How do you play this effect?

[danmurrelljr]

First time posting, I just recently got an electric, a Kramer Focus Fat Boy, after having an acoustic for a couple of years and never getting beyond the most basic stuff. In the 3 weeks I've had the Kramer I've learned more than I ever did on the acoustic (and notice I can play the acoustic 10x better now too!) I've been mostly following the lesson plans on about.com's guitar section, and recently discovered this site and joined up.

There is one technique I haven't seen how to do yet, and was hoping it would be discussed somewhere. I usually hear it at the start of a song, or before a heavy chord. It's kind of a heavy, curving, sweeping down sound before an opening chord, I believe Eddie does it before his first chord on Eruption except that it mostly stays the same note on the album and doesn't sweep down (is this the error he says is in the song?) On the tab I've seen, it was written as just a \ before the chord, but doesn't say what the original note was. I've tried various slides from down the neck and nothing sounds anything close.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Dan

[Ian Rossiter]

Ahhh, the dreaded "/", gotcha. Basicly, you slide your left hand down the neck from an undetermined fret (but somewhere high) and land on the opening chord or note. Kinda like a fake "dive bomb" sound but without using a wammy bar. I've also seen tabs where "/" means a pickscrape down the neck.
You could also try starting from a lower fret,sliding up and then back down.

[Andrew Sa]

Learnin all the symbols and stuff in transcriptions can be hard...Especially since some guys use different signs to indicate different things...it can get annoying,but you will eventually be able to work out what is meant, you will be able to narrow it down to two or three techniques and then eliminate the ones that dont sound right.