Pedal Steel Music

This is Bob Hempker and I had a few replies to the last newsletter asking how to setup two amps to work together. There are actually two or three different ways of doing it. Try them all and see what works best for you.

One way is to just have a volume pedal with two out jacks. That makes it totally simple. You can try running your effects between your guitar and your pedal or after your pedal if your effect unit has two outs.

Another way of doing it is using a stereo volume pedal. Come out of your guitar with a “Y” cord. Again you can go through your effects before or after the pedal. You can do this either of two ways. You can run everything through both amps or you can run one out with your effects to one amp and one out with no effects thus creating the wet amp dry amp concept.

Finding a stereo volume pedal might be a problem. I don’t know anybody who makes one anymore. Again, you need to try these things and see which one works best for you.

The Hilton and Goodrich volume pedals have two outs so you can run a separate cable to each amp. Just put your effects after the volume pedal on the wet amp and don’t use effects on the dry amp. Use the volume controls on your amp to blend the sound to taste.

If you want to go through your volume pedal first, make sure your effects unit has two outputs. As I said, there are many ways you can do this.

You can position your amps so you can hear one in each ear. You’ll really love the full, rich, thick sound that you’ll get. Also, using two amps, you’re not going to distort as quickly as you are with one amp. Using two amps doesn’t make you sound louder, it enables you to hear yourself better.

Twin amps is like air conditioning. We got along fine before we had it, but now that we have it, we don’t really want to go back to not having it.

Vic will be on the road for a few days playing for Craig Campbell. His website is www.craigcampbell.tv and you can hear his music there. If you can catch one of these shows, be sure you say hello to Vic.

They will be at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds on Saturday, August 24th for you players and fans living in the Cleveland, Ohio area.

On Monday, August 26th, they’ll be in Indiana, PA at the Indiana County Fair.

On Wednesday, August 28th, they will be in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ at Jenkinson’s Pavilion.

On Thursday, August 29th, they’ll be terrorizing the Erie County Fair in Wattsburg, PA.

Then Saturday, August 31st, you can catch the show at the Kearney Amphitheater in Kearney, MO.

All of these dates and more are listed on Craig’s website. Vic is always happy to meet steel players and fans on the road.

Remember, we cater to steel players, not sound men.

www.steelguitar.net
info@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday

August 15, 2013

This is Bob Hempker and I’d like to rant a bit today. I’d like to hear steel guitar in every piece of music I hear, no matter what the genre is, be it country, blues, rock, jazz, classical or whatever. I think the versatility of the instrument is realize unappreciated, underutilized and as a result misunderstood by a lot of people who are not really exposed to steel guitar.

Yet at the same, I hear a lot of steel players gripe about the way someone plays, or their tone in some piece of music. Let’s face it, we’re all not the same and we’re all not trying to play and sound the same. If we were, there’d only be room for one steel player on the planet.

I enjoy listening to a steel player without any country background whatsoever, performing some other form of music whether it be a jazz player, a rock and roll player or a blues player. If they’re proficient at their instrument and have a background in some other form of music and play it well, I don’t care whether or not they can play “Cold, Cold Heart”, “Together Again”, “Touch My Heart” or any other standard country steel guitar oriented song.

Allow them to excel and help showcase the instrument. Guitar players, piano players and players of other instruments are not all country players. Why should we expect all steel players to be country oriented?

On the other hand, if a steel player is on a gig that calls for a country oriented player, they should be proficient at playing country music. I don’t want to hear a blues player with distortion on their instrument playing a blues solo on “A Way To Survive” or some other country tune in a country band that’s playing a country arrangement.

We might all do a little soul searching and try to put our love for the steel guitar ahead of our own preferences in music. After all, there are fans out there who love steel guitar no matter where they find it and I’m one of them.

I would imagine that several decades back when the steel guitar was first being used in country music, there were probably many Hawaiian players that hated it. Personally I like to hear any musician play their forte or their bag, however you want to call it, and do what they do best.

I like to hear jazz played by a jazz oriented musician. A country player playing jazz or as some call it, Hillbilly Jazz, is wonderful and shows the well roundedness of the musician, but jazz played by a jazz oriented musician will usually have a different feel to it. Emotions and ideas are coming from a different place.

I do like to hear someone, no matter what type of music they play, play in tune, although in certain types of music there are actually certain passages that call for dissonance.

