Electric guitar effects

I’m very new to music and learning to play an electric guitar and am trying to practice some of the tricks that I see the Pros use. Problem is that I don’t always know what to call the ‘trick’ so I can look it up to see how it’s done. The effect I’m looking for now is when the string is plucked, its where the player slides his finger up or down the string. I can’t describe the ‘sound’ except if you tried to say it, it sounds like ‘whoop’. Can anyone tell me what that is called and what other tricks to look for and learn? Many thanks as a new traveler in this space.

Originally Posted by: jamesarlenevans The effect I’m looking for now is when the string is plucked, its where the player slides his finger up or down the string.

You guessed it... its called a slide. "Sliding" or to "slide a note" means to keep your finger down on the string as you move up or down from one note to the next. Slides usually sound best with an over-driven sound, but if done well, can sound really great with clean sounds or even on an acoustic. Slides seem to be used for the "effect" but can also have a practical application too: they allow the player to move up or down the scale to a different position that may be more comfortable to play, or just more sonically desirable. For instance, a player may choose to slide up the fretboard and play a lead lick higher on the neck on lower strings, instead of moving up to higher strings and staying at or close to the same position on the fretboard. Why? Because the same notes played on the lower, thicker strings will have a subtle but distinctly different tone than if played on the thinner strings. A lot depends on the player, the tone they are using, and the style of play. David Gilmour is a great guy to listen to for that kind thing, but first, check out the solo by The Edge in U2's "New Years Day"... he stays on the one string a lot in that solo, and you can really hear as he slides from one note to the next. He does a lot of that on the "Achtung Baby" album too.

A great little practice drill for you when you start learning scale patterns is to play half way through a pattern, slide up a note to the next pattern, play half of that, then slide up to the next pattern, then back down, and keep mixing it up at random. Really gets you visualizing all the patterns across the fretboard.

Hope this helps!

Cal