Here at Reverb, we recently welcomed guitarist Ariel Posen into the studio to show us a few of his go-to guitar-playing techniques. Last week, he kicked off his short series of lessons by demonstrating some of his techniques for improvising with pentatonics and arpeggios. This week, he's showing us a couple of slide guitar techniques in open and standard tunings, using a balltip brass slide.
"One of the techniques I do a lot of is basically playing behind the slide, which a lot of people do. If you don't know what that is, it's when you kind of anchor down a fret and you start playing behind the actual slide," Posen starts, demonstrating by playing a pentatonic scale behind the slide in G with his other fingers. This technique allows previous notes to keep ringing, helping you build a chord with the combination of your slide playing and fretting.
From there, he moves into standard tuning, showing how the placement of the notes change when you're trying to play the same modified major pentatonic scale. The biggest difference is that while the scale starts on the root in G, it starts on the fifth in standard tuning.
Be sure to check out the full video above, and let us know what you think in the comments below. Ariel Posen's album, How Long, will be released on January 11 and is already available for pre-sale now. Click the links to listen to the first two singles, "Fade" and "Things That I've Said," or search for them wherever you like to get your music.