How Great Guitar Players Use Slides (And How You Should Too)

Want your solos to breathe, sing, and feel human without learning a new scale? We dive into the art of slides and show how three simple categories—intentional slides, subtle half-step drifts, and “airplane” landings—transform stiff lines into vocal phrases with character. From deciding whether to let the listener hear the start note to treating it like a fast grace note, you’ll learn how tiny choices change the mood, timing, and shape of every lick.

We break down clear, practical examples: sliding up and down between targets, bouncing back to where you started to create tension and release, and linking slides with hammer-ons and pull-offs to escape robotic picking. Then we zoom into the details that separate pros from dabblers—micro slides that brush a blue note, controlled muting so exits sound clean, and tasteful landings that glide into a target note right on the beat. You’ll hear how larger interval slides inject drama, how subtle drifts add grit without hijacking harmony, and how to keep the feel intact across positions.

Along the way, we talk about studying the “isms” of your favorite players and folding them into your own voice. You don’t need to copy entire solos; you can borrow the one glide, the one landing, the one micro slide that gives their lines life. With a little focused practice—listening for timing, clarity, and target notes—you’ll build a personal toolkit that works in blues, rock, pop, and beyond. By the end, you’ll know when to plant on the first note, when to leave instantly, and when to slide in or drop off to make melodies speak.

If this inspires you to go deeper, tap the link to explore GuitarZoom Academy, subscribe for more lessons, and leave a review to tell us which slide move changed your playing the most.

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

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• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Transcript

