What Should I Learn Next? (a beginner)

Michael Murray · From: British Columbia, Canada

I've only been playing psg several months - and loving it! I've learned some rudimentary topics (major & minor chords, scales, A,B,C pedals, palm-blocking). (I have Band-in-a-box for backing tracks plus some tabbed licks. Neither of which I've dived into yet.)

Any advice on what I should concentrate on next? Or a useful order/priority for beginner's to achieve?

Thanks a lot!

Kevin Hatton · From: Buffalo, N.Y.

Yes. Learn how to change a broken string in a dark Honky-Tonk before the end of the song without poking yourself in the index finger and bleeding on your steel (I hate that). This is Seel Guitar-101, and a must for bar playing. When you've conquered that, you've arrived.

Joseph Barcus · From: Volga West Virginia

scales, scales, and more scales frontward backwards from middle left, middle right, learn them till you are sick of them. never sit in a kitchen chair, use a seat thats build for steel guitar, always keep in tune, never overplay the singer, dont get married and expect to play out every weekend for the first 10 years.never sit down and put on another steel players picks, always carry your own. the center of your body should line up with the 14th fret, get a volume pedal that attaches to the pedal rack, dont sit beside of piano players they will make you think youre out of tune, not that I am saying anything bad about piano players just dont sit beside them lol. oh did I mention scales, scales and more scales, learn all the theory you can.
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Larry Jamieson · From: Walton, NY USA

Michael,
Have you played other instruments? How is your ear? Can you hear chord changes coming and know what
chord to play next? Try putting on some CDs with some slow, simple, three chord songs and play along.
Don't try to play the melody to start with, just play the chords, and see if you can play some fills
in the pauses between the vocal lines. You will have to figure out what key the song is in. You can do this by sliding up the 4th string until you match the pitch of the main (I) chord in the song.
If you want to play melodies, start with something simple like Amazing Grace. See if you can find the melody within the scales you have learned.
A teacher can do a lot to move you along faster...
Good luck!

Barry Hyman · From: upstate New York, USA

I would concentrate on learning at least three different places where you can play each major or minor triad. For example, E minor can be played at the third fret with the A pedal, at the eighth fret with the E lever, and at the tenth fret with the B and C pedals. And it is very helpful to know at least four different places where you can play a seventh chord. For example, some of the places where you can play a D7 chord are at the first fret, at the third fret, at the fifth fret, and at the tenth fret.

Obviously there are several possible grips for each of these chords, especially on a 12-string. Might as well get used to different grips early, rather than getting stuck on strings 3, 4, 5, and 6.

And do you know scales in at least three different positions? For example, you can play a G major scale at the third fret, at the eighth fret, and at the tenth fret, assuming you have the necessary pulls.

Then study the places where the chords and scales overlap. For example, if you are playing a C chord at the eighth fret in the key of C major, you use one set of pedals and levers and strings to decorate it. (By "decorate" I mean superimposing notes from the scale, such as the fourth or sixth or ninth, on top of the chord to ornament it melodically.) For example, you might add the second string and then use the lever that lowers the second string a whole step.

If you are playing the same C chord at the same fret, but in the key of F, however, you would use a slightly different set of pedals and knees and strings to decorate it. For example, you might now use the pedal or lever that lowers your second string a half step. And now you can include the ninth string in your runs.

That's the fun part... Very Happy

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Joseph Barcus · From: Volga West Virginia

come spend some time here its free door is always open
http://www.youtube.com/user/JoeBarcus?feature=mhum
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Clete Ritta · From: San Antonio, Texas

Barry and Joe have great advice.
Practice chord grips and inversions like going from fret 3 open, to fret 6 with A and F, to fret 10 with AB. Then move up a fret (4 to 7 to 11 etc.).
This helps develop eye and hand but most importantly ear.
Check out Mickey Adams vids about pick-blocking, cross-picking etc. on YouTube, and listen to as much steel guitar music as possible. Smile

Clete

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

Many of us, including me, learned from Winnie Winston's book. I suggest you get it and learn everything in it.
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Joseph Barcus · From: Volga West Virginia

somewhere within my 152+/- youtube videos you will find also about scales as well.once you get on my videos type in scales and it should take you right to them
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David Ellison · From: California, USA

>>Any advice on what I should concentrate on next? Or a useful order/priority for beginner's to achieve?

I think you should concentrate on learning to play the stuff that you really like. What inspired you to take up steel in the first place? Once you have a basic understanding of how the pedals work and the theory behind it, I think the best thing you can do is sit down with your favorite steel playing on recordings and figure it out and practice it until you can play it. You can use software to slow the recordings down to make the songs easy to figure out.

I can only speak for myself, but I think I made much more progress much faster, and came away with a better feel for playing in a band situation by doing this... especially when it came to things like when and where and what to play behind a vocalist. I found that there are nuances in a person's playing that you can't pick up otherwise.

