Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

The pedal board on a steel guitar. Do you realize how many different spacings, pedal travel and pedal shapes there are from guitar to guitar? When you say a pedal feels good, does this mean you want one to push real easy or have enough resistance that you can get half pedal without running the pedal into the floor?

There are many different types of pedal feels and of course, pedal shapes. If a pedal is rounded off from the top to the end, the ratio actually changes as your foot pushes it down and walks along the top of it. This might be okay if you get used to it, but after playing a guitar with a flat pedal on top like Franklin or Fessenden, it could be pretty confusing.

The first Emmons LeGrande and actually second and third LeGrandes, I took the pedals off and replaced them with the old style cast push pull pedals. I like the feel much better even though the tension from all the way up to all the way down was identical. Upon seeing Buddy Emmons first LeGrande, I see that he did the same thing.

I personally don’t like the LeGrande pedals because of the sharp edge on top that prevents a player from sliding his foot across the top of the pedal. The old Emmons pedals, you could do this quite easily. The good thing about this is if you have a belt sander, it’s very easy to cut this sharp edge off the tops of the pedals.

The Sho-Bud pedals do not have this trouble. I like the newer Sho-Bud pedals that are thin from the shank to the end of the pedal because it gives you more space between the pedals without the pedals being further apart. However, the very wide spacing like on the early Sho-Bud Pro IIIs, these new pedals give you almost too much space between the pedals. But let me say this out loud.

All these pedal sizes and pedal feels I’m talking about really must be sized and adjusted to the player. The person that likes one may hate another. I remember Tom Morrell and I building some of the first MSAs and Tommy himself built a steel guitar with only two inches of space between them. This was horribly narrow for me and I just couldn’t play it. But he wanted it that way and played it very well.

I like two and three quarter spacing or even more if the pedals are wide. I just put the pedal setup on my new Clinesmith and because of the width of the pedal, I went to three and a quarter inch spacing. This would be too much on a Sho-Bud or Emmons, but it’s just perfect for Bigsby or Clinesmith.

Remember here, Clinesmith and Bigsby pedals, like the first Sho-Bud pedals, are built with a very wide pad on the end so they require either thinning them down with a band saw, which I have done, or add more space between pedals overall.

Most steel guitars today that are on my floor here are a good blend of width and spacing, for instance, the new Mullen guitars. It’s obvious that these guitars are being designed and built by a very good player, Mr. Del Mullen himself. These guitars are extremely comfortable to sit down behind and play well the first time you try.

Just remember that any pedals that’s too easy to push is not going to give you the control that you need of the note changing from one pitch to another. Also, the rate of string change will determine the pedal feel. The harder you push the pedal the farther a note goes? This is not good. The pedal should push with about the same tension all the way to the stop. As you push the pedal, it should get progressively easier, not progressively harder.

You may notice if you’ve ever played an Emmons push pull, the farther the pedal goes down, the easier it is to push. This ratio of pressure can be adjusted on all guitars. However, it may take a different bell crank, or different parts to accomplish this. The Emmons LeGrande guitars are also very good about incorporating this feature.

I have seen several homemade guitars in my lifetime and guitars like the Sho-Bud Fingertip that have progressively harder push the farther you push the pedal. Not bad if you get use to it and can control it possibly, but not for me.

The Sho-Bud Permanent, built from ’57 to ’65 is fine, but the Fingertip made form ’64 to ’68, unless adjusted very precisely, does not have what I call good pedal action. However, this Fingertip model was a brilliant design and the great granddaddy of the all pull guitars of today.

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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

Hello fellow players,

I just had a question asked of me that seems like a very intelligent question. I think this question may be in several other people’s minds so I’m going to answer it here in the newsletter. I was asked how us old guys learned to play so well so fast in the beginning of pedal steel guitar.

For instance, 1951 there were none, but by 1955 there were many great steel guitar players playing unbelievably well. Did we practice all day long every day? Did we all huddle together and help each other out? Did we listen to each other every chance we could? Did we attend every jam session that we could find?

My answer was players with great tone and execution that played without pedals simply added pedals and then learned licks with the pedals. Guys like Sonny Burnett that played almost nothing, but pedals inspired him to practice continually and listen to everybody else.

Walter Haynes bought a Bigsby from Shot with one pedal on it. He recorded “We Could” with Jimmy Dickens and the entire world went nuts over that record and this is the same story for Bud Isaacs and Sonny Burnett that cut those glorious records with Webb Pierce.

It’s hard to hide a candle under a bushel basket when the light is that bright. Everyone that owned a steel guitar and everybody that didn’t own a steel guitar had gone totally nuts over that E to A pedal sound.

Then when Buddy Emmons came along with his Bigsby, everything he recorded was a steel guitar lesson to anyone that had 87 cents for a 45 rpm record. I remember seeing Buddy with Jimmy Dickens on a television show out of Louisiana and he had just split his E to A pedals and he played some beautiful things that forced me to bang my head against the wall.

From this point on, I didn’t care if I had to throw my whole entire life away, all I could hear in my mind twenty four hours a day was that steel guitar sound. So how did we get better was the question from 1951 to 1961. I believe we were all driven nuts by that incredible style and sound. Everybody was practicing, jamming, copying, working any kind of a job they could get, in Nashville or out and also it seems like everybody helped everybody at that period of time.

Anytime anyone came out with a new lick on a record and one guy could play it, he’d show everybody within earshot how to do it. What wonderful days these were. By far the greatest thing to help steel guitar and make it what it is today were the pedals on the E9th neck.

It was so haunting that even piano players were building styles playing steel guitar licks. Remember Floyd Cramer? If it wasn’t for him copying steel guitar, he’d still be totally unknown today.

