Slide
Slide means on the guitar gliding from note to note: the finger or a tube, the bottleneck, slips along the string. The word is also the English name of the Schleifer, an ornament. Here it is about the playing technique.
- Meaning
- gliding from note to note on the string
- Means
- finger or tube (bottleneck, slide)
- Typical tuning
- open tunings, e.g. open G
- Do not confuse
- with the Schleifer
Gliding instead of fretting
Most notes on the guitar arise by pressing the string down at a fret and striking it. In a slide you move the finger or a tube further along the struck string without lifting it. The pitch changes by gliding until it reaches the target. This gives a singing, flowing pulling across from note to note, as with voice and strings. It is notated as a line between the notes, as in a glissando.
Slide with the finger from fret to fret
A line leads from the first to the second note each time. On the guitar the finger glides along the string from one fret to another. The audio example plays the intermediate notes in semitone steps. On the string, when the finger glides over the frets, these steps are audible, only blurred.
Slide with a tube in open G
In the open G tuning (D G D G B D) the open strings sound together as a G major chord. With the tube you glide in the first bar from the G up to the fifth D and in the second from the B down to the G.
Finger or tube
There are two ways of playing. In the finger slide the finger of the fretting hand glides from one fret to the next, mostly to join two notes of a melody. In tube slide playing you wear a tube of glass or metal over a finger, the “bottleneck”, and glide with it over the strings without pressing them onto the fingerboard. For this the guitar is often tuned in an open tuning. A classic slide tuning is open G: the six open strings already give a G major chord, so that with the tube across all the strings a whole chord can be taken.
Slide, glissando and Schleifer
The slide is a glissando on one string. When the finger glides over the frets, the pitch changes in semitone steps, only blurred: the fret steps stay audible. The pitch glides continuously only with the bottleneck or on instruments without frets. In English the Schleifer too is called “slide”, an ornament of two or three small notes. That is something else: the Schleifer is a short, notated series of notes, the guitar slide a gliding of the hand.
Common mistakes
- Pressing too hard: Then the glide stalls and the string buzzes.
- Missing the target: The slide ends exactly on the target fret or above the fret wire.
- Confusing slide and Schleifer: One is a technique of the hand, the other an ornament in notes.
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Related terms
GlissandoSchleiferPortamentoGuitarDroneArpeggio
Editor: Maik Krohm · reviewed on 3 October 2026
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