“These techniques are very effective for giving your lines a slippery, rubber band-like sound”: Steve Vai and Guthrie Govan love these long-slide glissando techniques – here’s how you can bring them into your playing

Andy Wood.

I’m a big fan of Steve Vai and Guthrie Govan, both of whom are known for liberally employing legato articulations in their melody playing, such as slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends and glissandos (long slides).

These techniques are very effective for giving your lines a slippery, rubber band-like sound. The chorus melody from the title track to my latest album, Charisma, offers a nice example of how I use these techniques to create see-saw-like melodic figures during this section.