The Steel Guitar Forum

It kinda grinds my gut to hear a Hawaiian steel guitar called a "slide"!! I started playing in 1945 and in my old fashioned mind it's always been a Hawaiian steel guitar. Where and when did "slide" come into fashion ?? I don't really have an open mind but would like to know how this travesty came to be ??? the olde geezer AKA Eddie "C"

I think it was the moment when people heard Duane Allman played Statesboro blues for the first time.

the 60's and 70's are the culprits.

Slide guitar has a long history. Son House employed a bottleneck,as did Johnny Shines and many other bluesmen from the 1920's on. Robert Johnson played slide on some songs. In the fifties, Muddy Waters and Elmore James became prominent electric slide-guitar players. In the sixties a few rock musicians took up electric slide playing, notably George Harrison and Lowell George. Ry Cooder came along and became regarded, over time, as the best and most authentic of the rock slide guitar players. Duane Allman developed an electric blues-rock style that enabled his virtuosity to soar.This type of slide playing has very little to do with Hawaiian lap steel, although lap steel players were developing their swing styles at the same time the bluesmen were shaping the slide guitar style. In a way, these are two divergent paths of the music. I think the real root of all the blues-rock slide stylists is Elmore James, who popularized the Robert Johnson song "Dust My Broom," which is still played today by the popular rock band ZZ Top.

If somebody calls your lap steel a slide guitar, just tell them that's a different instrument, because it is!

I've heard any number of people refer to lap steel as lap slide.

At least that's better than just lumping it in with all styles of slide guitar.

I rarely use the phrase Hawaiian Steel Guitar. Why? Because to the uninitiated they are likely to think that it's only for Hawaiian music.

I don't refer to a "regular" acoustic guitar as a Spanish guitar either - that's guaranteed to get you some puzzled looks.

"Slide" comes from the guitar world.

"steel guitar" should be enough to cover most kinds of steels, and that's the ONLY way I describe whatever type of steel I'm playing when asked by non-players. Any further adjectives will just confuse people. In fact, most people don't even know what a "steel guitar" is. So I tell them "it's like a Slide".

I believe that if you research a bit you will discover that slide guitar is an African traditional music form. There are historical references to Africans stretching grass blades between wooden pieces and sliding along them to produce various musical pitches.

BB King, Muddy Waters, and many other blues musicians learned to play slide guitar with a "Diddley Bow". They described making one by taking the wire off of a worn out broom and tacking it up on the side of a house or barn. It was tensioned or "tuned" by inserting rocks or bottles under each end until it reached a desired pitch. They would then play it by rythmically picking the string and sliding up or down to "stop" the pitch with a piece of broken bottle or other smooth implement. The side of the building provided a soundboard for the resonance of the heavy string. This is most certainly akin to lap style playing since there were no frets of any kind to stop the string.

Whether one plays lap or bottleneck style, it is still slide guitar. In my opinion, each has its own strengths and weaknesses. I have played both for over 20 years and still struggle with a decision as to my favorite.

Guess I am just hooked on slide guitar.

Thanks,

Jeff
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OK here is my experience... When I was 9 years old and a group(Sales People) are going door to door selling music lessons. The choice was Hawaiian Steel Guitar or Violin. My Dad chooses the Hawaiian Steel Guitar for me since he was born in Hawaii and for the most part that was the kind of music we learned and played, loved as a family plus the country music feel of the time with sliders was popular.

It wasn't until later when I was in a blues band, that I learned all the variations of slide. The concept of slide became really big/important for me, it was the era of bottleneck and rockers taking up slide. Sliders in the 60's and on became so unique as to style and the genres they were playing in. To Me always though I hold dear the slack key players of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar. They are in a class all their own is my opinion and the interpretation/style/licks that they played.

But for all of us that play the strings, sliding strings is a unique art all on its own. So slide guitar(The Description) works really good for me cause I have witnessed sliders attacking in every form and many different guitars, slide methods etc.
Currently I like my art of playing being referred as the Lap steel or slide guitar.

It is what it is, What do folks feel now about the Ole Hawaiian Steel Guitar it still really is significant to me the interpretation and the history. Blues slidin', rock slidin' seems to be the same time era the beginning but a different part of the world but the same concept. Sliding and vibrato with a steel or some kind of slide.

Michael

To Me What I feel slide Guitar is when the lead player takes the bar with the hole threw it and put his finger in it and slides it up and down the Lead Guitars strings to me that is a slid.People always come up with some thing to change every thing in this country and world to try to make them selves feel important.My Dyna Lap is a lap Steel Guitar not a Slide. If you want to slide go up North and slide in all the snow they just got.My 2 Cents .
Sam White

Back in my youth, there were two types of guitars:
the Hawaiian guitar that you played with a bar and a Spanish guitar that you fretted with your fingers.
Not too complicated!

