Travels in Calcutta 

My fascination with Indian music started the same way it did for a lot of people of my generation: George Harrison. The Beatles. That extraordinary moment in the mid-60s when the sitar started appearing on pop records and suddenly the whole world got a little bit bigger.

That spark stayed with me for years. And eventually, in my search for all things slide guitar around the world, it took me to Calcutta, where I studied Indian classical slide guitar with one of the most remarkable musicians alive. Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, the Grammy nominated BBC award winner who is one of the world's great slide guitarists - and the inheritor of a tradition that goes right back to the man who pioneered raga on the slide guitar, Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, in the 1960s.

The man who may have started it all

In the 1870s, according to some accounts, a young man born in India was kidnapped by a Portuguese sea captain and taken to Honolulu. His name was Gabriel Davion.

In 1884 a Hawaiian composer named Charles E. King saw Davion playing guitar in what he described as a "new way" - with a slide. And some historians believe that what Davion was doing was carrying a technique from India that had existed for centuries, from an ancient instrument called the Vichitra Veena.

The Vichitra Veena is a fretless string instrument played with a smooth glass ball pressed against the strings, sliding and swooping along them to find the notes. Not the fixed notes. The notes between the notes. The slides and glides and microtonal inflections that live in the spaces Western tuning can't accommodate.

The slide technique, in other words, may have existed in India for over a thousand years before it arrived in Hawaii, before it crossed to Mississippi, before a ragged man pressed a knife against his guitar strings at Tutwiler station and Handy woke up on that bench.

Nobody knows for certain. The story is contested. But given what I've seen and heard in Calcutta, it doesn't surprise me in the least.

The Indian word for blue note

We've been talking these last few newsletters about blue notes. The squeeze between the third and fourth fret. The note that lives between major and minor. What makes the blues sound like the blues.

When I started studying in Calcutta I had one of those moments where something you already know suddenly gets a lot bigger.

Because in Indian classical music they've been talking about exactly the same thing for over a thousand years. They just have a different name for it.

They call them shrutis. The word comes from the Sanskrit for "that which is heard." Where Western music carves an octave into twelve fixed notes, Indian classical music recognises twenty two — the subtle microtonal positions that live in the spaces between. The notes between the notes.

It's the same note, the same impulse. The same search for the human, vocal, expressive quality that lives between the fixed pitches. The blues got there through West Africa and the Mississippi Delta. Indian classical music got there through thousands of years of raga tradition and the ancient Vichitra Veena.

The slide guitar is the instrument that finds them both. And that's why when Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya picks up a slide in Calcutta and when Blind Willie Johnson pressed a pocketknife against his strings in Open D, they are reaching for exactly the same thing.

The lineage — and the full circle

What I find extraordinary, and what I think about every time I pick up the slide, is that there is a direct line from Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, the man who first played ragas on the slide guitar in the 1960s, through Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya in Calcutta, to a guitar teacher in a small studio in Wales.

That line carries something. A way of thinking about the slide that is older than the blues, older than Hawaii, older than any of the American story we've been talking about these last few weeks.

And here's where it all comes full circle. In 1993 Ry Cooder walked into a studio with Indian slide guitarist Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and recorded A Meeting by the River. Two traditions — the Mississippi Delta and the Indian classical — sitting in the same room, playing the same instrument, reaching for the same notes. It won the Grammy for Best World Music Album.

Put it on and you'll hear everything we've been talking about in these last few blogs in one extraordinary recording.

When you squeeze your slide into that zone between the third and fourth fret on the top string and find that note — you're not just playing the blues. You're reaching for something that musicians on the other side of the world have been reaching for since before the guitar existed.

Have a listen

Three recordings. Three strands of the same story.

Call of the Valley — Brij Bhushan Kabra with Hariprasad Chaurasia and Shivkumar Sharma, 1967. The record that introduced raga to the slide guitar. Listen to what Kabra does with the slide — the glides, the inflections, the notes between the fixed pitches. You'll recognise every impulse even if the musical language is completely new to you.

3: Calcutta Slide Guitar — Debashish Bhattacharya. The man I studied with. One of the most extraordinary slide guitar recordings you will ever hear. Put it on and just listen.

A Meeting by the River — Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, 1993. The moment the two traditions sat in the same room. Grammy winning. Essential. Everything we've been talking about in one recording.

You don't need to understand the ragas to feel what's happening. The instrument is doing the same thing it always does — finding the notes between the notes and making them sing.

Find my classes and courses online here or pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here

See you on the back porch!

