Phillip Henry

The intro to the Elmore James classic, The Sky Is Crying, is a really good one to look at in terms of phrasing as it is all based around the same lick that gets phrased slightly differently as the chords change.

Here is the tab:  

This cool intro takes place over the last 4 bars of the progression and features three very similar licks each with its own bit of phrasing magic.

For the Slide Success group I played the Elmore James recording then dissected each phrase.  

Youtube isn’t too happy with me playing the original recording in my video so I'm just going to pull out a few little samples for you today.

I would urge you to listen to the original and try to imitate the great man himself using these little lesson samples as a way in.  Here it is on Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/track/0qRz3AYteD6VX65GkBqcel?si=47ef33183407435a

So here we have the first phrase:

This has more going on from a phrasing point of view than first meets the eye with some subtle string muting.  Check out the lesson here:  https://youtu.be/MxRlr1ZvoeE

Now onto the next Phrase:

This one is a great example of some staccato phrasing that I talked about on the blog a couple of weeks ago.

Basically shortening the notes to create rhythmic interest and funk.  Check out the lesson here to see this in action:  https://youtu.be/3zmlgzKzFPc

Now the third phrase:

This one again has a bit of staccato phrasing in it albeit a bit more subtle and some really cool timing things.

Check out the lesson here:  https://youtu.be/OocVc_uX6w8

Now finally here is the last phrase:

This simple but effective little phrase neatly takes you to the 5 chord to mark the end of the intro.

Check out the lesson here which also has a playthrough of the whole intro:

https://youtu.be/2Pk_QFCbB1k

So have some fun with this and enjoy adding some Elmore James magic to your playing. 

If there are particular techniques you'd like to brush up on, you can check out my slide courses here, or pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide to get started, even if you've never picked up a guitar before.

Happy sliding!

When most guitarists start learning slide, they focus on the obvious things: intonation, vibrato, muting and tone. While these skills are essential, there’s another element that separates good slide players from great ones - space.

Space is what happens between the notes. It’s the silence that allows a phrase to breathe, the pause that lets your emotion shine through. In slide guitar, space isn't empty, it's part of the music.

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is feeling the need to fill every moment with sound. We often assume that more notes equal better playing. In reality, some of the most memorable slide performances are built on simplicity. A single sustained note, allowed to ring and decay naturally, can be more powerful than an entire flurry of licks.

When you listen to players like Derek Trucks or Bonnie Raitt, you'll notice that their phrasing often emulates a singer rather than a guitarist. They don't rush from one note to the next. Instead, they leave room for the music to breathe. Those brief moments of silence create anticipation and make the notes that follow feel more meaningful.

Space also helps develop your sense of timing. When you stop focusing on playing continuously, you begin listening more carefully to the groove, the backing instruments and the overall feel of the song. This awareness allows your slide playing to become more musical and expressive.

A great exercise is to limit yourself intentionally. Put on a backing track and challenge yourself to play only three or four notes per phrase. After each phrase, leave a short pause before responding with another. Think of it as a conversation rather than a speech. Ask a question with your guitar, then wait before answering it.

You'll soon see that silence creates tension and interest. The listener begins to anticipate what comes next. Suddenly, every note carries more weight.

The beauty of slide guitar lies in its ability to mimic the human voice. Just as singers pause to breathe, slide guitarists should embrace moments of silence. These pauses aren't weaknesses, they're opportunities for expression.

The next time you pick up your slide, don't focus on how many notes you can play but think about how much feeling you can create with just a few. Sometimes the most powerful note in a solo is the one you choose not to play.

Happy sliding!

Check out my courses on my website - Backporch Blues is still available for just $11! And pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here to get started. 

This week we are going to discuss phrasing and learn from the master of the 12th fret box Elmore James.

Let's look at the “all important 12th fret box” that Elmore is so well known for using.

With this scale box I like to ignore the bottom 2 strings and start from the root note D on the 4th string, (and also include the note underneath that)

This gives us a handy slide box which is where Elmore gets the licks for this intro from.  

You will also be using the 12th fret on the 3rd string and “blurring”  between that note and the 11th fret note to get an important “blue” note.  

