Warren Haynes Demonstrates His Slide Guitar Technique

Guitarist Warren Haynes recently detailed an aspect of his playing style in a pair of videos produced by Reverb. The former The Allman Brothers Band member and current Gov’t Mule frontman demonstrated his technique for playing slide guitar.

Haynes began playing slide guitar when he was around 14-years-old. In the videos posted by Reverb, Haynes discusses his choice to use standard tuning, rather than utilizing opening tunings often used by slide players. Warren talks about being influenced by the likes of Johnny Winter, Duane Allman, Lowell George, Ry Cooder and David Lindley and demonstrates (with a Grateful Dead Steal Your Face slide) some of the differences between the talented musicians. Watch Haynes give a lesson on slide guitar tuning below:

A second Reverb clip begins with Warren giving a step-by-step guide to his right hand technique while playing slide. “I always tell people there’s a lotta different ways to play the same note,” Haynes states and gives a series of examples to make his point. “One of the cool things about slide guitar is that there are all the notes in between the notes that you don’t have on piano — it makes it easier to emulate the human voice, which is kind of the whole point,” Haynes reveals. Watch another illustrative segment with Warren here: