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A steel bar, commonly referred to as a "steel", but also referred to as a tone bar, slide bar, guitar slide, slide, or bottleneck, is a smooth hard object which is pressed against strings to play steel guitar and is itself the origin of the name "steel guitar". The device can either be a solid bar which is held in the hand, or a tubular object worn around the player's finger. Instead of pressing fingertips on the strings against
A steel bar, commonly referred to as a "steel", but also referred to as a tone bar, slide bar, guitar slide, slide, or bottleneck, is a smooth hard object which is pressed against strings to play steel guitar and is itself the origin of the name "steel guitar". The device can either be a solid bar which is held in the hand, or a tubular object worn around the player's finger. Instead of pressing fingertips on the strings against frets
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instrum ...
as a traditional guitar is played, the steel guitarist uses one of these objects pressed against the strings with one hand, while plucking the strings with the other to gain the ability to play a smooth glissando and a deep vibrato
Vibrato ( Italian, from past participle of " vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms ...
not possible when playing with fingers on frets.
The solid bar is typically used when the instrument is played on the player's lap (across the knees) or otherwise supported in a horizontal position, historically called "Hawaiian-style". It is used in many genres of music, but commonly associated with American country music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...
.
The tubular model is typically used in blues and rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
music when the player holds the guitar in the traditional position (flat against the body). It is then called a "slide" and the style called " slide guitar". Early blues musicians inserted a finger in the sawed-off neck of a bottle to use as a slide and the term "bottleneck
Bottleneck literally refers to the narrowed portion (neck) of a bottle near its opening, which limit the rate of outflow, and may describe any object of a similar shape. The literal neck of a bottle was originally used to play what is now known as ...
" became an eponym for this type of blues guitar playing.
References
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