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.
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:
Strengthening The Foundations - getting the essentials right, including your tuning, touch, and tone.
Open Tunings Unlocked - demystifying alternate tunings and getting your fingers round them confidently
Fingerstyle Mastery - learning picking patterns such as Travis picking, and right hand string muting techniques.
A New World Of Sounds - learning the 'bells and whistles' such as vibrato and harmonics.
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.
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 isindie 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 musicmight 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm excited to announce something new this summer: a 30 day programme called theSummer 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.
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.
Have you ever felt frustrated when practicing your guitar and wondered if you're actually improving at all?
If so, you're not alone.
Every musician, from complete beginners to professional performers, experiences periods where progress feels painfully slow. One day you're excited because you've learned a new skill or mastered a tricky rhythm. The next, it feels like you've hit a wall and aren't improving at all.
The truth is that like most other forms of learning, learning an instrument isn't a straight line. It's a journey filled with peaks, plateaus, breakthroughs, and occasional moments when you seriously consider using your instrument as expensive decor.
But slow progress doesn't mean you're failing.
Let's explore why progress sometimes feels slow and, more importantly, how to stay motivated when you're tempted to give up.
It's important to remember that you're learning more than you think you are. When you first start learning an instrument, every improvement feels huge. Your first chord, the first riff, the first time it really feels smooth… it's obvious that you're making progress.
But as your skills grow, improvements become smaller and more subtle. Instead of learning a whole new song in a day, you might spend a week refining your timing or improving finger placement.
The gains are still happening, they're just harder to spot.
One of the fastest ways to destroy motivation is comparison.
Thanks to social media, we're constantly exposed to incredible musicians performing flawlessly. We see polished videos, perfect performances, and seemingly effortless talent. We don't see the years of practice, the mistakes, the failures or the frustrations.
When you compare your current ability to someone else's highlight reel, you'll almost always come away feeling discouraged. The only person you need to compare yourself to is you - look at where you are compared with where you were last month. Have you learned a new song or refined your technique?
Keep your journey focused on yourself, and celebrate your achievements, even if they feel small! Reward yourself for each little bit of progress, and keep moving forward.
It isn't realistic to aim for perfection, but consistency will get you where you want to be. If you feel stuck in a rut, take a break and remind yourself why you wanted to learn in the first place - listen to some of your favourite songs and get back to having fun with your guitar.
Today, we're more aware than ever of the importance of maintaining our mental health - but did you know that music can help? Playing a musical instrument has consistently been shown to support mental health and wellbeing, so that's another excellent reason to get started learning slide guitar.
One of the biggest advantages of playing music is that it reduces stress. When we focus on practicing an instrument, our attention shifts away from daily worries and pressures. This state of concentration can be similar to mindfulness, helping to calm the mind and promote relaxation. Have you ever felt that fantastic sense of peace and satisfaction after playing?
Playing music can also improve mood and emotional well-being. Learning a new song or mastering a challenging technique creates a sense of accomplishment that boosts self-confidence. These small successes build over time, encouraging a positive mindset and increasing motivation. Music also provides a healthy outlet for expressing emotions, allowing people to communicate feelings that may be difficult to put into words - and this is especially true for slide guitar, which often feels like an expression of pure emotion.
Another important benefit is the positive impact on cognitive function. Playing an instrument requires coordination between the hands, eyes, and brain, helping to strengthen memory, concentration, and problem-solving skills. The mental challenge of learning notes, rhythms, and techniques keeps the brain active and engaged, which can contribute to improved mental sharpness over time.
Music can also help combat feelings of loneliness and isolation. Joining a band, orchestra, or music group provides opportunities to connect with others who share similar interests. These social interactions can foster a sense of belonging and community, both of which are essential for good mental health. Even practicing with a teacher or attending music events can create meaningful social connections. Quick plug for the UK Slide Guitar Festival, coming up in November, get your tickets now…!
For many people, playing music becomes a valuable form of self-care. It offers a break from screens, work, and everyday responsibilities while providing a creative and rewarding experience. Unlike many hobbies, music combines emotional expression, mental stimulation, and personal achievement in a way that few activities can.
Learning slide guitar can reduce stress, improve mood, strengthen cognitive abilities, and encourage social connection. There's a host of great reasons to pick up your Get Going With Slide Guide or check out my courses today.
This week, I want to talk about riffs as one of the most fun ways into slide playing.
I also teach blues harmonica, and one of the first things I get students doing is simply getting the harmonica in their gob and having a chug.
Get your mouth round the bottom 3 or 4 holes, breathe in - in - out - out, and you've got a simple train rhythm.
It feels good straight away. You're making sound, making music, and getting inspired. The finer points can come later.
And recently I've been thinking: why shouldn't slide work the same way?
Get the slide on. Get into open tuning. And instead of getting chugging, get riffing.
Get used to the feel of the slide. Get to know the tuning. Make some swampy grooves. The rest we can sort out later.
