Learn Slide Guitar Lessons Online
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The guitar is quite arguably the most famous instrument in the entire world. The instrument has been around for a very long time and they are an instrument that has revolutionized music. Many of the greatest musical scores of all time have used guitars and you can hear them in the most popular songs around today.
It is a beautiful instrument in terms of both appearance and sound, something that plays a big role in their popularity. Guitars aren’t difficult to get started with as it is a simple instrument when compared to some others, however they are difficult to master.
There are many different ways you can play a guitar, one of the most popular ones being the slide guitar, a style used to create deeper vibratos. Playing slide guitars requires great precision and practice to fully master and self-training alone won’t be enough as you need an expert to help you some of the times.
Luckily for anyone that wants to learn how to play the guitar using the slide guitar technique, there are thousands of lessons on the internet waiting to help them out.
15 Websites To Learn Slide Guitar Lessons Online Review
1) GuitarTricks
Guitar Tricks offers five guitar lessons that introduce you to the basics of slide guitar in the style of blues, rock, and country. What you will be covering in the Guitar Tricks slide guitar lessons include mastering the guitar slide mechanics, applying the right tone in your guitar playing, and learn the different tones produced by varous guitar slide materials and sizes. The titles for Guitar Tricks slide guitar lessons are listed as below:
1. Blues Drop D Slide Guitar by Instructor Hanspeter Kruesi
2. Blues Style Level 1: Odds and End – Slide by Instructor Andy Gurley
3. Blues Style Level 2: Blues Slide Guitar Techniques by Instructor Anders Mouridsen
4. Rock Tone: Miscellaneous – The Slide by Instructor Andy Gurley
5. Country Style Level 1: How a Slide Effects Tone by Instructor Andy Gurley
You can start your slide guitar lesson in Guitar Tricks without following a specific order. There is a difficulty scale next to each lesson, so you can choose which lessons are suitable for you to keep up.
To gain full access to Guitar Tricks online materials, you can sign up as a member with a monthly subscription fee if you don’t feel like spending money yet. No worries! You can opt for Guitar Tricks basic access for free!
2) TrueFire
TrueFire is one of the best guitar learning websites to exist on the Internet to date. It promises a good quality music education by assembling world-renowned educators to guide you to be a good slide guitarist.
By subscribing as an All access member with TrueFire, you can unlock thousands of slide guitar lessons found in the vast TrueFire course library. You can also choose to learn the slide guitar on your own or attend an online music class with other slide guitar students.
By self-learning, you can take your TrueFire slide guitar lessons with you anytime and anywhere. TrueFire provides flexible learning tools for you, such as instant video downloads, streaming on mobile & PC apps, video playback, and so on. You can also personally track your learning progress by marking your lessons with the labels ‘Incomplete’, ‘In Progress’ and, ‘Complete’. How convenient!
However, if you prefer to study in a group, TrueFire offers online music classes where you can interact with other students and have one-on-one time with your educator. Furthermore, you can always hop into TrueFire’s Student Forum to hang out and connect with other TrueFire students.
When you are ready, join these TrueFire Educators for your first slide guitar lessons:
Lee Roy Parnell, Geoff Hartwell, Richard Gilewitz, BJ Baartmans, Rick Vito, David Hamburger, Sonny Landreth, and Andy Aledort.
3) Udemy
There are literally thousands of courses on Udemy that can help you learn more about slide guitars and how you can become better at playing them. This leaves you with more than enough of a variety to take your pick from.
There are lessons for people that have no prior experience with slide guitars or for people that have been playing them for a long time and want to improve, as well as everyone between the two.
The beginner courses on the site can help you get familiar with the technique and how it works. This includes explaining the effects that using slides have on the sound of the guitar as well as how you can perfect it.
If you have no past experience with guitars in general, some courses can also quickly get you familiar with the instrument as well along with how you can do different things such as tune it.
Other than this, there are courses that intermediates and advanced players can take in order to learn more about the different types of licks you can try out with slide guitars. Their many courses cover these different, small yet important topics, making them ideal for all skill levels.
4) SkillShare
Skill Share can provide people of pretty much any skill levels with the courses that they need to go one step further. The site has a good enough variety of slide guitar courses, with most mainly being suited to beginners.
Their lengthy courses regarding the popular technique can help beginners develop a better understanding of the effects that placing slides on your guitars can have and why it can or can’t be suitable for you depending on the type of sound you’re trying to create.
Something that many people will find great about some of the courses on Skill Share is that they’re provided by professionals who have been playing blues-styled music using slide guitars for a long time.
The courses are all provided by experienced guitarists and each of said courses consist of multiple video classes, each covering a unique topic.
There are several different videos inside each course, all of them mostly short and well-explained so you don’t have any troubles understanding any particular topic.