He woke up to the weirdest music he had ever heard... 

I've got a bit of history for you today, a piece to play, and hopefully some serious inspiration for you and your slide.

It's 1903. A railway station in Tutwiler, Mississippi. A classically trained bandleader named W.C. Handy has fallen asleep on a hard wooden bench waiting for a train.

He wakes up to find a man sitting beside him. Ragged clothes. Shoes with holes in them. Playing a guitar with a knife pressed against the strings. Singing the same line over and over — “Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog.”

Handy wrote about it later in his autobiography. He described the man like this:

"His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of a guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable." — W.C. Handy, 1941

That moment — a classically trained musician waking up on a station bench in rural Mississippi — is the first documented written account of slide guitar. And what Handy heard that morning would go on to reshape all of American music.

Where it came from

Now here's the thing that I find fascinating about this. Handy compared the technique to Hawaiian guitarists — and he wasn't wrong. Hawaiian steel guitar was sweeping America at exactly the same moment. By 1916 it was outselling every other genre of recorded music in the country. Hawaiian guitarists were touring the South with vaudeville shows, playing on street corners.

So the slide technique was arriving from multiple directions at once. And next week I've got another piece of that story for you — from somewhere you probably wouldn't expect.

But the deeper root, the one that matters most to us as blues slide players, goes back much further than 1903. It goes back to West Africa.

The instrument that links it all together is called the diddley bow. A single wire nailed between two screws on a board. A glass bottle used as a bridge. Nothing else. You pluck the string and move a slide up and down to change the pitch. That's it.

The diddley bow derives from instruments in the Sahel region of West Africa - northern Nigeria and Mali - where they were often played by children, one beating the string with sticks and the other changing the pitch by moving a slide up and down. Enslaved Africans brought that tradition to America. In the rural South it became the starter instrument: cheap to build, requiring no formal training, and producing a wailing, moaning quality that could carry across fields and porches.

The kids who grew up playing diddley bows in Mississippi went on to become the blues legends. Bukka White. Big Joe Williams. Muddy Waters almost certainly played one as a child on Stovall's plantation before he ever touched a proper guitar.

The line from a wire nailed to a wall in West Africa to Blind Willie Johnson's pocketknife in Open D is a direct one. It just crosses an ocean and a few generations on the way.

The first recording

The first time slide guitar was captured on record was 1923, when a 26 year old Kentucky guitarist named Sylvester Weaver, using a knife, in New York City. Twenty years after Handy woke up on that bench. Those twenty years it was just passing from player to player across the Delta, out on the porches and the juke joints before anyone wrote it down or recorded it.

Why this matters to your playing

I think about all of this when I pick up the slide. Because what we're doing is part of something very old and very deep.   

The technique of moving a hard object along a string to find the notes that live between the fixed pitches — that's not a guitar trick. 

That's a musical impulse that survived a slave ship and a plantation and a hundred years of American history before it got anywhere near a recording studio.

The blue notes we've been talking about in these last couple of newsletters — the ones that live between the frets, the ones that slide players have such an advantage in finding — they were already on that diddley bow. Already in that music at Tutwiler in 1903. Already there in West Africa, long before it ever crossed an ocean.

When you squeeze your slide into that zone between the third and fourth fret on the top string and find that note, you're reaching for the same thing that man on the bench was reaching for when Handy woke up.  That's worth knowing.

Have a go yourself: the one string exercise

Here is a simple piece to take into the Woodshed this weekend. And I mean really simple. One string only. Just like a diddley bow.

I've put together a little arrangement I'm calling Darkish Is The Night — Diddly Bow Version

It's based on the Ry Cooder piece we talked about last week, stripped right back to the top string only in Open D. 

No chords. No second string. Just you, your slide, and one wire — the same as those kids in Mississippi had on their wall.

The main thing here is not the notes. It's the spaces between them. Let each note breathe before you move to the next one. 

Slide into the notes rather than landing on them. And when you get to that blue note zone — the 2-3-2 movement in bars 8 to 11 — don't rush through it. That's where the music lives.

Try it slowly first. Then slower than that. Think about how your voice would sing it. Think about that man on the bench at Tutwiler and what he was reaching for with that knife on the strings.  One string. That's all it takes!

Find your own version of what's in there.

If you want to go deeper on all of this - the blue note zones, the squeeze technique, the full tab analysis of the Ry Cooder arrangement - Slide Success Pro members got the full masterclass this month. Just drop me a line to find out more.

Check out my courses on my website, or pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here

See you on the back porch!

