Pedal Steel Music

Hello fellow players,

This is Vic Lawson subbing for Bobbe Seymour today.

This is for newer players that are having trouble playing with bands and aren’t sure what to play or how to play. First and foremost, listen to the melody of the song. When you play fills, try to play short, simple melodies in between vocal phrases.

Instead of strictly thinking about a steel guitar sound, think about playing one or two notes because that is sometimes better than trying to play six or seven. By all means “shut up”. Don’t overplay. Everyone has heard of the old saying “less is more” but a lot of players forget that rule and an important rule it is.

In other words, if you fill the verse, after that verse is over, be silent, let somebody else play. The guy that taught me to play in a band was a piano player. I was sixteen and had never played in a band ever.

He asked me, “Have you ever played in a band?”

I answered, “No. Tell me what I need to do.”

He said, “Watch me and I will nod at you when I want you to play. When that verse or chorus is over, take your hands off the guitar. I don’t care if you sit on them. I don’t want to see your hands on the guitar.”

I asked him why and he said, “Because I want to be heard too. It’s my turn to play.”

That really stuck with me. Discipline is very important. You can be a fantastic player and play many hot licks, but if you don’t have discipline a lot of other players won’t want to work with you. You are a member of a band, you’re not a solo artist. Kenny G gets to be the front man, but you don’t.

Did you hear about the drummer who was so despondent over his timing that he threw himself behind a train? Speaking with drummers, with a lot of drummers today playing to click tracks, it never hurts to practice with a metronome.

Working with a metronome will drastically improve your timing and your pocket. The pocket is the groove essentially. It’s being able to get into the feel of a song and make your audience feel it.

Always play from your heart. Try to make your hands an extension of what you’re feeling in your heart. With our instrument, as sad as it can be, if you can make your audience cry with you, then you’ve done your job. Don’t be mechanical. Any computer can generate music without feel. Be human.

If you’re having trouble learning a particular part, you may want to try one of the many learning tools on the market such as the Tascam GB-10 which has the ability to slow a song down to half speed without changing the key and can also loop a lick or solo infinitely. It will make things much easier to learn and it’s easy to use. I use mine extensively and have for years.

Lately, we’ve had a run on volume pedal pots which is good for us, but if you can try to improve your volume pedal technique, your pot is going to last longer. Just try to be more smooth and dynamic instead of like a pump organ.

I think if your practice regimen is two hours a day, at least give twenty minutes of that to volume pedal technique. Not only is it more pleasing to the ear, but it will save you some money.

I think a lot of guys get too caught up in trying to do what somebody else does such as right hand technique, pick blocking versus palm blocking for example. Granted, there’s a right way to do it, but I don’t think what works for one player will work for the other player.

I think it’s a matter of experimenting and seeing what works best for you as a player. There’s a million critics out there, but bottom line is whether you’re playing for recreation or for a living, as long as you’re striving to be better, do it the way you want to do it.

You can’t learn to play with a band by playing alone in your practice room, you have to get out and play with other people. By all means, have fun with it. Don’t take it too seriously. Don’t let players that do take themselves too seriously suck you into their black hole. That’ll make it more enjoyable and easier to learn.

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

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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,

It’s not often that a steel guitar instrumental makes headlines in Nashville’s Tennessean newspaper, but it does happen and it happened to one of nicest guys you’ll ever want to run into, Mike Daly. So Mike is going to be our guest newsletter writer today.

For those who don’t already know Mike, he has been with Hank Jr. for the last 18 years along with recording three albums with Texas icon Pat Green. He was also the Dobro player on the Hayseed Dixie album “A Hillbilly Tribute To AC/DC” which sold 100,000 copies.

Previous to working with Hank Jr. Mike was a member of the Gibson/Miller Band and recorded two albums for Sony Music in ’93 and ’94, “Where There’s Smoke” and “Red White And Blue Collar”. At this point I’m turning it over to Mike.

The story behind my album getting in the newspaper is that Peter Cooper was introduced to the album through Lloyd Green. I had gone to Pacific International Music Studio on 18th Avenue to give an advance copy of the album to my friend, producer and engineer Mike Flanders. Mike had been very helpful in maintaining the direction of the album and I wanted him to have the first advance copy.

When I walked in, Lloyd Green had just completed a session and was tearing down his steel. I gave Mike his copy and Lloyd asked, “What have you got there?”

After listening to four songs he said, “I want to take this album home and digest it.”

The next morning Lloyd emailed me and was very complimentary on the CD and really understood what it was about. He contacted Peter Cooper who in turn thought the music was worthy of an article. And that’s how I ended up in the Nashville newspapers.

What I tried to do with this album was showcase the broad range of music that could be made with the steel guitar. I do sessions downtown all the time and I see guitars player come in with ten guitars and five different amplifiers so they can create numerous tracks that all have their own voice and color.

However, steel guitar is usually relegated to a single track with the tone of the steel guitar being what you would expect. We don’t get to experiment around. When producers call you to a session, that’s what they’re looking for in a steel guitar track.

But I’ve been around a studio long enough to know that a steel guitar is capable of a much broader palette of tones and colors than most people have been exposed to. Throughout this album I tried to showcase everything the steel guitar is capable of.

