Make Your Rhythm Guitar Playing Sound More Advanced By Adding Slides To Blues Chords
Many guitarists are able to play decent guitar solos, but when it’s their turn to play rhythm they have a hard time making their guitar playing sound special. A great way to make sure your rhythm guitar playing stands out is by adding embellishments to the chords you use. In this article we’ll look at the most common way to do this; using a slide to ornament chords.
Sliding Chords In Blues
If we play a slide in front of a chord it produces a fluent effect and makes the whole rhythm part sound more advanced. This is usually done by approaching the chord one fret below.
Tip 1: Approach Chords One Fret Below
We can either slide the full chord one fret up or slide up using only one string. If we choose to use the full chord then this will add a more fuller sound to the effect of the slide.
Let’s try this out with the A7 chord.
5 7
A7
First slide the chord one fret up using all the notes in the chord. To achieve this we’ll have to start one fret lower, so we’ll start at the 4th fret. Once you stroke the strings with your pick, immediately slide the chord one fret up. We could say that we use the G#7 chord to slide up to the A7, but since we only use the location at the 4th fret as starting point to immediately slide up to the A7 chord, the tonality of the former chord is not really all that important.
Now try sliding the chord up, using only the string where the lowest note of the chord is located. In this case the lowest note of the chord is located on the low E-string. So in this case we’ll first play the slide on one string and then we’ll hit the other strings of the chords, as you can see in the tab below.
Tip 2: Chord Voicings
There are many different chord voicings that you can use to slide up. In case you’re unfamiliar with the word ‘voicing’; it means that we play the same chord but with the notes inside the chord arranged in a different order. One of my favorite chord voicing of the A7 chord to apply the slide on is the next one:
5 7
A7
This voicing gives the chord a more jazzy feel, especially if we apply this slide to it. Regardless of which voicings we choose, we can add this slide anywhere, not only on the A7 chord. So let’s look at applying the slide on the D7 and E7 chord.
Tip 3: Using Ninth Chords
Again, to add a bit more jazzy sound to the whole progression we could use another type of chord, such as using a ‘ninth’ chord, instead of a ‘seventh’ chord.
You could for instance consider using the E9 chord and D9 chord instead of the E7 and D7 chord.
These ninth chords are used in various styles from blues to bluesjazz and jazz and gives a more ‘refined’ feel to the chords.
Exercise
To conclude, I’ll play a 12 bar progression with the added slide applied on some chords. However, this is only an example, you can choose where you want to add this slide and wheter you want to use it or not (ofcourse you don’t have to add this slide to every chord).
Listen to the 12 bar blues progression
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