I have a certain tone in my head that I like to hear, but certain types of music and different players may not find my idea of tone acceptable. When I think about all the great soloists I’ve listened to in my lifetime, guitar players, steel players, horn players, fiddle players, piano players, it goes on and on, that covers a pretty wide spectrum of tones.

I’ve heard people say when talking about a particular player, “Man I love his playing but I can’t get past his tone.” If we really feel this way, the truth is we don’t really love his playing because his tone is part of his playing.

Country music is very near and dear to my heart. I’ve made a living playing country music all my adult life, but I still appreciate any kind of music as long as it’s performed well. I have had to finally conclude I am a steel guitar fan first and a country music fan second.

Let’s all of us just be more open minded and accepting of other people’s work and be happy to hear steel guitar in rock and roll music or any kind of music. Rant finished.

I’ve decided I need two girlfriends to carry both of my Nashville 112’s because I really love having twin amps on a gig. Of course, they’ll both need to have good paying jobs! When you get used to twins, you don’t want to go back. LOL.

Remember, we cater to steel players, not sound men.

www.steelguitar.net
info@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday

August 8, 2013

This is Bob Hempker with today’s newsletter.

I see a renewed interest in steel guitar playing. YouTube has helped steel guitar out a bunch. It’s exposed a lot of people to an instrument they’ve never seen before. I see young kids come in here wanting to try out a steel because they saw someone play one on a video.

I think it’s extended to older players who gave up the instrument 20 years ago and are wanting to get back into it. We’ve also had some older players come in here who have drug their old guitars out from under their bed and want their guitar gone over and more modern pedal changes put on them.

We’ve had a lot of young guitar players who want to add steel guitar to their resume. These younger players are at a different starting point and have a different mindset than what some of us older players were when we started out.

As many of us have done in the past, starting out with a six string lap guitar learning Hawaiian music, then graduating up to the pedal guitars, the modern day steel guitar player is usually starting with a single neck ten string, 3 pedal, 4 knee lever configuration.

We all have to start somewhere and we all have to come from somewhere, so there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just different from the way many of us started out.

There are learning aids that we didn’t have years ago such as instructional DVDs, instructors using Skype to teach, numerous books and plenty of instruction available for free on YouTube.

You don’t have to rack up a large expense to call somebody and ask them what they played on something or how they played. We have cell phones, email, facebook, the internet. All these things can be used as tools to help us learn how to play our instrument.

There are tools such as the Tascam guitar trainer that does fantastic things. I remember as a kid taking a vinyl record and recording it onto a reel to reel tape recorder, then slowing the tape recorder down to half speed. It was a cumbersome process learning to play licks because when you slowed the speed down, it would lower the pitch down as well.

It seems as if the average younger musician is more knowledgeable about music than we were back years ago. When I was a kid I would hear something and then just try to play it. It never dawned on me that I was playing out of a certain scale or mode and this passage or lick I was learning could be phrased differently and used in other places in other songs.

I know one of the biggest impediments to getting new people into steel guitar is the cost of entry. There doesn’t seem to be any good way around this because of all the machine work and parts that go into a steel guitar which brings me to equipment for beginners.

Many people bring in a guitar they bought off ebay or craigslist. The guitar is many times beyond repair. They’ve thrown their money away trying to get a bargain.

Looking at the reality of the situation, if you’re going to learn steel guitar or any instrument for that matter, you need to be prepared to invest enough money in your equipment to get a decent enough instrument that the instrument in itself, kill your interest in learning.

There’s nothing more frustrating for a beginner or anybody for that matter, than a subpar instrument. With a steel guitar, probably the biggest irritant is a cheap instrument that won’t stay in tune. This is especially annoying to a beginner who already plays another instrument or two because their ear is somewhat developed.

Another thing to always consider in buying an instrument is its resale value. If later on down the road, you want to trade up to a more expensive instrument, a good instrument won’t depreciate as much as a poor one.

Also if you find out down the road that steel guitar isn’t for you, you’ll have something that will be easier to sell and you won’t have to take near so much of a loss as you would on something nobody wants.

Try to envision what the steel guitar player of 10 or 15 years from now will be looking for, where they’ll be coming from, plus looking at where the instrument could evolve into. It’s somewhat mind boggling to imagine what musicians, bands and individual players will sound like 20 years from now.

Bottom line, I’m highly elated to see the interest in steel guitar where it is today and I think it will grow. It’s just going to be a different breed of player than we know today.

Remember, we cater to steel players, not sound men.

www.steelguitar.net
info@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Open 9AM – 2Pm Second and Third Saturday of each Month
Closed Sunday