"This isn't slide guitar" - Jerry Byrd

To me steel guitar is over handed with a bar, slide guitar is under handed with a finger inside a hollow tube of metal, glass etc. Youngsters who come from rock and blues backgrounds should be corrected when they call steel guitar playing "slide".

Greg Booth wrote:To me steel guitar is over handed with a bar, slide guitar is under handed with a finger inside a hollow tube of metal, glass etc. Youngsters who come from rock and blues backgrounds should be corrected when they call steel guitar playing "slide".

Greg, there could be some correctin' in your future, and it might not be just youngsters. I just was thinking of a handful of CDs in my collection and odds are good you have most or all of these as well:

Slide - compilation produced by Pete Drake in the 1980s featuring the likes of Paul Franklin, Hal Rugg, John Hughey, Lloyd Green, Jeff Newman, etc.

Slide Show - Cindy Cashdollar

Slide Effect - Phil Leadbetter

Slide Rule - Jerry Douglas

I've even heard Jerry refer to playing dobro and lap steel as a form of slide guitar, since the moves on the instrument are often executed as slides. We don't say things like "on the beginning of the next measure, steel on fret three string one up to fret five, string one."

A guitar player friend once referred to my Stringmaster triple neck as a "table guitar."

I recall being annoyed.

I've heard the "table guitar" thing a few times...now that is just going too far!

Mark, of course we all do slides with the bar, kids slide at the water park and I have a huge box of 35mm slides. Still, to me playing slide guitar is a different instrument than steel guitar. Do you ever see Paul, Lloyd, Jerry Byrd or Jerry D credited on an album as playing slide guitar?

No I haven't, but as I wrote earlier, I've heard Jerry use the term in the past, perhaps for the sake of convenience and it avoids additional explaining, and maybe these album titles were chosen by the artists because they thought the average Joe on the street might "get it" better than using something like steel guitar or dobro in the title.

I guess technically the thing parked in my driveway is an automobile, but everybody around here would refer to it as a car.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"

And I correct people all the time myself, youngsters and oldsters alike.

Whenever anyone asked, I always referred to my D-10 as an electric table, or a cheese slicer. And when playing armpit guitar with my little glass bottle, I called it "bottleneck," but never "slide."

From now on, think I'm gonna go with "electric cheese slider."

Eddie is right to me. The Hawaiian Steel Guitar is what it is. Truly a style all it own played on your lap, legs table whatever.

The English language we all agree is complex many interpretations for one word.

When I think of slide Guitar I think of the style players like Johnny Winters for example.

When I think a Hawaiian Steel how about Bobby Ingano playing so lovely or Gabby Pahinui with friends and bands sharing the tradition.

Ok ponder this how about all of our great Lap steel country guys. What are they playing? A Lap Steel, country slide or a Hawaiian Steel Guitar.

Once again maybe its just our complicated language that makes us dwell on such things....Michael

It points to the gradual decline in popularity of the steel guitar. When I was a kid you couldn't throw a cat without hitting a couple of steel guitar players. I remember seeing Buddy Merrill on Lawrence Welk and knowing at the age of five what a steel guitar was.

Nowadays it still surprises me how many people come up to me at shows and ask what that instrument is called. Younger people often say something like 'nice slide', which used to rankle me, but I realized that they have no point of reference. I am happy to politely explain the difference and the basics of steel guitar to those who ask.

When a guitar player is looking at the moves a slide (or bottleneck) player makes, it kind of makes sense. Looking at a steel player's movements may seem confusing, sometimes nothing happens with the bar staying at the same place, while the pedals and levers make the notes.

Michael Laslovich wrote: Ok ponder this how about all of our great Lap steel country guys. What are they playing? A Lap Steel, country slide or a Hawaiian Steel Guitar.

It is a Steel Guitar.

Joachim Kettner wrote:When a guitar player is looking at the moves a slide (or bottleneck) player makes, it kind of makes sense. Looking at a steel player's movements may seem confusing, sometimes nothing happens with the bar staying at the same place, while the pedals and levers make the notes.

When that happens the steel guitarist is pulling strings behind the bar... there are no pedals or levers on Steel Guitar. Perhaps you mean Pedal Steel Guitar?

Oops sorry I meant pedal. There's more moving the bar around on Dobros, Nationals, Lap steels and regular guitars when played with a steel bar or slide, IMHO.