Intentional Slides Up And Down

Grace Notes And Position Shifts

Multi-Note Slides And Flow

Subtle Bluesy Half-Step Drifts

Airplane Slides: Landings And Drop‑Offs

Steal Isms And Build Your Style

Practice, Positivity, And Next Steps

Steve 0:35

Hey Steve Stein from the Guitar Zoom Academy here. Thank you so much for joining me. Today, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about how to utilize some really fun slides in your playing, in your soloing. We're going to talk about some pretty obvious things, and then we're going to talk about some things that maybe aren't quite so obvious. So let's just start at the beginning of this. First of all, what is a slide? Well, for me, there's really two different kinds of slides. There's a slide where you're intending to go from something to something else. And then there's less obvious slides. I call them airplane slides because oftentimes you're not sure where you're starting from or you're not sure where you're sliding off to. And then we get into more subtle slides. So I'm going to show you these three categories to begin with. So the first thing is sliding in an intentional sense. So let's think about if I was playing again, let's say I was an A minor. And I wanted to do some sliding. One thing that I might do, for instance, is I might go. So I'm sliding from the seven to the nine. Okay? Now, the other thing is you can hear the seven right now, and then you can hear the nine. The other thing I might do is I might just slide directly. So I'm not spending any time on this seven here. I'm not spending any time on that D note. I'm just taking off right away. See the difference? And you can use those anywhere. I'm just showing you one example, but you could use those. And slides can go up, but they can also go down. So let's say I was in the second position here, and I'm going. Again, intentional. I'm going from the nine to the seven. Versus going. So you're still hearing the nine, but I'm not giving it any rhythmic value. Now that's a back and forth. Notice how I slid up and then I slid back. So just starting with a couple of those to begin with, learning how to slide from a note to another note. Sometimes it's going to push you out of a position into another position. Sometimes you could stay in the same position. But now, of course, your fingering is different. So what are you going to do? Are you going to go into this new position, or maybe you slide backwards and you come back again? So thinking about the fact that the first thing you're going to do is either play that note and then slide up. Play that note, slide up, slide back if you like to. The other option is to play that note, but you leave immediately. And maybe you slide up and come back down. So the great thing about slides is that they're not the same. Like you can do a lot of different really unique things with those. So I want you to think about that. That's step one is just learning how to move from a note to another note and then decide whether you want to go back, whether or not you want to plant yourself on that first note, or whether or not it's more of like a grace note where you're leaving right away. Okay, you can do slides on more than one note. You might do something where you go. You know, you could add some hammer ons and pull-offs in between there or something like that. You could do more than just a slide between two notes, you could do more notes than that. Jump over a note. See, the point is that the slide is giving you the availability of being able to do something that sounds a little more human, a little more vocal. And you can make it, you can, you can kind of stretch that reality by going in larger intervals, sliding to higher distances or larger distances. Depending on what it is that you like. The point is you're breaking up the sound of kind of staccato playing. That sort of thing. You're deciding whether or not you want to hear that first note or whether you want it to be more of a grace note. Okay? Now the next thing I want to do is show you subtle slides that I think are very important. I use these all the time. Same kind of idea, but this time I'm just sliding from seven to eight to seven. Now we might look at that eight and say, well, I can play that note because it's a blues note or a blue note, we call it. And yeah, that's true. But really, it's the effect. We can do that over a lot of different notes. Okay. It's just this subtle little thing that we do. It's almost like a like a slide, like a physical slide, where we're able to just move up a little bit and come back. And people use this all the time. There's no necessarily right or wrong way to use it. It's just the approach, the execution of being able to play it. You know, it sounds really cool. And so just subtle things like that that you can use in your playing that makes things sound a little more interesting. Okay. So intentional slides. We're sliding from something to something. We might come back, we might keep going. Okay. The other kind of slide is what I call an airplane slide, which is where you're not sliding from somewhere intentional. You're just coming in like an airplane landing, is why I think about it that way. So I use this a lot when I'm starting or stopping phrases. So let's say my target here is the A on the fourth string. That's where I want to go, is right there. Well, instead of just starting, which is fine, I might slide into that note. And I can slide in from two or three or four or five or six or you know, into the seven. But I'm not thinking about it that way. I'm just landing the airplane. So you don't have to go like this whole long thing like that, and you certainly wouldn't want that sound anyway. So it's just this subtle little thing where your pick and your finger both meet each other, and you're getting that sliding sound. So it doesn't sound like you're sliding from five or four or three, you're just getting an airplane slide. And then you do the same thing on the way out. When you're on the way out, you play the note and you drop off. Okay, you're not going again, unless you want that. That's an intentional slide. The point of this is you're just sliding off into oblivion. So what's happening is I'm stopping the strings. As soon as I'm done with that slide, I'm just stopping them taking this hand off. And when you start watching some of the players that you really like, you're gonna notice that they do a lot of this kind of stuff. So as you're exploring this and just testing out new things, what I would strongly recommend for you is then take a look at maybe a solo or a particular artist that you like and start finding recognizing this in their playing and how they use it. Again, you don't always have to learn whole solos or whole songs. Sometimes you just learn the isms that that particular player does and then figure out, well, how do I, how could I implement that? Right? I I always tell students, don't ever worry about robbery. Okay, that isn't what this is about. You can't learn how to paint effectively if you don't study other painters, right? You can't learn how to do anything, you can't learn engineering unless you learn how engineering works. Well, soloing and playing guitar is very much the same thing. And I mean this in the kindest way possible, no matter how much you look at whoever, you know, Steve Aye or Eddie Van Halen, you're never gonna be Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen, right? You could borrow isms from them, but they already exist. You are a culmination of a lot of different things. Maybe it's Steve I and Van Eddie Van Halen and Steve Ray Von and you know Mateus Asado, who knows who it is. The point is that you have your own thing, but you're looking at these other players and going, what is it about their playing that I enjoy? Maybe I don't enjoy everything, but maybe there's something in there that they do that I think is really interesting and what I need to learn to do is first of all, how to do it, and second of all, how to how to implement that into my own playing. So anyway, take care, stay positive, keep practicing. Hopefully this helps you, gives you something to kind of work on to uh further develop your own style. And if you're ever interested in trying to expand your playing and you want to kind of rate reach a new level with your playing, that's what we've created the Guitar Zoom Academy for. You can always click on a link. I'm sure there'll be something around here that you can click on. Learn more about it, see if it's something that you know fits you. If you want to have a conversation, we can always do that and kind of see where that leads us. So take care, and I'll talk to you later later, okay? Bye.