Festival Season! 

It's festival season! The summer festivals are a highlight for many musicians in the UK, and the fabulous folk festivals here have certainly given me some great memories. 

This is a throwback to the inaugural Found Festival, in Buckinghamshire last summer - I loved the great set by Willie and the Bandits! 

This year, I'll be playing with the Gigspanner Big Band on 5th August at the Sidmouth Folk Week so come and join in the fun if you're local! The seaside town is taken over by fantastic folk acts, from young children to amateur and professional touring groups and it's always a great atmosphere. 

This weekend, it's the Warwick Folk Festival (23-26th July 2026), followed by the Cambridge Folk Festival, which is well worth a trip (1st-2nd August 2026). 

Shrewsbury Folk Festival is coming up at the end of August (28th-31st August 2026), with riverside camping and a family friendly vibe, and the Mosely Folk and Arts Festival combines live folk music with comedy, spoken word and storytelling performances, as well as craft demonstrations (4-6th September 2026).

Which festivals are you heading to this summer?

Pick up your Get Going with Slide Guide here, or find my courses here

Happy sliding!

The Piece NASA Sent Into Space 

In 1927 a blind street preacher from Georgia recorded a piece of music with no words, no conventional melody, and no chord changes to follow.

Just a pocketknife pressed against a guitar string in Open D. And a voice that couldn't find words for what it needed to say, so it hummed and moaned instead.

That piece was Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground by Blind Willie Johnson. And in 1977, fifty years later, NASA chose it as one of 27 pieces of music to put on the Voyager Golden Record. Sent into space to represent the diversity of life on Earth.

Of everything human beings have ever made, this was considered that important.

Now, a lot of what Johnson does on that recording is actually done with his voice. The slide plays its part, but the voice is doing a huge amount of the work. Which is why I also love to reference the Ry Cooder version — Dark Is The Night — because Ry does it all with the slide. 

What Johnson does with his voice, Cooder does with the glass. And suddenly you can really clearly hear what's going on with all that shaping and squeezing.

The Paris Texas connection is a good story too. Wim Wenders was in the editing suite with no music sorted. He just took a bit of Ry's earlier recording of Dark Is The Night and dropped it into a scene. As soon as Ry heard it alongside the footage he said — that's it, that's the direction for the whole soundtrack. He went away and wrote Paris Texas — the main piece on the soundtrack — as a direct homage to Dark Is The Night. That one fragment of Blind Willie Johnson's playing, filtered through Ry Cooder, shaped one of the most celebrated film scores ever made.

What's actually going on

Now here's what I find so interesting about this piece as a slide player. When you listen to it and try to work out what's happening, it's both simpler and more mysterious than it first appears.

There is a scale. There are landing points. The structure is there if you listen for it.

But the music doesn't happen at the landing points. It happens in the journey between them.

The slide shifts seamlessly between major and minor — sometimes bright, sometimes dark, sometimes neither and both at once. And in those transitions, in the movement between one settled note and the next, Johnson finds something that a fretted guitarist simply can't reach.

We talked last week about blue note squeeze zones — the spaces between major and minor that we as slide players can get into so much more easily than someone bending strings. This piece is essentially a masterclass in that. The destinations are clear. The journey between them is where all the music lives.

There's a reason for that, and it's worth knowing about. When African musicians came to America and brought their musical traditions with them, the tuning system they used — based on the natural harmonic series, which is essentially physics — didn't quite fit the Western equal temperament system. 

There were notes they wanted to pitch that you couldn't find on a keyboard or on the frets of a guitar.

So those notes ended up in the cracks. In between. And when African musicians took on the gospel chord progressions, the hymn tunes, the one four five — two traditions came head to head. And you feel that push and pull every time you listen to music like this.

"The blues scale is a West African scale forced into compromise with the twelve tone system.Not a European invention. An African survival" — Gerhard Kubik, ethnomusicologist

 

And as slide players, we're the ones best placed to honour it — because we can go where the notes are, rather than where the frets tell us they should be.

Your challenge this week:

Pull up both versions. Johnson first, then Cooder. Don't analyse them. Just listen to what they make you feel.

Then pick up your slide in Open D and have a go at painting a picture in those zones we talked about last week. Third fret toward fourth on the top string. The slow squeeze. See how much or how little you put into it. Think of it like colour — you can lean into the dark or keep it a bit lighter. The world's your oyster with the slide.

The key thing is control. If you're tense and jerky you won't be able to shape into those zones the way you want. Relax into it.

