Pedal Steel Music

Bobbe Seymour wrote:

Hello fellow players,

I got so many emails praising Bob Hempker’s insights into pedal steel guitar playing that I’m going to let Bob do an entire series of newsletters for me. Take it away Bob.

We got several questions from readers concerning the last newsletter and I’d like to answer a couple of them. One person asked how important it was to play exactly like the recording when you sub or sit-in with the artist who recorded the song.

When in doubt, if you know how the recorded arrangement went, start with that. Singers are all different. Some of them want their material played just like the record and some of them don’t. To cover yourself, if you can beforehand, know the recorded arrangement. If the singer wants it done differently, you just sort of have to wing it.

One other thing that you might encounter is the signature licks on the recorded arrangement may have to be played in a different key since the singer has raised or lowered the key since they recorded it. For example, Ray Price, Loretta and Little Jimmy Dickens have all lowered their keys.

This is another reason you should practice songs in different keys when you’re learning them. Boy Scouts aren’t the only ones who have to be prepared. Musicians do too.

Another example is if you have a female singer singing a hit song that a male artist originally recorded or vice versa, you can bet it will be in a different key. A female singer in many cases will raise the key a perfect fourth. For example, if a song is normally done in the key of C by a male singer, a female singer will want to sing it in F. This is not etched in stone, but it does happen frequently. You can use it as a guideline.

One of the responses came from a lifelong friend of mine named Wayne Kaiser. Wayne, I remember sitting in as a kid with you and your brothers Louie and Ross. Wayne played steel, Louie played bass and Ross played accordion. Thanks for putting up with me as a kid.

When I left off on the last newsletter, I was getting ready to talk about fills, turnarounds, solos and endings.

The main thing about playing fills behind a singer is to not play over top of the singer, to play between the singer’s phrases. Again, you have to listen to what’s going on besides just listening to yourself.

Sometimes you will get in a rotation with the other lead instrument you’re playing with. If you play fills on the verse, the guitar player or fiddle player will play fills on the chorus and you rotate around until it comes back to you. Some songs have little signature licks that maybe you’re playing parts with the guitar with.

Again, listen to what’s going on, keep eye contact with the different players in the band. If you’re playing parts with someone, try to blend with them, you need match their volume, their phrasing and play in tune with them.

Some songs have lines that you may want to echo the singer with a melodic echo of what they’re singing. Every song has a different feel to it so get involved in the song and the feeling of the song will take over. It’s about working as a team on stage instead of one person show-boating by himself.

Now let’s address turnarounds. Sometimes a song just calls for a simple four or eight bar turnaround. You may play it all yourself or you may play half of it and another lead instrument play the other half of it.

One neat thing I like about working clubs where people are dancing is normally the rule of thumb is each lead instrument will play a whole chorus and you’ll have a whole solo to yourself. In a club if people are dancing, they want you to stretch the song out as long as you can.

I look at this as great practice because you’re having to play the melody of the song without sometimes really knowing the song. It also gives you a chance to play around the melody and improvise.

As far as endings are concerned, in the situation where you’re winging it, again make eye contact with everyone else who is onstage, listen and you will hear when the end is coming and act accordingly. Again, keep your eye on the singer. Sometimes they will repeat or tag the last line. Sometimes they won’t.

You don’t want to play over them if they’re going to tag it and thus end it while they’re still singing. On the other hand, if they are going to end it, you don’t want to keep on playing after they’ve ended it. The importance of good bandstand communication is vital for a band to sound like a band.

We’ve all heard bands where half the band sounds like they’re playing one song and the other half sounds like they’re playing another song. They don’t teach bandstand communication at any music school, you have to learn it through experience.

Every time you sit down to play, you learn something. I’ve never met anybody that I couldn’t learn something from, even some simple little thing they might play a little bit different than I would.

Again, Bobbe’s DVD Intros, Fills and Turnarounds is a great resource. www.steelguitar.net/videos.html

This is Bob Hempker substituting for Bobbe Seymour.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.
www.steelguitar.net
sales@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
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fans and fellow players,

Bobbe Seymour wrote:

I’ve been feeling poorly this week so Bob Hempker is going to do a guest newsletter today. It’s all yours Bob.

I’ve been playing steel guitar most all my life, that’s what I know and that’s what I’m going to talk about. When I have to fill in for somebody on the road or record in a studio or even just playing live in a club with a new band, I have to learn the material pretty much on the fly.

We don’t usually get a rehearsal. When you show up for a gig you sometimes don’t know who else is going to be in the band. In a recording studio setting, you don’t always know who the other players are going to be either.

In a recording situation, you’re not recording a known hit song, you’re creating a hopefully future standard from original material. In such a situation it’s up to you, the producer and everyone else involved in the recording project to create something that will stick in the minds of listeners.

If you think about it, there are only two elements involved in music, the performer and the listener. As the performer it’s your job to play something that is pleasant, enjoyable and ear catching to the listener.

In any playing situation, you have to be organized and approach your job in a systematic way. In a live band situation, the band members decide who is going to play what parts and we have to do it quickly because you can’t have a dead stage. People may get up and leave if you do.

The same thing goes for the studio because somebody is paying for the studio time. Either you catch on pretty quickly or you won’t be called back to play in the future.