I don't think it's safe to ascribe the slide "confusion" solely, or even primarily (anymore?), to the ignorant and/or linguistically-lazy listening mobs - when a collective of Sacred Steel players are calling themselves "The Slide Brothers", when lap steeler Debashish Bhattacharya releases albums called "Calcutta Slide Guitar"... on a practical basis, over the years I believe "slide guitar" has come to be associated with some rather financially-successful styles and musicians, and "steel guitar" has been seen as sort of a poorer sister to that. Absolutely ridiculous, and as one who plays and loves both - similarities and the differences - in most ways, I see pedal steel as being a more complete instrument. But, but, but... what a console-oriented steel guitar just can't do is really, really kick a hard rhythm as well as the underarm position. It's complicated, and still a bit mysterious to me, but lord, all you have to do is listen and that pops out.

There's a great numbers factor working too. For every ten people who start playing pedal steel there's probably a thousand underarm guitarists. And out of a hundred pedal steelers, (equals TEN-THOUSAND guitarists) say, ten of those pedal steelers will get good, four of them will be really good, one will make "great" - which corresponds to 100 good guitarists, forty really good ones and TEN great ones). The numbers may even be more skewed than that?

Additionally (no I never though about this before) out of that initial puny startup team, a very large proportion of pedal steel guitars were drawn in by a sweet, clean tone, mostly major-scale... and every other instrument that aspires to greatness can be and long has-been used to portray the entire range of human emotion. There are death-metal guitarists prancing about on stage covered in Hollywood gore, both Brahms' AND Mendelssohn's violin concertos are so totally weepy, suicidally-depressing I can't stand to listen to one, if you dig a little deeper into Indian music than Ravi Shankar's dumbed-down short-happy "Ambassador" period (he himself thought he bobbled that one) you will find some of the deepest and scariest music in the world. Yet to the unwashed masses, the best sad-out that "steel guitar" has to offer is a mildly melancholy 16-bar solo in a country song about being drunk and dumb - from 40 years ago.

And yes, WE here all know who can dive down, Susan Alcorn can go dark and wide, Mike Perlowin can play whatever the composer envisioned and I can't imagine a single thing, idea or human condition that Dave Easley couldn't bang till there was nothing left to bang - and just this year pokey igno-me discovered Chris Combs, a six-string, non-pedal lap steeler (twank?) - composing and performing an entire orchestral jazz suite with the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey?!? Whoa.

And, still, playing that numbers game, there's bound to be a hell of a lot of great slide guitarists out there, right? And, even if you don't care for a man's chosen style, you can lose a tremendous set of reference points by allowing a sketchy, perhaps hyped, perhaps inarticulate description of his tools interfere with your ability to remain open to what they're saying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKVOr1u6MM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byhsiNAj ... NkiB1ouHQG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZRYrDRIJ8I
(6:00 ->->->)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RG-QjAmdaU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65cP52NC8s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuZHRJhoEIw

Hmmm. Got pipe?
Ring finger: http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cf ... &top_cat=0
Li'l one: http://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cf ... &top_cat=0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_guitar

Wikipedia definition: Slide guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide along the strings, To answer Eddie maybe.

don't think it's safe to ascribe the slide "confusion" solely, or even primarily (anymore?), to the ignorant and/or linguistically-lazy listening mobs - when a collective of Sacred Steel players are calling themselves "The Slide Brothers", when lap steeler Debashish Bhattacharya releases albums called "Calcutta Slide Guitar"..

First I do want to thank Stephen Cowell for reinforcing that the belief many of us that play the steel are playing the Steel Guitar it works for me when like others that have responded to folks asking about the instrument describing as such reassures me that I'm playing the instrument that I say I'm playing.

I was actually starting to feel a bit insecure when this whole dialogue started to take place because I remembered introducing myself as a slide player.

I think what David nailed for us is that we are playing with a steel bar regardless of what form of guitar or stringed instrument we play and we slide.

My good friend Moe plays under the arm slide and I lap slide but we do in the end have similar sounds. His Dobro is the Nickle plated one and mine is wood. We both have played his old Gibson SG me on my lap and him under his arm. Our techniques different for sure but we slide and our Motto"If its Not Fun Its Not Done". And I can tell you the Old SG sounds great either way.

But I will agree with Steve when I'm asked at an open mic jam what I'm playing I'm going to say the Steel Guitar and I'm sure my Buddy Moe will Say he's playing slide Guitar and I'm good with it. Of course if I play a Hawaiian song I'm going to refer to the same guitar as a Hawaiian Steel Guitar and I don't see anything wrong with that.
On a Side bar after reading The Wikipedia definition I became really excited when they talked about slide bass as that's what I did professionally not slide but playing the bass. But I think it would be a gas playing slide bass so if anyone can share some on that subject. Maybe we can start a new subject on Lap Basses.

Lastly I want to say I appreciate all the folks that participate in this forum. Their is an incredible wealth of information here and sharing and I want to commend all that participate regardless of how they personally feel about some of the subject matter.

And I have no qualms wishing all Happy sliding' Michael