Homegrown Music: The Basics of Dobro and Slide Guitar

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PHOTO: FOTOLIA/GWIMAGES
Learn the basics of playing the slide guitar.

Not long after I took up playing the guitar, I was given an old musical instrument that had weathered more than a few years in a corner of my grandfather’s shed. It was a guitar designed to be played on the lap using a steel bar to chord the strings. Well, never having seen such a thing before, I quickly attempted to play a few songs on it in “normal” guitar fashion — and ended up highly frustrated. Later I learned that many of my pickin’ friends had had similar experiences.
However, I soon discovered that my peculiar acquisition was actually a “Hawaiian guitar,” a type of instrument that had been tremendously popular back in the ’20s and ’30s. As a result of that fad, thousands of “lap guitars,” as they came to be called, were sold all across the North American continent — and many of them can still be found today, primarily in secondhand stores and thrift shops.

The Hawaiian Influence on the Slide Guitar

According to legend, a man by the name of Joseph Kekuku invented the lap guitar quite unintentionally. The Hawaiian had been humming through a comb and tissue paper kazoo one day while his guitar rested on his lap. The comb slipped from his hand onto the strings of his instrument and Joseph was delighted by the sound it made.

  • Published on May 1, 1982
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