Think about how your voice would do it. That's really what you're after — making the slide sing!

Here's one of the diagrams from this week's masterclass to give you a visual on where those zones sit:

 

 

There's a whole world of sound in between those frets. Go and find some of it.

See you on the back porch.

You'll find my courses here and my free PDF Get Going With Slide here.

 

The note that lives between the frets 

There's a moment that happens to almost every slide player at some point.

You're playing along, following the changes, hitting the right positions, and it sounds... almost right. Almost like the records. Almost like the players you've been listening to for years.

But not quite.

And it's frustrating because you can't put your finger on what's missing. You know the notes. You know the positions. But something isn't there yet.

I've been teaching slide for 20 years and I've seen this moment hundreds of times. And almost without exception, the missing ingredient is the same thing.

It's the note that lives between the frets.

The blue note squeeze

Here's what I mean.

In Open D, if you put your slide on the third fret of the top string, you've got a minor third. Dark. Tense. Very blues.

Move up to the fourth fret and you've got a major third. Brighter. More open.

Now here's the thing: the note that makes blues sound like blues doesn't live at either of those frets. It lives somewhere in between. And as a slide player you have something that no fretted guitarist has; the ability to find that note, sit on it, squeeze toward it, blur between minor and major and find the exact shade of blue you're looking for in any given moment.

That's the blue note squeeze. And once you start hearing it you'll hear it everywhere. In Blind Willie Johnson, in Elmore James, in Ry Cooder, in every great slide player you've ever admired.

It's not a scale position. It's not something you can write down in a tab. It's a feel.

How to practice it

Start simple. Put your slide on the third fret of the top string in Open D and play that note. Hear the minor quality - dark, slightly tense.

Now very slowly move the slide toward the fourth fret. Don't jump to it. Creep toward it. Listen to what happens in between. Somewhere in that movement the note starts to open up, to brighten - somewhere in there is the blue note.

The key is the movement itself. You're not landing on a fret. You're passing through a feeling. The speed of that movement, how far you go, whether you come back… all of that is expression. All of that is yours to control in a way that a fretted guitarist simply can't.

Try it slowly at first. Third fret to fourth fret and back. Then experiment: what happens if you only go halfway? What happens if you squeeze toward the fourth fret and then release back to the third? Listen carefully to the difference.

This is what Blind Willie Johnson was doing. This is what makes Elmore James sound like Elmore James rather than someone playing his licks. The notes are the same. The feeling between the notes is everything.

This is also one of those things that's genuinely hard to develop on your own because you can't always hear what someone else can hear from the outside. It's something I work on with students a lot. A fresh pair of ears and a few specific pointers at the right moment can move this forward faster than months of solo practice.

If you want that kind of help, you know where I am. 

You'll find my courses on my website and I'm ready to get started whenever you are.

See you on the back porch.

Slide Success: Learn Slide Guitar Online 

Are you trying to learn slide guitar? Maybe you've tried it over the years and now fancy tackling some techniques to build your confidence and get that authentic backporch sound… here's how. 

My Slide Success course is designed to meet you where you are, giving you all the essentials you need to become a confident slide player quickly. 

Here are a few of the questions I often get asked:

  • Who is Slide Success: Academy for?

Slide Success: Academy is for those looking to jumpstart their bottleneck slide playing, even if they are completely new to the guitar. It is designed for anyone who is interested in learning bottleneck slide guitar, whether you are an experienced guitarist or have never picked up the instrument before.

  • What's included in Slide Success: Academy?

The course includes an extensive library of video lessons and tabs, giving you a comprehensive insight into the world of slide guitar.

For a limited time, Slide Success: Academy also features these bonuses:

  • FREE access to my Slide Success: Foundations course - giving you all the basics (worth £47)
  • The Get Gigging With Slide Guide bonus course (worth £99)
  • Do I need specific equipment to join the course?

You can use just about any normal guitar. You'll learn to use a bottleneck as the course centres on the bottleneck technique - I can advise you on all aspects of gear when you start. You won't need lots of fancy equipment!

  • How is the course structured?

Slide Success: Academy centres around my five pillared approach to bottleneck playing. It includes the short course Slide Success: Foundations, to get you started, and then progresses to the five pillars:

  1. Strengthening The Foundations - getting the essentials right, including your tuning, touch, and tone.
  2. Open Tunings Unlocked - demystifying alternate tunings and getting your fingers round them confidently
  3. Fingerstyle Mastery - learning picking patterns such as Travis picking, and right hand string muting techniques.
  4. A New World Of Sounds - learning the 'bells and whistles' such as vibrato and harmonics.
  5. Slide Like A Pro - bringing all the elements together and learning some fun repertoire pieces.
  • How is each pillar taught?