Ever hear of the Scruggs tuner on a banjo? This trick was just as dastardly as the pedal on the steel guitar. I think if Danny Davis could’ve put a pedal on his trumpet, the Nashville Brass would still be cutting hit tunes today.

Back to the original question again. How did us old guys suddenly get so good so fast? It had directly to do with us all becoming so enthusiastic with that sound that when we got up in the morning, we’d sit down behind our steel guitar and play it continually until something was threatening to drive us out of the house.

You know. Something like the kitchen on fire. Or the police banging on the door telling us to turn down the volume.

The greatest thing to happen to steel guitar was Bud Isaacs coming up with the pedal and recording \223Slowly\224 with Webb Pierce. He lit the fuse on the musical dynamite that blew the world apart. He blew steel guitar into the next century literally. And then right behind him Sonny Burnett recorded the rest of many songs with Webb Pierce playing with style.

Both of these guys are still with us today, but time is nibbling hard at their heels. To know either one of these people is to know the absolute beginnings of real steel guitar the way it’s played today.

The Lloyd Green, Buddy Emmons, Walter Haynes, Don Davis, Howard White, even the Paul Franklin, Tommy White styles are just these old original styles with a lot of nice little tricks thrown in. If you love steel guitar, you have to love what these guys did.

You’d think that going back and listening to them today would be hard to do because our little style of playing steel has progressed so much, but this isn’t true. I know new steel players today that are going back and listening to the beginning of this style. The great Chris Scruggs is one of these players. I’d just as soon listen to him play as about any steel player around because he takes me back where it was in the beginning.

I think this explains how we all got so good in the beginning so fast. It was just something that lit our fuses that we had to learn to play quickly because we loved it.

Remember also, we didn’t have steel guitars that you could run down to the store and buy. We had to put our own pedal on whatever guitars we owned at the time. Fender, National, Rickenbacker, Magnatone, Silvertone or anything we could find or build. It didn’t play easy, however some incredible sounds came from what we would call junk today.

Half the mystique of steel guitar was making these old non-pedal guitars get these sounds that were coming out of Nashville. As I said in a previous newsletter, Shot Jackson setup a little garage area to put pedals on any steel guitar he could find and the rest of us ended up playing them twenty four hours a day.

The real pedal guitars came out in the mid to late fifties. Bigsbys, Fender 1000 to name a couple. I think everybody in the world was waiting for them. From that point on, steel guitar has progressed more rapidly than any musical instrument ever has since the beginning of time.

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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

Hello fellow players,

I’ve been talking about this for a long time, but I thought I’d touch on it again because the future for steel guitar looks bright, that is, bright if you play well. The golden age of country music is now definitely gone. We’ve lost almost all the stars. Jimmy Dickens is 90 years old. Jack Greene is almost there and Kitty Wells is not a spring chicken anymore.

All these great artists are about gone as are most of the great steel guitar players. However, what’s happening today is music that can be played on steel guitar very successfully. Many of the so-called alternative groups are using steel guitar.

Neil Young, Pure Prairie League, Poco and many of these groups have steel guitar so if we just change our aim a little bit, broaden our scope and start knocking on the doors of funky rock groups, we can possibly find work that may even pay better.

Sure, you’ll miss that beautiful shuffle rhythm that we’ve all grown up with, that smooth, flowing old Nashville sound, but remember, it’s the instrument we’re really in love with and these bands need steel guitar worse than any band ever has in the past.

We are at the beginning now of new. What is new you may ask? Let’s look at what’s gone and what’s coming. Sure, it’s a lot easier to look backwards and see where we’ve been and play music that we’ve been playing forever so we can feel comfortable, but let’s look at what’s coming.

Music today is really very easy when it comes to chord changes. It’s very easy to play because you can really get away with about anything. There is a great future and new doors opening up in all kinds of music.

Do you not like the new country? I don’t either, but thank goodness there are many other kinds of styles that not only accept steel guitar but look for steel guitar. I’ve seen steel guitar on the Letterman show and on Jay Leno and Austin City Limits many times in the last two years. If you’re playing steel guitar in this day and age, you have a whole new world opening up for you. You are just going to have to throw away your old thoughts of what direction you want to take.

Please remember this. Music has always been music and always will be. Chords are chords. Melodies are melodies. Styles are the only things that are changing. The good thing is there are no set patterns for what a steel guitar has to do in the new music of today. This means you can get away with about anything. Just play in tune with taste and tone.

If the song calls for beauty, you as a steel guitar player can give beauty like no other instrument can, and many of you can play fast single notes that can actually push the keyboard player or your hotshot showoff lead player. Steel guitar really has no boundaries except you yourself as the player. Your music talent won’t go away. So find a way to use it.

Again remember, old country will not be the staple of everyone’s taste forever. If you don’t go to the future, you stand a good chance of going under. Styles may change like I said, but music rules and taste is written in stone. Like gravity, the eight elements along with light and Newton’s Law of Physics cannot be changed. There is no reason at all why a good musician that plays steel guitar can’t work forever.

You may even say a great steel player will always work if he plays his steel guitar and his cards right. He may have to play some politics also. Yep, the first golden age is over, but get ready for what’s coming and someday when it’s over, you can be remembered as a legend for what you’ve contributed.

Your music career and the music business is exactly what you make it.

Just like lead players of today, you may need a lot of tricks which may include setting up a second guitar onstage and having all the effects, phase, echo, distortion, Leslie organ effect and anything else. Remember, if a lead guitar player can do it, so can you. The object is to be sellable and desirable as a musician for who hires you.

This may involve us doing things that we’ve never done before and things that at first you may not want to do, but this is what’s going to make our instrument grow.

Check out our monthly specials at http://www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

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