Here is a video showing this: https://youtu.be/I6wRdKdVaro

Next week, we'll take a look at Elmore James' classic track, The Sky is Crying, which is all based around the same lick with slightly different phrasing as the chords change. Enjoy playing with this in the meantime…

Happy sliding!

Pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here or find out more about my courses on my website.

Setting up a new studio is always a pleasure, and it's the highlight of moving house for me! 

There's something about hanging guitars on the way and settling into a new workspace that helps me to recalibrate and settle after the mayhem of moving - especially with children!

I'm really enjoying getting to grips with my new space. I've been able to use the original picture rails to hang my collection and I've tried out different ways of recording lessons in here. 

Moving house is one of those things that feels never-ending at the time, so it's a relief to be on the other side. Time to let go of the stress, enjoy the new space and relax into the music… 

Get in touch if you'd like to explore specific techniques or brush up on your slide playing. You can grab your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here, or find out more about the different courses I offer on my website. 

Happy sliding!

Following up on my session on Phrasing For Slide players, I was inspired by a great little clip of B.B. King describing his approach to phrasing over a slow groove.

Here is the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33WTBinPIEI

B.B. King is the master of creating these lovely little phrases with lots of space between and as he says in the clip : “It’s like I'm talking to the person”

So this week, let's look at how we can inject a bit of this into our slide playing and make it talk!

In the world of slide, with all those sustained, smooth sounds, it's easy to get lost in endless notes. But there's something magical that happens when you approach music like a conversation, injecting space and breath into your playing.

To demonstrate this, I have put together a little solo for you over an 8 bar blues based on the standard:  Key To The Highway.

A real master of this in terms of slide playing is Derek Trucks and the first phrase here is borrowed from his version.

Here is the tab: 

As you can see in the tab there are lots of rests - (these are the black squiggles if you don't read notation).  

This means stop playing!  This is not always the easiest thing to do, especially as a slide player. The slide has so much sustain that it can be very tempting to let it fill all the gaps.

Check out the video here to see that in action:  https://youtu.be/21CTTJzBynI

Of course sometimes you want to lean into this and enjoy the sustain but having this approach up your sleeve as well gives you more options and can help to set your playing apart.

Give this a go over the weekend and let me know how you get on.  Next week we will look at some more phrasing from the great Elmore James.

Happy sliding!

Pick up your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here, or check out my courses on my website!

We looked at Legato in the last blog, so lets go to the opposite end of the spectrum and look at some Staccato phrasing - or more simply put - short stabby notes.

This approach is often overlooked in the slide world as it is tempting to lean into the long sustain you naturally get with the slide, but this can really add extra funk and lift to your slide playing.

Lets stay with the minor pentatonic scale and you could take the exercise we looked at in the last blog and play each note short and staccato as a good starting point but let's look at this applied to a couple of cool licks here:

#1:

#2:

Adding some staccato phrasing to these licks really helps to build the intensity of them.

Check out the lesson here to hear this in action: https://youtu.be/GuOtlBpk-To

Try incorporating these two approaches to your playing this weekend and see if you can blend the 2 approaches to create tension and release and have some fun with it.,

Let me know how you get on with this and happy sliding!

Take a look at my courses to find out more or grab your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide to get started with slide…

What Is Musical Phrasing?

Here is what Wikipedia thinks:

“a method by which musicians shape a sequence of notes in a passage of music to allow expression, much like when speaking English.  A phrase may be written identically but may be played/spoken differently”

And relating this to speaking is quite useful really because there's a reason that people say, "Oh, he can make that guitar talk," about players that are really good, is that music is like a conversation and it wants to have that quality.

Back to Wikipedia:     

“you can alter the tone, the tempo, the dynamics, the articulation, the inflection, and other characteristics to change the phrasing”,

So there's lots and lots of variables there,

Let's simplify things and pick out a couple of ways you can play your slide notes that actually incorporate a few of those categories.

Legatto and Staccato - or more simply put long and short notes. Here, I'll take a look at legatto, and then I'll explore staccato next week. 

