Introduction
Welcome!
In creating this course, I have curated and expanded the best material from my YouTube channel, together with new material, to create a full, sequenced introduction to playing blues slide guitar in Open G tuning.
Every lesson has been refined, broken down, and supported with PDFs, and practice advice.
This course is aimed at intermediate level guitarists and beyond, whatever your slide guitar experience. If you’re new to slide guitar, I’d advise checking out my free “Getting Ready to Slide” course as a precursor. You may also want to check out “Slide Guitar Technique 101” for more in-depth technique advice.
These courses are both available HERE.
Why Open G tuning?!
Open tunings are very common in slide guitar playing, with the most common being Open G and Open D (and their variants).
I think Open G is a great starting point for people new to open tuning, especially because of its similarity to standard tuning - strings 2,3,4 remain the same, and the other strings are just dropped by a whole step/tone.
Without too much adjustment and with a bit of work, you’ll sound like a slide guitarist in no time :-)
Course outline
The course is divided into Chapters, and within these are the related Lessons.
Each Chapter starts with an Introduction, and this page also contains resources for all the videos within it.
(Note: just to keep you on your toes, a couple of the lessons actually have the materials attached underneath the video!)
In amongst all of this, I will discuss many other nuances, and tips that I’ve learnt and discovered along the way, so be ready to take notes :-)
We start with a Basic Introduction, covering how to tune to Open G and navigating the primary triads (I, IV, V).
Then we dive in with some short Blues Licks, to get you started.
We’ll learn three great Slide Guitar Riffs in Open G - from Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor and Jimmy Page.
Then we’ll dive into some Blues Rhythm Guitar, to get you playing with other people, and learnign about groove.
We’ll take a detour with five classic harmonica licks, to spice up your soloing - there’s something speical about applying these to slide guitar.
We’ll explore in-depth the two most important scales you need to solo convinvingly on a blues.
In our final chapter, we’ll learn to play three classic Muddy Waters tunes in Open G tuning - these great tunes are likely to form a solid part of your repertoire for years to come!
And finally, a special Bonus section offers an important technique recap, to help you get the most out of the rest of the material.
Let’s dive in!