Guitar Metal Scraping & Sliding Techniques
- Billy Gibbons, famed guitarist and singer for the band ZZ Top, uses a Mexican peso, which resemble an American quarter, as a guitar pick. The pick is obviously thick and does not bend when playing, as do plastic guitar picks. The resulting tone is a slight scraping sound when he presses the pick against the string. Billy Gibbons is known for playing “Pinch Harmonics.” To mimic this sound, strike a string with a quarter or with a thicker plastic pick and then immediately touch the string with the side of your finger to “deaden” the sound. The string will produce an overtone called a Pinch Harmonic. Dimebag Darrel, the late guitarist for Metal group Pantera and Zakk Wyld, guitarist for Black Label Society and Ozzy Osborne also employed this technique to great effect.
- Tom Morello, the original guitarist for Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, uses a whole host of special effects when playing his guitar. Tom received critical acclaim for his use of an Allen wrench when he recorded the song, “People of the Sun” which appeared on the album, “Evil Empire.” In contrast to a metal tube that fits over the finger slides over the strings, the sharp edges on an Allen wrench actually slip into the windings of the E, A and D strings to create a scratching sound as you pass the wrench over the strings. This mimics the sound of record scratching commonly used by rap artists. Eddie Van Halen used the edge of a guitar pick on the song Atomic Punk, released on Van Halen's self-titled album to achieve the same record scratching effect.
- Jimi Hendrix has many memorable recorded concerts such as the Monterey Festival where he played his guitar with his teeth. Jimi’s version of the Star Spangled Banner has perplexed many a guitarists over the years who tried to play the version note for note. During this live recording, Jimi mimicked the sound of falling bombs during an interlude in the song. To achieve this sound, Jimi pressed his guitar’s strings against the side of his microphone stand and scraped the strings back and forth. Although the randomness of this prevents any guitarists from an exact reproduction, this is a good technique to employ if you are doing a guitar solo on-stage or when you need an un-controlled sound during a break-down on a song.
- In 2009, the Gibson Guitar Company, one of the world’s guitar manufacturers in the world, named its top ten slide guitarists of all time. Robert Johnson topped the list. Robert Johnson used a glass slide on his pinky finger. He would fret chords as normal for rhythm guitar and then solo by sliding the broken neck of a glass bottle across the strings while he plucked the strings with his other hand. This allowed Robert to slide from one note to the next. Robert Johnson, who died in 1928, was one of the first artists recorded using this technique. Artist such as Stevie Ray Vaughan. Ry Cooder, Duane Allman and many others have used glass, ceramic and metal slides to mimic the sound achieved by Robert Johnson.
