  This gives you the major 2nd and minor 7th.  Try fiddling around with this until you're comfortable, and then combine it with the minor pentatonic stuff from the previous post.  This will give you a pretty wide palette to draw from.  In general, it's a good idea to keep your slide stuff pretty safe in terms of note choice.  I try to avoid playing too many passing tones with the slide.  You're going to be sliding into a lot of the notes, so you can get your color that way, instead of going out of your way to play some outside stuff.