All of these lessons also feature PDF files that can help you learn more about slide guitars once you’ve completed the course that you were taking. These PDF files can also be assignments.
5) LessonFace
Lesson Face is a platform that believes that a great tutor plays the biggest role in the development of a student, which is exactly why they look to provide people from all over the world with great and experienced tutors.
The site features many expert guitar tutors that can teach you all you need to know if you’re interested in becoming better at using the slide guitar.
It is true that personal attention can help when learning how to play instruments, while it is also true that some people prefer studying with a teacher as compared to online courses.
Luckily for said people, there are tutors that can teach them more about slide guitars available for bookings at pretty much any time.
One great thing about the site is that it is very detailed, allowing you to learn many things about the tutors you’re interested in, such as where they’ve completed their studies and how experienced they are at playing the guitar.
One very helpful feature is one that lets you identify the tutors teaching method, allowing you to learn how one specific tutor will be teaching you in their own way and letting you choose which one suits you.
6) LearningGuitarNow
LGN is a platform dedicated to providing people from all over the world with highly detailed guitar lessons so that they can learn more about playing the instrument and improving their skills.
LGN stands for Learning Guitar Now, the full name of the site. There are many different types of guitars and there are many different techniques that can be used to play these different guitars.
Learn Guitar Now features lessons for all these guitars and techniques, including of course the popular slide guitar. There are many courses on the site available to be taken at any time that can teach you more about the different, important things related to slide guitars, such as ear training and string tuning.
All these different courses can help you learn more about slide guitars and can help you significantly improve the way you play. The lessons are taught through video and can be accessed at any time from their site, allowing you to study about slide guitars whenever you get the time.
One of the best things about these string guitar lessons is that they’re completely free to take, meaning that you can get started with them right away without having to do anything.
7) FretHub
Frethub have many courses on their site that can help beginner, intermediate or advanced guitarists learn whatever they want to about playing guitars. They have many slide guitar courses on their site that can help said guitar players out, regardless of their skill level.
There are slide guitar courses on the site that focus on specific and very important aspects of playing guitars with a slide, including helping players decide what type of slide is most suited to them.
Other than this, there are other essential things such as licks and muting techniques that come in handy for anyone, regardless of how experienced they might be.
Rolls, chord ideas and other important things will also be discussed, making the lessons pretty much ideal for anyone looking to learn more about slide guitars. In all these lessons, there is a free one which acts as an introduction to playing slide guitars.
This free video course can give you a good idea of what the other lessons will be teaching you about and how they’ll be doing it. The intro will also discuss things such as teaching you how to get your guitar ready for slide playing so you can get started.
8) JustinGuitar
Justin Guitar, as you can see from its name, is a site that heavily focuses on guitars and helping others learn how to play them in different ways. Owned by Justin Sandercoe, the platform features hundreds of completely free courses that you can take at any time in order to learn more and more about guitars.
This particular course on the site is all about helping you learn how to play the guitar using a slide and teaching you about all the important techniques.
The lesson is for beginners and intermediates, as it will teach them about all the important techniques necessary for slide guitar playing that any advanced guitarist that uses a slide would already know about.
6 main topics are discussed throughout the video lesson with the first one being arguably the most important of them all. The very first point that the lesson will discuss is choosing a slide.
Choosing a slide is a difficult thing, however the course will make it much easier by pinpointing the right type of slide for you depending on your criteria. The topics that follow after this will also be important, such as discussing vibratos, muting techniques etc.
9) GuitarCompass
Guitar Compass is run by very experienced hands that have been providing guitar lessons for almost four decades now. The platform is very experienced when it comes to guitar lessons, making them something that you can trust.
They have always been quite devoted to helping guitarists all over the world and with the invention of the internet, they were able to create their own website to accomplish this goal.
On their site, you will be able to find many helpful and completely free to take courses that can allow you to significantly improve your guitar playing skills.
This particular course is one that is meant to help people with little prior experience get introduced to slide guitars and how they can use the technique in order to improve the criteria of different techniques they know.
The first thing that the lesson will be focusing on is how and why you should use your right hand’s fingers in order to play the strings as opposed to using a pick.
Afterwards, the course will be focusing on your left hand’s fingers and the different things that you can try out with them as well as wearing the slide and more.
10) Ipassio
Ipassio have multiple tutors on their site that can provide you with the personal attention you would want when learning how to play the slide guitar.
Their tutors and courses will be teaching you how to work with the different variations of the slide guitar so you can add to the variety of different ways you can play the guitar.
Their one on one classes with experienced tutors can help anyone, regardless of their skill level, as their tutors are skilled enough themselves to teach pretty much anyone that isn’t a professional.
You can select any of the lesson plans available on their site and you will be able to contact the tutor that will be teaching you the course. This way, you will be able to meet your teacher and see for yourself if they are the right tutor for you.
After communicating with them, all you have to do is set a time that is mutually agreeable by both parties and you will be able to take the class at that time.