That's exactly why I made Backporch Blues Riffs - a mini-course with 7 cool riffs to get you going on slide. It's just $11, and you can find it here.
For this train rhythm idea, open D works beautifully.
Keep it simple. A straight feel works well, and using the bottom 3 strings of open D gives you that same nice, solid block of sound - a bit like using the bottom holes on the harmonica.
Start with a simple off-and-on rhythm.
Bring the slide on, go up to the 5th fret, down to the 3rd, then off again. That's already a great riff.
Then try a slight variation: go up to the 3rd fret for the two hits, then off again. Loop those ideas round and you've got a really cool groove.
After that, add the train whistle.
On harmonica, that comes from drawing in and bending a few holes together. On slide, you can get a lovely version of it up at the 12th fret on the top 3 strings.
Try sliding from 11 to 12 and see if you can catch that bending, rushing train sound.
Then put it all together: groove, whistle, back to groove. Simple, fun, and full of character.
I've also found a way to make this rhythm even more interesting, but I'll save that for another day. There's a little hint of it in the faster example with a bit more rhythmic complexity.
I'll also be launching Summer Slide Launchpad shortly. There are only 10 places on this 6-week fast-track programme, so if you'd like to hear about it first, just get in touch and let me know.
At a recent gig, the pickup on my dobro started misbehaving, so it was time to get it into the workshop for a service. I needed to put in a new jack socket and, while I was there, I also wanted to give the cone a good clean and check everything was in order underneath the cover plate.
So, when you're servicing a resonator, the first thing to do is get the strings off, get the tailpiece off and then lift off the cover plate and it's all going on underneath there.
So with the Dobro, you've got a spider bridge, which is attached to the cone by a tension screw, so we loosen the tension screw off and that separates the spider bridge from the cone and then you can take the cone out and give it a good clean. I usually use glass cleaner, but couldn't find it today so I used isopropyl alcohol instead, and I gave it a good old polish.
The cone in this Dobro is a Paul Beard Legend Cone, so it's a very nice cone - I upgraded it a few years ago - but it has benefitted from a good clean because they pick up grease and fluff and all sorts from gigging and it helps to brighten the tone.
If you want to check how your cone is sounding, you can balance it on your finger, give it a flick with your finger and listen for a nice bell-like, pinging tone.
If you want to check how your cone is sounding, you can balance it on your finger, give it a flick with your finger and listen for a nice bell-like, pinging tone.
New jack socket needed, so just a case of re-soldering that on. Jack sockets do go funny over time because the contacts on the inside get pushed out of position and you can feel when you push the jack in and the contact doesn't feel very tight anymore that it's getting towards time to change it.
If you put off changing it, you will find that you don't get a good connection and you get hums and ground earth hum issues and so on - which was what was happening with this one.
So it's just a case of de-soldering, soldering a new jack socket on, putting it all back together and tightening everything up, then adding new strings and polishing it up so it's feeling almost like a new guitar!
Now, the mission of the Slide Success course has always been to help as many people as possible get into this beautiful way of playing the guitar. I want to show you that this is something anyone can do, including you!
Getting started with slide can be a bit of a bumpy ride and navigating all the information out there and knowing where to start is a big part of the challenge.
So rather than add more noise to the situation, we are going to go back to fundamentals of the technique and I want to show you that slide is not an overly complicated thing to learn if you approach it in the right way.
One of the first things that can get in the way of you making a start is all the gear jargon. So let's start by answering this question I get asked all the time: what do I need to play slide ?
The answer is very simple. All you need is a guitar, a slide and a passion to learn something new!
Got those?
Ok lets go.
Something I always say to people is: “make a start now with what you have and you can tweak as you go".…
The next bit of gear that you are waiting for from the postman is not the thing that is going to make the big difference and suddenly sort this out for you.
Getting stuck in now and working on the technique is what will move the needle!
As part of my Slide Success course, I made a PDF document called Get Set Slide to help people cut through all the gear jargon surrounding slide and I’d like to give it you guys as a free gift today. Just click here to find it.
This covers guitar set ups, string gauges , types of guitar and so on and should help you if you still have questions that are holding you back from making a start.
Ultimately, if you have the technique, you can play slide on anything with anything.
To finish up, here's a little story:
When I was studying in India I was out socialising one evening and a jam broke out - I had no guitar or slides with me, big mistake! I managed to borrow a child size nylon string guitar , picked up a teaspoon and joined in on a great session with musicians from all over the world.
In the end it doesn’t come down to what guitar or slide you have, it comes down to technique.
And that is where we will be heading next week as we look at how to approach getting started with the technique - or if you are already playing slide, how to improve on the core foundations.
Please get in touch if you have any questions, I am always happy to help.
Happy sliding!
I will be running a short promotion on a new Summer Slide: Launchpad programme shortly so look out for more information on that.
This is a 6 week rocket boost designed to get your slide dreams off the ground for a fraction of the price of the Slide Success full course and there will only be 10 places - if you want to get ahead of the game and book a spot then drop me a line on whatsapp at +44 7854 833 081.
