Pedal Steel Music

This is Bob Hempker and we got a great email from Bill Fall. Here it is.

Hi Guys!

I can appreciate how challenging it must be for you, after a while, to come up with fresh new tips and ideas, so let me suggest a topic which, broken down, I think could be the subject of several newsletters: bars and bar control.

The late Jeff Newman, a genius at steel guitar pedagogy, taught a beautifully simplified, effective method for holding and controlling a bar that I suspect probably is still be available in some form from Jeffran Music. However, I don’t know if Jeff ever went beyond the simplest basics in that discussion.

Much could be said about the advantages and disadvantages of different bar diameters, for example, as well as about various bar types.

One specific part of bar control that I was never shown, but only developed subconsciously over years of practice and playing, is moving the bar nose vertically across the strings. This may be particularly helpful for newer players. The idea would be that when playing single notes, you want to align the nose-end of the bar right on that string. This allows you not only to apply a bit more pressure on the single string you’re picking, but also to better focus your attention on the correct string, and to better coordinate your right hand to attack that string more accurately – because we’re never looking at what our right hand is doing, of course.

Put simply, you LOOK at the string you want to play, you POINT the bar’s nose at that string, and then you’ll be able to PICK that string more accurately. With practice, all three will happen together automatically.

The same principle applies to picking double-stops or triads: The nose-end should be placed on the outer-most string.

Realize in this connection that increased bar pressure on the string(s) provides better clarity, ring and sustain. But, if you need to apply so much pressure that your bar hand gets tired or even starts cramping, then you may want to try a larger diameter – heavier – bar. I’m pushing 70 now, and my hand muscles don’t have the resilience they once did. So I carry two bars: one, 7/8ths-inch diameter; the other, 15/16ths. I use the heavier bar for playing slower tunes when I want to get the most ring and sustain. I’ll go to the lighter bar for speed-picking, or for when my bar hand starts to poop out.

Bill

Something else I can add is when you’re talking of using the bar tip, you can also use it to bend a note into tune if a note is a little bit flat by using a little more pressure on the top part of the bar or by sliding the tip of the bar just a little bit horizontally and using your ears to hear the note go in tune.

This can also be of help if we have a string that we hear is out of tune but don’t have time to tune it because we’re in the middle of a solo or something. We can use not only the tip end of the bar but the back end of the bar if we have a lower string that’s out of tune.

Fiddle players use this same technique with their bow. They may put more pressure on their bow to raise the pitch of a note while at the same time sliding their finger up the neck.

Left hand bar vibrato is a technique all its own and needs perfected. The technique like any other technique improves over time. Different things we play will require a different type of bar vibrato. Some things require practically no vibrato at all, where if we’re playing a Pete Drake lick or John Hughey lick, you may want to use a more exaggerated left hand vibrato.

Bear in mind, even these players didn’t use it on everything they played. Bar vibrato is similar to a singer using vibrato for an effect. When an effect is used all the time it ceases to be effective. Use the bar vibrato with discretion. That will give your playing a sense of taste. It’s kind of like salt. You don’t want too much salt on your potatoes.

I want to thank everybody who let us list them as teachers and remind all the new players who might be interested in taking lessons to refer to the list at www.steelguitar.net/teachers.html

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

Ron Carpenter sent the following email in response to my last newsletter and it’s definitely worth passing along. Here it is.

Here’s an idea I got from the Jamie Aebersold jazz course. It helps get your ideas out and I have found it to work equally well on both necks. I have many times had a musical idea or phrase bouncing around in my head. I sit down to my guitar in search of this new line or lick, only to find in a few moments I have slipped right back into the comfort of what I already know. Aebersold’s idea goes like this:

Take a small recording device (tape or digital) and scat sing or hum along with the song your working on. Do it 2 or 3 takes. Then, sit down to the guitar, play back your scat, and find the notes you were humming or scatting. The idea is your vocal instrument is a lot closer to your brain than your hands and guitar, so the musical ideas you scat have more fidelity to the idea in your head..

I find this more difficult than covering a hit record. Most records I can find the pocket(s) the studio player used and the riffs are executed from those pockets. My scats aren’t on anyone’s record. There may be odd intervals, dissonance, or other musical concepts not often on commercial recordings. So, finding my notes, from my own voice recording is more challenging.

The benefit? I once played with a jazz quartet. We had worked up about 75-100 tunes out of various fake books. Over time my steel guitar parts were unique and different for each song. Like today’s music a lot of those old tunes followed the same progression so , it’s easy to play the same licks from one to another. But that steals from the performance. Each song should be itself, separate and unique from the others. Recording my own ideas, learning those ideas, and practicing them can make each song on your playlist attention grabbing and beautiful.

Best of all, it’s just an idea, doesn’t cost anything, and your spending time with steel guitar.

Ron Carpenter

Personally I keep a guitar setup near me in the room where I watch television. If I hear a tune on a commercial or during a television show or whatever, I’ll jump up and get behind my guitar and work out the melody before it leaves my mind.

