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Today a user posted How should I do slides on guitar without hurting my fingers? and tagged it with . That tag was later removed, because the question seems to be about legato sliding with the fingers as opposed to using a slide.

On the other hand, I mistakenly re-tagged How to practice legato slide on the guitar? What constitutes proper technique? with (now fixed).

There are a fair number of questions regarding guitar sliding, some about "slide guitar" and some about "legato", but which are difficult to distinguish for a guitar ignoramus (points to self) or, perhaps, a guitar beginner.

From my perspective, there would be real value in adding a new (or some such) to make the distinction explicit. But what does the non-ignoramus community think? Is it always clear from context, even to a beginner? Or does the differentiation have value, if only to make searches more direct?

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  • Reading that question left me in no doubt that it was nothing to do with using a slide. As that doesn't hurt fingers. However, I was uncertain as to its meaning short slides as in legato, or long slides along the string length. 'Slide guitar', thus, is inappropriate as a tag. 'Legato playing' would suffice. Maybe OP didn't understand any more than 'I'm sliding my finger'. – Tim Feb 26 at 8:39
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How about using the tag for these questions? I could see someone debating its use for both fretted and fretless instruments, but Wikipedia includes both discrete and continuous glissando as subsections of glissando, so I think it's fine.

The guitar "sweep" technique could also be considered a glissando, so if you want the tag to exclusively refer to sliding around the strings then this would fail that requirement.

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  • There's also a legato tag, but I think both have a different intended meaning. Still, combined with the technique tag it could make sense. – Aaron Feb 24 at 21:19
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    @Aaron One thing about the legato tag is it doesn't necessarily imply using a slide technique. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are also legato. – Todd Wilcox Feb 24 at 22:00
  • @ToddWilcox Just to clarify, are you also saying that works in favor of the glissando tag? – Aaron Feb 24 at 22:30
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    Glissando isn't an accurate description of sweep-picking. And legato doesn't really imply anything except smooth transition from note to note. Legato guitar playing would include pull-off, hammer-on and slide. – Tim Feb 26 at 8:45
  • You could play a glissando with the sweep technique though, if you're fast enough. That's what I meant. – Edward Feb 27 at 23:27

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