Slide guitar

Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar that originated in the country blues. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the normal manner, by pressing the strings against the fretboard with the fingers, a slide is used. The slide is a usually a tube of some hard material about 1 to 2 inches long, though a knife may be used, as in knife guitar. Commonly these are made from glass (such as a bottleneck), although metals (normally steel or brass) are also used, with each type of giving the sound a distinct characteristic in terms of tone, clarity and duration. The slide is pressed against the strings (lightly, so as not to touch the strings to the fret board), producing a sustained tone which can be continuously varied by moving the slide across the neck. Many slide guitarists will still use their free fingers to fret the strings if they want to mix up the sounds they get from their guitar.

Reference

• van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0193161214.
• Evans, David.