Some of you may not have access to a guitar that readily. If that is the case, the idea Ron Carpenter had with the recording device is great to keep it until you get to your guitar. Many cell phones today record several seconds of audio or video. The recording doesn’t have to be of great quality, just clear enough to capture the sequence of notes you may want to hunt out on your instrument.

Another good exercise is to take a major triad, the 1, 3 and 5 notes of a major chord, hum them to yourself with 1, 3, 5, then back down 5, 3, 1. Now change the inversion. Hum 3, 1, 5 to yourself, then hum 5, 3, 1 to yourself. You can also do this with minor, diminished and augmented chords. You can hum a dominant 7th or a major 7th chord.

Just remember to change the inversions and practice all the inversions. This is really great for training your ears. Another good way to exercise your ears is to pick out any simple melody of a tune you’re familiar with, then try to hum the scale tones in your mind and figure out the scale tones to the melody.

For example, Mary Had A Little Lamb would be 3 2 1 2 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 5 5 – 3 2 1 2 3 3 3 2 2 3 2 1. Remember to sing out the numbers and not the lyrics. This will get the numbers in your head. Master this and you’ll be able to play any tune in any key.

You’ll find this to be really difficult at first but you’ll find like anything else, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. Obviously, once you get to where you can do this with some sort of ease, you’ll also find yourself finding melodies and such on your guitar easier without having to hunt for them. This is a skill that will serve you well for as long as you play music.

We get a lot of emails from all over the world asking us if we know of teachers in their area. We have several listed on our website but we need more. No matter where you live, if you teach steel guitar or are willing to, please let us know and we will add you to our list. There are people who want to learn and have no one to teach them. Pass your skills along and keep the steel guitar community thriving.

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

We’ll be talking more about Little Walter amps in future newsletters. As for now, here are the promised videos. Enjoy.

Little Walter Workshop Videos on YouTube.
Little Walter Workshop 1
Little Walter Workshop 2
Little Walter Workshop 3
Little Walter Workshop 4
Little Walter Workshop 5
Little Walter Workshop 6
Little Walter Workshop 7

This is Bob Hempker. One thing we haven’t addressed so far that I can recall is developing a style of your own. We want to create music as we’re playing it, call it improvising or whatever. After a period of years of doing this, people will hear us without evening knowing who it is and be able to tell by our particular “style”.

That can have several contributing factors such as tone, phrasing, intonation, aggression, passiveness. Our emotions and personality come through in our playing whether we like it or not. We should try and use this to our advantage.

When I think of steel guitar players with extremely prominent styles, people like Jerry Byrd, Don Helms, Ralph Mooney, Jimmy Day, Curly Chalker, John Hughey, Buddy Emmons and of course, YOUR own personal favorite, whoever that may be.

These are people who have left their mark on steel guitar history. This did earn each of these people a plaque in St. Louis.

Developing your own signature style should be something that’s always in the back of your mind. One particular exercise you can try is taking a solo that someone played then trying to play it like some other player would. For instance, take a Tom Brumley solo and imagine how Lloyd Green would play it or vice-versa.

You will find more often than not, you’ll end up sounding like neither of them but instead sounding like yourself. The more you do this, the more your own style will develop.

Another thing to try is taking an intro to a certain song as long as the chord changes are the same and melodies are similar and using it for an intro for an entirely different song. You’ll end up with something different from either.

You don’t have to use a steel guitar solo. You can take a horn, guitar, fiddle or bagpipe solo. It doesn’t have to come from a steel player for you to be able to incorporate it into your playing.

For example, twenty plus years ago when the song Achy Breaky Heart was a big hit recording, I was playing a club six nights a week and we had to play the song three to four times a night. The song is a hated song by most musicians anyway and having to play it that much was like rubbing salt into a wound.

I used just play as far out as I could as long as I didn’t screw up the rest of the band when they’d throw me a solo on that song. One funny thing that we laughed about was when I would solo over the changes of that song, I would play the old piano tune Alley Cat.

It was so stupid sounding it was funny. The audience paid no attention, they were busy dancing. But the band would crack up. It took some of the agony and boredom out of playing that song so often.

That’s probably not a good example of developing style, but it’s a good example of amusing yourself.

Another thing you can do is take licks that you’ve learned and see what songs that they’ll fit in. You may end up playing the licks a little bit differently than you originally learned them in order to fit the particular song you’re playing.

Another thing you can do is take a song or a lick that you normally play and start it out in a different position. In other words, if you’re playing in the key of A for instance and the particular lick starts out on the fifth fret, try playing it with your pedals down starting on the eighth fret with your “A” pedal and your knee lever raising your fourth and eighth strings.

This helps us to learn our instrument but it also furthers us towards developing our own style. I have seen other steel players play a lick that I would play in a totally different way than I would play it, then think to myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

We all seem to learn from each other and I have never ever met a player that if I didn’t sit and listen to long enough, I wouldn’t learn something from. We need to keep our minds completely open towards new ideas and new ways of playing things. One day years down the road, somebody will walk up to you and say, “Man you really got a unique style.”

This is what we are all trying to achieve. This will also get us more attention and more work than playing the most notes in a measure or being the fastest player. Anything you do to take you out of your normal rut will help you develop your style.

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