Trivia
Slide guitar playing may have been invented in a bar

If you are a fan of rock or blues music, you have likely heard what is called slide guitar playing. Instead of pressing the strings with his or her fingers, a guitarist slides a bar along the strings. It is said that this style of playing was originally at attempt to somehow approximate the rolling feeling of the blues with a guitar. A guitarist who wanted to play slide guitar would remove the neck from a bottle of whiskey or the like and fit it over his or her finger, giving this style of playing its alternate name: bottleneck playing. It is possible that this technique had its genesis in a bar, with a guitarist fooling around and trying to play the guitar with a bottle! Commercially available slide bars generally come in two varieties. Glass products offer a smooth and mild sound, while metal bars produce a louder and more solid sound. Of course, this does not mean that you need to go buy a slide bar if you want to play like this. Many expert slide players have done superlative work with such objects as medicine bottles (Duane Allman) or socket wrench bars (Lowell George). Some old blues guitarists were known to use ox bone, switchblades, or even metal lighters! If you want to give slide guitar a try, take a look around-you just might just have something nearby that you can use! Sometimes the most unlikely of objects can produce great sound.