There is no guitar player on this album, yet you will hear many layers of guitar like tones that are all produced on the steel through different techniques. Like guitar players, I used multiple guitars and a variety of tube amplifiers. The guitars were a 1993 Emmons LeGrande, a 1973 Pro II Sho-Bud and a Show Pro Russ Pahl Jr. model with two pickups on it’s single neck which provided the solo for “Frankenstein”.

I employed a collection of Fender amplifiers, a Ken Fox 212 Twin copy and a Peavey Ranger 212. The important thing I want to note is that these were all tube amps as opposed to solid state which most steel players gravitate to. For my purposes, the tubes respond better to tonal coloring and have a warmer, richer, thicker sound.

To give you a more detailed insight into my recording process, let’s talk about “Colour My World”, a song by the group Chicago. The arpeggiated piano part that opens the song was played on the Emmons through a DeLuxe with slight chorusing. I didn’t use any finger picks or thumb pick to attain a darker, warmer tone.

The next sound you hear will be whole note pads using a flanger in conjunction with a tremolo. I wanted to create pads that would be more ethereal and leave room for the melody line to speak.

The melody was played Dobro style on a Les Paul through the DeLuxe using a G Dobro slide tuning. The final solo utilized the Sho-Bud running through a Fender Twin and a plate reverb to complete the song with a sweet country sound.

When Bobbe heard this album, he graciously offered to let me write this newsletter to inform people about my record and I’m very grateful for this opportunity. Bobbe has always been very supportive of my approach to the steel, even to the point of employing me at Steel Guitar Nashville in 1988 and helping me survive through my first year in the Nashville community.

I just want to publicly thank Bobbe for all he’s done for me throughout my career in Nashville.

Thanks for your time,
Mike Daly

Note from Bobbe: You can order Mike’s CD from Steel Guitar Nashville. It’s down at the bottom of the page at www.steelguitar.net/cds.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

Hello fellow players,

This is Bob Hempker subbing today.

In this newsletter I want to talk about a few people who have made an impression on me over the years and possibly have made an impression on some other steel players. I’m not talking about the famous names that you’ve all heard of.

Instead these are people that never gained fame, but nevertheless, have contributed tremendously to steel guitar because you never know what famous players have picked up from these people.

I’m sure every player out there has had people like this in their lives at one time or another. One example that comes to mind is Don West. People from the Washington D.C. area know who he was, but many people have never heard of him.

Don influenced people such as Buddy Charleton and Buddy Emmons. All of the greats have talked about Don West. I don’t know of any recordings in existence. Don passed away a few years back and we really lost a great one.

I was taught as a kid by Ron Dearth in Lima, Ohio. Ron was said to have influenced Jerry Byrd a lot. Ron was a die-hard Hawaiian player. I learned an awful lot from him. I was also influenced highly by a man named Bill Pulford. Bill introduced me to the E9th tuning and the Nashville style of playing. He had such a great touch. I learned most of the basics on E9th tuning from him. We lost Bill a couple years ago.

I remember coming home from school one afternoon. I was about eleven years old. My older brother Dave and a few of his friends were playing music out in our garage. This was nothing new and I didn’t think much about it. All of a sudden I heard this sound that I had never really heard before. It immediately caught my attention.

I had to go out there and look and see where it was coming from. A new neighbor who had just moved in across the street from us had heard my brother and his friends playing music in the garage and asked if he could join them.

He was playing an Oahu Diana six string lapsteel with a string tone tuning changer on it that had a lever which you could switch from E to A to C#m tuning. The lever was worked with your right hand. He was playing a lot of the Bud Isaacs things with that little lap guitar using the string tone tuner changer. He would pick the string and while it was sustaining, he would work the lever to change the note from A to E and back.

I was absolutely hooked immediately. This man’s name was Bill Pulford and the sound of him playing his steel guitar completely changed the course of my life.

There are numerous players that I’ve encountered down through the years that were greats at what they did, but unfortunately they never were well-known. However the impact that they made on me and other players lives on and is testament to their skills and talents.

Down through the years I have encountered many players who were not that well-known but were phenomenal steel guitar artists. I remember a guy from New Mexico named Wayne Galey (I’m not sure of the spelling). He was one super player.

Many of you may remember Dick Miller as a guitar builder, but Dick could play with the best of them. Dick and Terry Bethel were in a band together in Las Vegas back in the seventies. When I was working with Loretta in Vegas, I would leave my gig and go directly to where they were playing and listen to them and hang out with them. Dick and Terry were both real impressive.

If you ever get in the Cincinnati area, by all means make a trip to Bobby Mackey’s club. Chuck Rich has played there for several years and is another one of my very favorite players.

There are really too many great unsung heroes for me to mention all of them. They may not have played on hit recordings nor have they starred at Scotty’s convention, but they have influenced so many of us. They have all rubbed off on me and probably in many ways that I’m not even aware of.

I felt compelled to address this particular topic because I feel that there are so many players that have been in the trenches and helped a lot of known players. I wanted to give these guys some positive ink and thank them for all they’ve done for me.

I had a question from a reader about how to practice harmonized scales. It’s easier to show than to explain so here is a video:

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