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

After A, B, C pedals, palm-blocking, and basic single-note and harmonized scales? Of course, it depends on what kind of music you want to do. But for the classic pedal steel stuff:

Continue exploring the A, B, and C pedals - there's a lot there that's not obvious - B+C especially. But also explore the E (E=>Eb on strings 4/8 ) and F (E=>F on strings 4/8 ) levers (by themselves and with other pedals), learn how to use the first two strings (with and without the string 2 lower - D-lever), work on playing the guitar really in-tune all over the neck, and start working on repertoire - classic songs for pedal steel. Developing one's ear is absolutely critical, and on pedal steel, I think it takes a lot of work.

Finally - find a good teacher who can give you appropriate feedback on what you're doing and give you new ideas about things to work on. I spent a week with Mike Sweeney in Nashville - highly recommended.

Stephen Cordingley · From: Ontario, Canada

Mel Bay's Deluxe Pedal Steel Guitar Method by Dewitt Scott
it's logical, correct, and flows smoothly from simple to more advanced - nothing wrong with learning the old chestnuts, and you can hear proper playing on the cd (you can adjust the stereo balance to get the backing channel only, and play along when you get confident)
- if you want to get gonzo about technique, you could check out the Joe Wright Technique Builder stuff
- the Jeff Newman "Right Hand Alpha" video is the other technical building block to consider

I'm starting to realize that, in the long run, good technique is a better place to start, rather than trying to learn to play some fancy, hot sounding, stuff you really don't have the chops for (I plead guilty as charged on that one ...)

Clete Ritta · From: San Antonio, Texas

Was going to add that a good teacher can speed things up considerably too, but Dave Mudgett says it first. I'll second that.

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

Learn pick blocking. Spend hours every week practicing it. You won't regret it.

Memorize the connections between major chords and their relative minors (C-Am, G-Em, Eb-Cm, etc.). The goal here is that when you see a minor chord name like F#m, you should instantly think of A positions (5th fret, 10th fret, 12th fret), not F# positions (2nd fret, 7th fret, etc.).

This is a real departure for guitar players. On guitar, the majors and minors are just one note different at the same fret. A and Am are both played at the 5th fret, for example. While you can do that on steel, it's not nearly as useful as the relative minor concept (G and Em at the same fret).
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Clete Ritta · From: San Antonio, Texas

When going from G major to G minor on guitar with E type bar chord at the third fret, only the middle finger is lifted.
Sometimes its at the {fill in blank} player for hitting a wrong note. Laughing

The relative minor is three frets down at open Em on 6 string.

On PSG, G to G minor from open at 3rd fret, you go two frets down and use BC for G minor, but also three frets up with the A pedal. Or also 8 frets ups with E lower.
The relationship between the I and the vi (the relative minor b0b talks about) ranks up there with the V7 I connection.

One of the most popular chord progressions ever is I vi IV V7.
It begins with the Major (I) and Relative Minor (vi).
This progression requires no bar movement on PSG.
Open, A, AB, B+E lower.

Clete

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

Right, Clete. But knowing that a minor is 2 frets back or 3 frets up just slows you down. Knowing that F#m is relative to A puts you at the right fret every time.

A guitar player thinks of fret 3 for G or Gm. A steel player thinks of fret 3 for G or Em.

This is really important for reading chord charts. When a chart says Cm, you don't want to connect it to the 8th fret in your brain at all. You want to connect it to Eb, frets 4, 6 and 11. That's why I stress that you should memorize these 12 relative minor connections:

G#m - B
C#m - E
F#m - A
Bm - D
Em - G
Am - C
Dm - F
Gm - Bb
Cm - Eb
Fm - Ab
Bbm - Db
Ebm - Gb

Novice E9th players often have a hard time with minors because they don't know these connections. They're still thinking like guitar players.

Don't print this post. Grab a pen and paper and write it down. Keep it handy on your music stand until you know it backwards and forwards.
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Pete Burak · From: Portland, OR USA

I don't disagree with anything b0b said.
fwiw, If you have the G#'s to G lower, then you can think of fret three as both G and Gm.
This is a great change for steelers coming form a guitar background.
The one for the pedals down minor is the A+B+[B>Bb] split. This gives you the minor of whatever A+B pedals down chord you are at.
Again, these changes put alot of chords where a guitar player taking up Steel might expect to find them.

David Ellison · From: California, USA

>>knowing that a minor is 3 frets up just slows you down. ...A steel player thinks of fret 3 for G or Em.

Isn't that essentially the same thing? Either way you look at it, G is still three frets up from E.