The pre-lesson class can also be a way to get familiar with your tutor. Depending on the lesson plan, you’ll be able to learn a variety of things.
11) GuitarZoom
Provided by Rob Ashe, this course on Guitar Zoom can help you learn everything that you want to about getting started and becoming a good slide guitar player.
Guitar Zoom is a site that focuses on guitars, featuring lessons, forums and more to help guitar players from all the world by providing them with the latest information that they could need in order to improve their playing skills.
In this specific course from the site, you will be able to learn all that you need to for mastering open tunings.
Some of the main things that the course will help you with is the ability to both play and tune your slide guitar in open D and G tunings, something that can add a whole lot of variety to the way your guitar sounds.
Other than this, slide techniques for creating different tones are also covered by the lesson. One of the best thing that Rob’s lesson will teach you is how to play 3 of his own songs using the slide guitar, as well as one song by legendary blues guitarist Elmore James.
The course has been designed to be easy as possible to work with, not being complicated.
12) BluesLessons
While most of the other sites on the list have been about guitars in general, Blues Lessons is a site that is entirely dedicated to teaching people about Blues music and helping them play it using different instruments such as the slide guitar.
The site covers lessons for blues-styled musical instruments and is an ideal platform for anyone interested in the genre and playing its music. This particular course available on the site is there to teach people how to play the slide guitar.
The lesson covers many things, including the history of slide guitars and guitars in general, along with the things that influenced the changes made in slide guitars throughout history.
Other than this, there is another very important topic discussed by the course which is deciding what guitar suits playing the slide most. It’s true that the slide can be played on any guitar, however different guitars bring different advantages.
The lesson will mention these advantages and help you determine the guitar you want. After this, things such as setting your guitar up for slide playing and basic techniques will be covered in order to get you started with the popular instrument.
13) SlideGuitarLessons
As you can pretty much determine from the sites name, Slide Guitar Lessons is all about helping you and other people learn more about playing slide guitars.
The sites lessons are provided by Dave Arcari, a professional side guitarist who is a solo artist situated in Scotland.
As mentioned, he is a professional guitarist and his specialty is blues and slide styles, however he is experienced enough to work with other styles played throughout different types of guitars such as electrical and classical.
All that you have to do in order to get started on your slide playing journey is to fill out a booking form and submit it in order to set an appointment with the artist.
After this, you will be able to communicate with him via Facetime or Skype and learn whatever it is that you want to about slide guitars. Being a very experienced professional, Dave is more than able to help anyone learn about slide guitars, regardless of how good they already might be.
In the classes that you take from him, your tutor will be able to answer and explain any slide related questions that you would want to ask him.
14) 12Bar
12Bar is another site dedicated to the blues. Featuring lessons for most blues related topics that you could think of, the site is a good platform for anyone interested in that specific genre as compared to other musical genres.
The course, as mentioned in its name, is meant for beginners, making it much less helpful for most intermediates and all advanced players as they should already know the things taught by the course.
The first thing that the lesson will talk about is itself. The ‘’introduction’’ of sorts will allow you to get familiar with the person that has provided the course and the different things that you’ll be learning in it.
After the introduction is complete, the course will be mentioning guitars and how you can choose the right one for yourself depending on your preference.
After this, the lesson will be mentioning slides, providing you with an insight to what they are and what type you should be using.
Fingers will also be covered in the lesson, meaning that it will help you practice their positioning and what finger you should be using for specific things. Other important aspects of slide guitar playing are also mentioned.
15) AdamFranklinBlues
Adam Franklin is a professional blues teacher that can teach you everything you need to learn in order to improve your slide guitar playing skills.
He is an experienced blues player that devotes most of the time in his day to teach people from all over the world about the different aspects of blues music playing such as learning how to play the ukulele and of course slide guitars.
You can book a lesson from his site to learn more about playing the slide at any time that he is available. The lessons can be taken on both Skype and Zoom, allowing you to communicate with Adam using either of the programs that you prefer to use.
One advantage to this is the fact that both programs are available on phone as well, allowing you to take your classes when away from home in order to improve your guitar playing skills.
He is an energetic teacher with 25 years of experience that can keep you interested in playing the instrument so that you don’t lose your passion anytime soon.
Failure is common at the beginning and he, like any good tutor, can help you overcome it and improve your playing skills.
Choosing The Best Slide Guitar Lesson Online
As you can see, slide guitar lessons are as common as slide guitars themselves. There are many different lessons and entire platforms dedicated to helping you learn more about how to use slides in order to help with your tones.
The lessons mentioned above are all well-defined and tailored to help even those that have no past experience with the instrument, meaning that you should have no problem understanding them.
Something that makes things even better is the fact that even if these courses can’t help you out, there are many more out there to choose from that might be more suited to your personal preferences.