Legato - Long and Flowing

I like to imagine the field holler style when I'm playing in this way - a song that would be sung while picking cotton to pass the time - long and flowing and free time with lots of decoration.

This tune:  Motherless Child is a good example:

https://youtu.be/3pdLWKkghAw

Now slide playing really lends itself to this approach - long flowing notes that slide into each other.  This can create a really vocal expression but to control it takes a bit of practice.

A great way to work on this approach is this 3 note sequence exercise:  

Check out the video lesson here : https://youtu.be/2knGYn3ZSFA

Next week, we'll be looking at staccato and you can compare the two!

Take a look at my courses here or grab your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here to get started. 

We are in open G this week in Slide Success classes, and we are going to start looking at a useful straight groove picking pattern.  This one formed the core of the riff we looked at last week and it is very useful to have this as a rudiment pattern that you can use in other ways.

Here is a little vid taking you through this one: https://youtu.be/D9N2VQYAXPw

Now what we are going to do is drill changing from a shuffle feel into this straight picking feel. This is a great exercise for getting you comfortable shifting between the two feels.

Then taking this exercise and adding in the chord changes of a 12bar blues progression, so playing the shuffle on the 1 chord (G) then switching to straight on the 4 (C) and 5 (D) chords:

Check out the video to see this in action : https://youtu.be/yzNp3KLT6Ss

To finish off, let's hear how this ability to switch and shift the feel is a key feature of the playing of Delta master Robert Johnson in the piece Walking Blues.

This piece is often played as a full on shuffle, the fantastic Eric Clapton version being a good example of this. I teach this piece to my students as a good way into the Delta style as it has all the key elements of the piece but stays rhythmically fairly straightforward.

The Robert Johnson version, on the other hand, has a bit more going on. It starts with the shuffle feel but then seems to drive forward into a more straight and dancey feel and shifts this feel back and forth.

Check out the video here where you can hear what I mean: https://youtu.be/UFn7kXyPJTM

The Delta players would have been playing in environments where it was important to get people dancing and grooving around so the driving straight feel was very important.  This ability to seamlessly shift the feel like this makes the Delta music fascinating from a rhythmic point of view and once this music moved to the more band oriented electric Chicago Blues style, a lot of this subtlety got smoothed out.

If you are a solo blues player and can inject a bit of this feel shifting onto your playing it will give your playing an interesting and very authentically Delta Blues vibe. 

Give this a go and let me know how you get on!

If you are still struggling to get to grips with the slide technique, book a call and we can talk about getting your technique sorted over the next few weeks. Explore my courses on my website to find the perfect fit!

The shuffle feel, with its laid back swing, is so important to blues but so is the more driving and funky straight groove. 

I have a cool riff to teach you for a groovy straight feel but before we do that let's look at the subtle but distinct difference in feel between swung and straight groove and a simple exercise for switching between the 2 feels.

As we discussed before, the shuffle feel is defined by its long short quality.  Without getting into the theory of that again, basically the notes are unevenly spaced - a long followed by a short to give the distinct lolloping feel.

The straight feel by contrast has evenly spaced notes giving its driving quality.

Check out this video for a bit more context on that: https://youtu.be/VFSHnXrC8vA

Now here is a simple exercise to get to grips with these 2 feels and also how to get used to switching between them, which as I will get onto in the future is a way of really elevating your blues playing.

 This one is in open D but you could do the same thing on the 5th and 3rd strings in open G.

 You will see this is not the most exciting bit of tab in the world as nothing appears to change except the instruction that you see over bar 1 which denotes the shuffle feel.  This changes to the “no Shuffle Feel” instruction on bar 5.

 To really get a feel for this subtle change you need to see/hear it in action here in the video:  https://youtu.be/4iMoerFyizc

To finish up, let's learn a cool straight feel riff in the G tuning that will come in useful.

I call this Pony Blues groove as it’s inspired by the Allman Brothers version of Pony Blues:

Here is the video lesson on how to play this:  https://youtu.be/MVcM2MBQe1w

I hope you're feeling inspired to pick up your guitar this weekend and play some slide! Grab your FREE Get Going with Slide Guide here to help…