This month, Andy G Jones is getting to grips with the extraordinary style of one of the finest guitarists to have ever picked up a bottleneck.
Derek Trucks is the nephew of Butch Trucks, the original drummer in the Allman Brothers, so naturally, the child prodigy Derek was influenced early on by Duane Allman’s slide guitar style.
Over time he has formulated his own highly personal approach to slide guitar playing. His style is very lyrical with a more legato approach than many great slide players. His band with wife Susan Tedeschi is one of the most popular blues-based live acts on the worldwide scene.
Trucks is a great accompanist. It’s worth listening to his records just for the way he accompanies his wife’s voice and guitar solos. He is also a fine non-slide soloist, too, and in the examples here I’ve used a slide for nearly but not all of the notes.
Intonation is always an issue with slide playing, so it’s really important to make sure that you can hear the bass in the mix. A great tip that Dominic Miller from Sting’s band recently told me is that you should use your eyes as well as your ears -so look at the frets. For slide playing you want to be directly above the fretwire to replicate the intonation of a normal fretted note. When you are more experienced you can explore further nuances of intonation but for now aim to hit the pitch exactly. Dominic said that the great American guitarist Waddy Wachtel gave him that advice on a session, very handy!
Fretting-hand damping is also a vital part of slide playing. If you want single-note lines to come out clearly (without the sympathetic ringing of other strings), try gently holding your fretting-hand first finger straight across all the strings, keeping it parallel to the slide.
Picking-hand damping is also important if you want to avoid all the string ringing out. Like Derek yo