Each pillar is broken down into easily-digestible chunks. Every aspect is covered by a video lesson, reinforced with tabs where needed. I am always available if you have any questions.

I've got several courses available on my website, and I can help to find the best fit for you. Whatever your experience level, get in touch and let's get started. Find out more by clicking here.

Happy sliding!

Slide Guitar in Unexpected Genres: Indie, Ambient & Lo-fi 

When most people think of slide guitar, they immediately picture Delta blues, Southern rock, or country music. It's easy to understand why - some of the greatest slide players built their reputation in these styles and they bring something very special to the table. But today's music scene is constantly evolving, and slide guitar is finding a home in places you might never expect.

If you've only ever used a slide for blues licks, maybe you'll enjoy thinking outside the box…

One of the most exciting genres for slide guitar is indie music. Many indie artists favour texture and atmosphere over flashy solos, making slide guitar the perfect tool for adding emotion to a song. A simple melody played with a slide can sit beautifully behind vocals, creating a haunting, expressive layer without overpowering the arrangement. Instead of thinking like a lead guitarist, think like a songwriter adding colour to the music.

Then there's the world of ambient guitar. Ambient music is built around space, sustain and mood, and slide guitar naturally excels at all three. Long, singing notes combined with delay and reverb can create huge cinematic soundscapes. You don't need to play lots of notes - just a few carefully chosen ones that slowly evolve as the effects carry them into the distance.

Lo-fi music might seem like an unlikely match, but it's becoming an increasingly popular home for slide guitar. Lo-fi is all about feel rather than perfection, and the organic character of slide playing fits beautifully. Small imperfections, gentle string noise and expressive vibrato often add warmth rather than distract from the music. A mellow slide melody over a chilled beat can give a track a unique personality that sampled instruments simply can't recreate.

Exploring these genres also encourages you to rethink your gear. While a cranked valve amp has its place, try experimenting with clean tones, stereo delays, shimmer reverbs or subtle modulation effects. You may be surprised how modern your slide guitar can sound with just a few adjustments.

Perhaps the biggest lesson is that slide guitar doesn't belong to one genre. It's simply another voice on the instrument. Whether you're creating dreamy soundscapes, writing indie songs or producing chilled lo-fi tracks, the expressive quality of the slide can bring something completely unique to your music.

So next time you pick up your slide, try something different! Experiment with new sounds, unusual effects and different styles to find your own voice. 

Happy sliding!

Check out my courses on my website and start building your confidence with slide guitar today. Here's my FREE Get Going With Slide PDF to begin with. 

On Tour Again 

Touring is a big part of life as a musician, and I generally love it. There are times when it feels exhausting to move around so much, and I always love the feeling of arriving home after a tour, but it's a great way to explore and spending time with a band is always a privilege. 

At the moment, we're on tour with the Gigspanner Big Band - check out the dates below if you fancy joining us. 

Tonight, we're at the Oxford Playhouse, a gorgeous venue in central Oxford that showcases a whole range of live music, plays, comedy and improv. If you're local, grab some tickets and come along!

After that, we'll be in Stroud, Hailsham (sold out), Deal, Halesworth and Ely:

The audience is in for a treat - this promises to be a really great experience for all of us and I'm looking forward to the busy week!

Check out my courses while I'm away and find the perfect solution to build your confidence with slide guitar.

Happy sliding!

The Slide: Talks with the Expert 

This week I want to go a bit deeper on one specific piece of kit — the slide itself.

Because if you've ever wondered why your slide sounds thin, buzzy or just a bit flat compared to the players you love listening to, there's a good chance the answer is in your hand rather than your technique.

I recently had a guest session with a very special guest - Iain McWee, the man behind Diamond Bottlenecks. 

Iain has been making glass slides since the 1970s and his slides are used by the likes of Mark Knopfler, Sonny Landreth and Michael Messer. 

He also made the bottleneck that every attendee went home with from the UK Slide Guitar Festival last year — which has since become my personal go-to slide.

Here are the most useful things that came out of that conversation.

Weight and density are everything - especially on acoustic and resonator. This is the big one. A standard Pyrex slide weighs around 33 grams. A proper bottleneck or lead crystal slide is 65-70 grams - double the weight. That extra mass is what gives you sustain, warmth and that thick, full tone.

