There's some-
thing magical about slide guitar. Simply taking a hunk of glass or metal to a guitar's strings turns the instrument into something ethereal. Whether evoking Haunting blues. the plaintive side of country music or Hawaiian slack-key melodies, slide guitar is a fail safe recipe for instant goose bumps.

Despite its inherent allure, many players never investigate slide because it usually involves nonstandard tunings, limits the number of playable chords, and makes pet licks nearly impossible to play. In Slide Guitar as a Second Language ($34.95), instructor Phil Johnson breaks the tuning taboo and shows that just about anything is playable with a slide. Using behind-the-bar fingering techniques, Johnson shows how sliders can play

nonslide tricks--such as hammer-ons, pull-offs and bends--and also demonstrates fingerings for minor chords, dominant 7th chords, augmented chords and other chord types that free slide players from simple major triads. Another convention that Johnson disregards is that slide must be played fingerstyle. While he acknowledges that fingerstyle (and pick-and-fingers style) has several advantages over flatpicking, Johnson chooses to play solely with a flatpick. Again, this should come as a relief to slide-o-phobes. ("Hey, here's a guy who plays in standard tuning with a flatpick, and he's damn good--maybe I could develop some slide chops")

The two-hour video will not turn you into the life of the slide party overnight, but it covers a lot of rudiments very well. Johnson compares various types of slides, explains left and right hand damping, offers tips on keeping intonation true, and shows how to optimize your guitar's setup for slide. Slide guitar as a Second Language does a good job of coaxing slide-shy players to incorporate slide into their styles. That's the message here . Slide doesn't have to mean starting from scratch--it can be a way to expand on what you already know.--Adam Levy