This piece by the great Robert Johnson is one of the most identifiable slide songs and licks ever, and is an important part of slide guitar development for you. In this example, we are using open E tuning to play its classic main lick, as well as the famous slide fills it incorporates.

This is one of those “must have” lessons! Yes, the idea of the “turnaround licks” per se, are rather mundane and predictable to me, but they are certainly important to know, and can be used in countless musical situations and riffs hat don’t necessarily have to occur as the last 2 measures of a Blues!

In this lesson I’m going to look at open string harmonies and pull offs that can be combined with descending double stop runs.

Getting to know these positions is another one of those critical “building blocks” you need on the way to knowing all the correct “archetypes” of the guitar. First, we work on them in the open chord forms, and then see how they are as we use partial forms of them up the neck in closed forms.

The use of slides are critical to the success of this lick, and as you’ll see me point out, the “turn of the wrist” is much more aided by the use of the second finger, rather than the typically used third finger in this kind of a run.