Last month, we started looking into the playing style of the legendary Irish guitarist Rory Gallagher, who is without doubt one of my all-time favorite players.
Rory always played with a fiery intensity and communicated great emotional depth in every performance. He was also a brilliant slide player, which is the focus of this month’s column.
When playing slide, Rory often tuned to an open tuning, such an open A, G, E, or D. For this month’s examples, my guitar is in open A tuning. With my low E, high E and A strings tuned normally, I tuned my D, G and B strings up a whole step, to E, A and C, respectively.
Who’s That Coming is a great example of Rory’s prowess as a slide player. Figure 1 presents a slide lick played in his style on this track.
Picking the strings with my bare fingers and wearing a metal slide on my fret-hand ring finger, I begin by sliding up to the 3rd fret on the 2nd string to sound E, followed by G at the 3rd fret on the 1st string, describing an A7 sound.
I then slide back down the 2nd string from E to D, followed by a slide up to C on the 3rd string’s 3rd fret, and then pull-off to the open string, sounding an A root note. At the end of the bar, I add a low A note on the open 5th string for punctuation and to bring some low end into the lick.
I play this phrase three times, with slight variations, and follow it in bar 4 with slides into C and D chords. This bar ends with a high A chord, sounded by laying the slide across the strings at the 12th fret.
In Figure 2, the riff is moved up an octave higher, starting on the 15th fret on the top two strings, and the melodic line and phrasing are similar to the initial melody. Notice how cool it sounds to pull off from the 15th fret to the open 1st string. In bars 4 and 5, the C - D - A chordal figure is played twice.
Rory often used open A tuning for his slide playing, sometimes along with a capo, as on Bullfrog Blues. Capoed at the 2nd fret, the open A tuning sounds an open B tuning. Figure 3 illustrates a ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ chordal figure fretted without a slide.
Rory had a great slide vibrato and achieved a very sharp attack by using a pick. I myself usually fingerpick when playing slide, but I’ll use a pick if I want to emulate Rory’s slide attack, as demonstrated in Figure 4.
Bars 1 and 2 are played up in 12th position, followed in bars 3 and 4 with a shift down to “open” position, accentuating the use of open strings. When playing slide, Rory didn’t do much muting with either hand, so you’ll often hear the sound of many strings ringing together.
Like Gary Moore, Rory played and sang with incredible intensity, and within the world of slide guitar, he is one of the greatest ever. Be sure to check out his acoustic slide recordings as well, such as Too Much Alcohol.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
- Breakthrough is out on 18 July and is available to preorder via J&R Recordings.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