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Lots of great advice here. While Pete is correct about the G#-G lower for minors at the "same" fret, I would be afraid that might become a crutch for avoiding the mental patterning b0b recommends, which is what you'll hear almost all steel players actually doing on record, and a part of the steel "sound".

I assume your goal is to play in a band of some sort. If so, my advice is to learn about and study the so-called Nashville Number System. (There is a good book available by Chas Williams). It's hard to visualize now, but this number system can be used to understand not only the structure of any song you want to learn or play, by ear, but also why the steel guitar is tuned and set up as it is, what the pedals/levers do, where all the chords are, and how to make everything you know fit in.

While I respectfully agree with b0b's suggestion, it requires that you know the name of whatever minor chord you need to play, and then which relative major position to play it at. I did (mostly) learn minor chords on steel in this way myself. In the real playing world, if you learn the positions and sounds of the harmonized scale (basis for the number system) on your guitar, and train yourself to hear the changes as the song "happens", you can make instant moves to the chords needed without translating. You'll need to grow into it as you learn, but many people don't realize that every chord sequence or song progression has a distinctive sound regardless of what key it's played in.

To refer to Clete's example of the common I vi IV V7 progression (1 6m 4 57), C Am F G7 in the key of C, G Em C D7 in the key of G, etc. These are the so called "Ice Cream" Changes used in songs like "Monster Mash", "Last Kiss", "Heart and Soul", "Every Breath You Take", and with slight re-arrangement, "Rocky Top", "Country Roads" and on and on.
My point is that you can learn to hear and recognize these changes, and if you learn the same structures on your steel, you can eventually play along with anything you hear.

I know this may sound overly technical or involved to a beginner, but in all honesty there's not a single thing that was of more help to me in my professional playing career than knowledge and application of the number system. When I started to focus on it my playing really took off.

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Any G position is, of course, three frets up from the "same" E position. But what they were referring to, David, is the concept that without a dedicated lever to lower the thirds of the "no pedals" major chord, the minor of the same root is found three frets higher using the "A" pedal.
For many steel novices, the thought process is "Ok, playing along with the song, Major chord, oh, here's a minor, it must be E minor... let's see... E major is at the 12th fret, so I need to slide up three frets and hit the A pedal..." and of course, by the time we've traversed that line of logic, the minor chord is long gone.
My suggestion is to learn to hear the way songs work... in real time, as they're happening. Ear training, and the number system to put it all together.

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

Memorizing those 12 connections will save you a lot of thinking when someone puts a chord chart in front of you. That's all I'm saying.

The number system fits right into this concept, and is even easier. You only have 3 relative minor relationships to remember:

6m - 1
2m - 4
3m - 5

That's it. It's the same in every key.
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Stuart Legg · Posted 23 Feb 2011 11:39 am

If you follow all b0b's advice here and practice all of it until you can apply it without thinking about it (like running or walking) You'll shave years off the learning process and be way ahead of most.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

What David Ellison said - learn to play music that you like. On this forum Paul Franklin has said any number of times that "technique follows from musical needs" or something to that effect, and it's been said by any number of electric guitarists. Unlike the violin or classical piano, there's no set pedagogues or schools to follow, though the Emmons vs. Wallace vs Newman vs. Winston debate could be interesting...

If you want to play southern rock, you'll need to learn from guitarists more than from country steel players. If you want to play jazz, you'll need to learn your chords in and out. But starting from scratch? You need to keep the "WoW!" moments coming, and the best way is to learn how to play a song that you like. Play it poorly, then play it better, then play in it two other places, then play it as a polka and a 6/8 waltz.... by then you (& the wife & the dog) will be ready for another song, that's for sure.

Stuart Legg · Posted 23 Feb 2011 7:09 pm

While I agree with b0b on the pick blocking and being aware of the relative minors,
I believe it is much simpler not to think in terms of relative minors when playing a scale over a given minor chord, but rather think in terms of a Major chord and three of the chord’s modes. The Ionian (major) mode, Dorian (minor) mode and Mixolydian (Dominant 7th ) mode.
For example the relative minor for the Key of C is Am. This Am scale shares the same notes with the C major and implies that you logically would play a C major scale over an Am chord. But in truth most generally you would only play a C major scale if the Key was designated as Am or C. In almost all other instances you would play the Dorian mode of the G major scale over an Am chord which of course shares the same notes as the G major scale.
There is only one note difference in the C major scale (F note) and the G major (F# note) but that F note in the Am scale can be a real clam.

So my chart looks more like this for picking and most generally play the scales using pedals in the up and down positions of those major chords.

For this chord…… I use this scale
Am......................G major…...The major scale built on the b7 of the minor chord
A7.......................D major…...The major scale built on the 4th of the 7th chord
A.........................A major…...This is a no brainer’

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

That's exactly what I mean by "thinking like a guitar player", Stuart. Oh Well

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