On electric guitar it matters less, the slide is only a small part of your overall tone once you factor in pickups, pedals and amp. But on acoustic or resonator guitar, the slide is a massive chunk of what you're actually hearing. On those instruments, a lightweight Pyrex slide will always sound thin and hollow no matter how good your technique is.

A university researcher once did a sound wave test across all slide materials. Apart from really heavy brass, Iain's lead crystal slides came second. Everything else was in the dust.

Surface polish matters more than most people realise. Iain demonstrated this live in the session with a satin finish titanium slide versus one of his highly polished glass slides. The difference was immediate - the satin finish created a fizzing, grating noise across the strings that you just can't EQ out. A highly polished surface gives you clean, smooth contact with no extra noise.

Worth checking your slide under a light if you've been wondering where that extra fizz is coming from.

Pyrex is fine for electric - but there's better glass out there.

The standard Dunlop and Fender Pyrex slides you find in most shops are machine-made, often shipped in from China, and very lightweight. They work perfectly well for electric slide because you're running through pickups, pedals and amplification. For acoustic and resonator work, the weight just isn't there to give you the tone. If that's mostly what you play, it's worth investing in something heavier.

Two slides worth having in your toolkit:

When someone in the session asked for a recommendation, Iain pointed straight to two from his own range. These are the ones I'd point you to as well.

🎸  The Red House — the great all-rounder

A double-cut bottleneck made from proper soda lime glass — around double the weight of Pyrex, with a slightly flared shape that works on different finger sizes. It's what most of Iain's customers start with and it's the one I reach for most often myself. A great first proper slide and genuinely good value.

👉  The Red House at diamondbottlenecks.com

 

✨  The Ultimate — the one to aspire to

Iain's hand-blown lead crystal masterpiece. Heavier, warmer, with that thick, deep tone that serious resonator players chase. Mark Knopfler uses one. As I mention below, lead crystal is becoming increasingly hard to source — if the Ultimate is something you want in your hands at some point, sooner is better than later.

👉  The Ultimate at diamondbottlenecks.com

How to get the right fit:

Fit is more important than most people think. Too tight and you risk tendonitis — Iain had a genuinely alarming story about a professional guitarist who jammed his slides on so tightly he couldn't play for weeks. Too loose and the slide rattles and loses control.

Iain's simple test: curve your hand like you're holding a grapefruit. Slide the bottleneck onto your finger without changing the hand position. Apply a little pressure with your fingertip on the inside of the slide and turn it over. If it stays on — that's your size. If it falls off, go smaller.

 

To get an accurate measurement, grab a plastic ring sizer set from eBay for under £4. Take that number to Iain's site and he can make a slide to your exact size — something almost no other manufacturer offers. Most shops only do small, medium and large, which is useless if you fall between sizes.

One more thing worth knowing:

Lead crystal slides — Iain's most sought-after product — are becoming increasingly rare. The last UK supplier of leaded glass is closing down, and by law they can't be sold in America at all (long story involving bourbon and pregnant women in the 1950s — genuinely fascinating if you ever get Iain talking about it). If you've been thinking about getting an Ultimate, sooner is better than later.

You can explore the full range and watch Iain's workshop tour — which shows every stage of how these are made from a raw tube — at diamondbottlenecks.com.

Happy sliding!

If you've enjoyed this kind of thing and want more — guest sessions like this one with Iain, weekly masterclasses, a community of fellow slide players, and personal help from me to get your playing properly on track — that's exactly what the Summer Slide Launchpad is. Six weeks, ten places, and the lowest price it will ever be. Click here to find out more.

Summer Slide Launchpad 

I'm excited to announce something new this summer: a 30 day programme called the Summer Slide Launchpad

In the last few blogs, I've been going back to fundamentals - the gear questions, the riffs, the simple ways in. And what I kept coming back to was this: the people who make the fastest progress aren't the ones who watch the most YouTube videos. 

They're the ones who get proper, structured help and have someone alongside them to keep things on track.

That's exactly what the Summer Slide Launchpad is.

It's a complete 6-week programme - on-demand lessons laid out in a clear plan, a one-to-one session with me at the start to build a practice plan around your playing, WhatsApp support throughout, group sessions, and the Slide Success community alongside you the whole way.

Six weeks. Personal help from me. Everything you need to finally get this thing moving.

I'm keeping it to just 10 people so everyone gets the attention they need - and this is the lowest price it will ever be.

A few of you already replied after the last couple of newsletters to say you were interested. If that was you, this is the moment.

For everyone else: full details are here.

 

 

Happy sliding!