My approach to intros, especially in traditional country music, is to play the last line or the last four bars of the melody of the song. We refer to that as a Sears and Roebuck intro. It works well in a live situation.

When we don’t kick off with a Sears and Roebuck intro, usually it’s a standard song that everybody knows the arrangement to and everybody just plays the song as we all know it, the way it was done on the recording. Two examples of this would be John Anderson’s “Seminole Wind” and Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried”. These are songs most everybody knows and knows the arrangements.

Sometimes the singer will kick it off “cold”, meaning that he just starts singing, then the band comes in. So don’t forget that this is a viable technique. A good example of this is Ferlin Husky’s “Since You’ve Gone”.

There are times during a live gig when somebody in the audience will yell out the name of a song that you don’t know or haven’t played in so long you can’t remember. The way I handle this is to rely on another band member who knows the song to tell me the key and flash numbers.

We do that for each other. I might be me flashing numbers for the next song. So it’s very important to know the Nashville number system if you’re going to survive.

The ability to create something brilliant on the fly is what distinguishes run of the mill players from the studio dogs who get the high paying jobs. Unfortunately I’m not one of those guys.

It’s important to know how to harmonize your scales in every key and three basic inversions. This enables you to find parts with the guitar player, fiddle player or whatever other lead instruments you may be working with.

Knowing and practicing harmonizing these scales in every key is vitally important and should be a regular part of your practice routine.

Say you’re going to play “Crazy Arms” and you’re going to it kick off, you can play a harmony part with the fiddle or if there are two fiddles, you can play a third part, or a unison part with one of them or play all three parts because you’ve got three fingers and you can by knowing how to harmonize your scales.

If there is no fiddle player in the band, then the steel guitar is usually expected to play the intro. That’s where knowing your harmonized scale comes into play. If you play it in three parts, your melody line would be on top and the other two parts would be underneath that. This can make the song sound very full and rich and makes the band sound like you’ve arranged it even though you haven’t.

One of the most important things in any playing situation is to watch and listen, not just to yourself but to everybody on the stage.

The singer may sing a verse when he’s supposed to sing the chorus, but you’ve got to follow the singer and you’ve got to blend with the other people on the stage. This all requires you to pay attention with both your eyes and your ears. The gig isn’t all about you, it’s about playing with other people and again, pleasing the listener.

How many times have you heard one guy in the band playing louder than anybody else and looking around to see of anybody is watching? This is very immature in my opinion. An example is a drummer twirling his sticks and the tempo going up and down. I fired a drummer one time for twirling his sticks.

I was checking out Bobbe’s Intros, Fills and Turnarounds instructional video set which is what got me started on this subject. The next time I do a guest newsletter for Bobbe, I’ll get into fills, turnarounds, solos and endings and how to play with other people and fit in with a band.

You can check out all of Bobbe’s instructional videos at www.steelguitar.net/videos.html and believe me, they are all great to play along with while you’re practicing which is something every player should do on a regular basis. I have a practice schedule that I follow and you should too.

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

This has been Bob Hempker filling in for,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@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
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fellow players,

I’ve been thinking about all the people that have helped my career over the years. These are people I need to acknowledge and thank for hiring me.

I have touched on many of them in the past. Starting at the beginning, I would like to mention Claude Gray. Claude was a neighbor of mine in north Nashville. This is a guy that I thank profusely for saying good things about me which is what really got my career lit and got me noticed by other artists.

Of course, I thank Jean Shepard for using me on some of her first recording sessions. Then there’s Ray Price. I thank him very much for being the kind of person that he was to me.

Several of the artists that I worked with at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas really gave my career a boost such as David Rogers. I thank Pete Drake for lining me up with him. I got a lot of recording session work from my association with David.

One artist that stands out to me is Billy Walker. He was the most appreciated star most of us have ever worked with.

I was probably appreciated most of all by Pat Boone. Lynn Anderson was very important along with Ferlin Husky. I thank all of them for the opportunities they gave me.

Another standout artist is Johnny Paycheck. Paycheck did a lot for me by encouraging me to be a showman and a show-off. The offshoot of this was that in between shows, the audience wouldn’t just come back and ask me to get Johnny’s autograph for them, but they actually wanted my autograph for being the nut that I was onstage.

Stan Hitchcock has been very good to me through the years. Because of working with Stan and Bobby Goldsboro and having to learn their arrangements, I came to appreciate their music.

Working where I had to back up several different artists on television shows, I had to learn a lot of new arrangements very quickly. The challenge of continually working on new arrangements was very good for me and catapulted my development as a player to a much higher level.

Tanya Tucker was very open and easy to get along with and I had no problems learning her arrangements and appreciating what all she did.

Artists I worked with on the west coast which include Dolly Parton, Bobby Goldsboro, Buck Owens, Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris and subbing for Bob Hempker with Loretta Lynn deserve my thanks.

Faron Young, George Jones and several other of the crazy men in the business. I learned very nice things from all of them and the experiences I had with them are responsible for my evolution as a player.

If you want to become the very best player that you can be, then don’t ever turn down a chance to play with anybody because you never know what you’ll learn from the experience.

Again, I thank all the artists I worked with for making me the person I am today.

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

Your buddy,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@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
Closed Saturday and Sunday