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Topic: Using two slides? |
Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 6:11 am |
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 I've had too much extra time lately and have been thinking a little "outside the box" about a thread of how to get E9 pedal steel sounds on a lap steel. I crammed a socket on my thumb and index finger and tried hammering strings in front of the bar to get Mooney style stuff. I managed to execute some licks but I think it would work much better if I had proper fitting finger slides. For the thumb I would need something like an over sized left thumb pick with a real heavy blade, and a type of heavy thimble for the index finger. The picks or slides need the mass of at least a socket to get the right sound/sustain and effect.
Have any lap steelers tried this yet?
I found some rock/blues guys that use two slides:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-AVlxO7E0Q&feature=youtu.be
This guy uses a small thumb slide with a standard bottleneck slide:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVNHeNzmak
I also tried a socket on my third finger so i could lower tones past the tip of the bar on the top strings. It could work....... 
I'm welcoming ideas to help develop this technique. Thanks
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 8:34 am
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You could flip that thing around to have changes in front of the as well?
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Jim Pitman
From:
Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 12:27 pm
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| Cool idea Dave and Doug. I'll be following this thread. |
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 12:30 pm
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Here I am fumbling with the technique and the pockets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxkSXowukk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4FgvqPpa4A
The idea behind this is to lighten my load. I have some regular calls that need me to bring two or three instruments. If I could get some of those cliches licks on the lapsteel then I may get it down to one trip to the car for load in. Sometimes I bring a pedal steel to a gig and only play three songs....
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Posted 30 May 2013 1:09 pm
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| Quote: |
| You could flip that thing around to have changes in front of the as well? |
Yes, but it works better with the "mini-bar" behind the main bar. It's a way to flat the third of a major chord. You place the small piece on the string that's tuned to the 3rd of the major chord and press down. As you do, the main bar still makes contact with the other strings, so the chord goes from major (root, 3rd, 5th) to minor (root, 3b, 5th). It seems to work well in Theory, but in reality, not so much.  
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My Site / My YouTube Channel
25 Songs C6 Lap Steel / 25 MORE Songs C6 Lap Steel / 16 Songs, C6, A6, B11 / 60 Popular Melodies E9 Pedal Steel |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Niels Andrews
From:
Salinas, California, USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 1:24 pm
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One of those great ideas you have late at night, that doesn't seem to hold up to the cold hard light of day! Like the Old Man use to say Good Idea!
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Die with Memories. Not Dreams.
Good Stuff like Zum S-12, Wolfe Resoport
MSA SS-12, Telonics Combo. |
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 1:25 pm
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Thanks Doug. That's what I was trying to say in my original post. I need to get someone interested that has the ability to make it. I'm picturing a left handed metal thumb pick with a stainless steel blunt tipped blade, something with some mass and weight. Having something thinner would be good when going up the fret board and the frets get tighter. Thanks for the replies.
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Stephen Cowell
From:
Round Rock, Texas, USA
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Posted 30 May 2013 5:09 pm
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I played around with the two bars thing for a while... palm one, hold the other like a pencil for hammer-ons, etc... I like the idea of the 'heavy thimble', that would just about work. Use it on your forefinger... or have two, one on fore, one on index, for A/B pedal things.
I also thought about a bar with a finger sticking out... but without the slide arrangement shown it would only be good at one location on the neck.
Evil minds think alike!
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Too much junk to list... always getting more. |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 31 May 2013 7:30 am
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I have been playing around with "odd things to slide with" for a long time. A while back, I made up some of these out of lamp parts:
The reasoning being, if you hold it like a pencil with your left palm down, as you move it across the strings, the string it's leaving pops up against your palm - so it's basically self-muting, no right-hand blocking needed (in theory). If you can "see" forward slants and back slants and interlocking "pocket"-type licks as as series of W's and V's and L's across the strings, you can play them basically as fast as you can think them.
It's a refinement or extension of what everybody does, picking up the back end of the bar and using the tip - Emmons did it, Dave Easley calls it "penciling." But you can't drop it, AND:
You can reverse your blocking requirements completely, by putting a nice heavy guitar slide on your little finger and holding one of these ahead of it, dipping down to get single hammer-ons and pulloffs. What's easier than that is to use a regular left-hand bar, hold one of these in your right hand, pick with thumb and middle and tap out any notes higher between bar and pickup. I can get balls that are "slip-through" and make one with a big ball that sits in your palm and another smaller ball that sides up and down, sorta like the above. In anything like that, you're going to run into problems of coupling the overall weight to the little sliding gizmo.
This guy, Kirby Kelley, is a friend of Reece's and plays a MSA 6-string SuperSlide. I don't know if he's ever attempted the two=slide thing on a lap or console.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGmLsLmT11A
Michael Messer and his "Peace Rings" multi-finger slides have been around a long time, but it... hmmm.... Let's just say that melodic power seems to operate in inverse proportion to complexity, the robofinger "MAN OF BRASS" trick might look good on a video but "shred steel" is a genre which has been mercifully NOT invented so far. (Don't let them sacred guys read this thread!)  |
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chris ivey
From:
california (deceased)
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Posted 31 May 2013 9:32 am
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hey dave...that clip sounds really cool...better than i thought it would. maybe some kind of rubber deal to keep the extra bar on your thumb...like those things people who shuffle lots of papers use.
the tape is gonna be weird at break time. |
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 31 May 2013 9:57 am
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| Quote: |
| the tape is gonna be weird at break time. |
Yes I agree. The socket and tape is all I had to experiment with. I think if I had the right thumb piece (whatever it may be) my technique would improve quite a bit. I probably should have got something better on video but I'm fumbling with new pockets as well. Whether it ends up working for me or not it was really fun trying something new and different. I may contact a machinist friend to make something for me.
Thanks everyone for the feedback.
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 31 May 2013 10:06 am
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Cool, man.
Since the bar is pretty much just a moving bridge in that duty, why not focus on making the bar something you control with your ring finger, freeing up your index finger to do those hammer-ons in conjunction with the thumb? You could use a bar with a ring attachment that fits on your...wait for it...ring finger! 
Better yet, check this out: a glove that already has a bar attached to it with rounded bar ends on the tips of 2 or 3 fingers....
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Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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Dave Zirbel
From:
Sebastopol, CA USA
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Posted 31 May 2013 10:19 am
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yes and on the glove you can have tips on the fingers behind the bar so you can pull the bar back and lower the top strings behind the bar......
....or forget the bar altogether and just wear finger tip slides...
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Dave Zirbel-
Sierra S-10 (Built by Ross Shafer),ZB, Fender 400 guitars, various tube and SS amps |
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Niels Andrews
From:
Salinas, California, USA
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Posted 31 May 2013 10:33 am
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Or you could add a pedal or a lever and do the same thing! LOL
_________________
Die with Memories. Not Dreams.
Good Stuff like Zum S-12, Wolfe Resoport
MSA SS-12, Telonics Combo. |
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Doug Beaumier
From:
Northampton, MA
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chris ivey
From:
california (deceased)
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Posted 31 May 2013 11:35 am
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| patent the 'zirbel thumbsteel'. |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 31 May 2013 12:21 pm
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A machinist may have to charge you an arm and a leg to start with a block of steel and hog it out - and it may not work the way you'd expect. It would end up cheaper in the long run if you just bought a couple of feet of different-sized brass pipe pieces and sawed on it and banged on until it got close, before you take it to somebody. At least to date, I haven't been able to convince any of them that if they just make me one thingabob for free, they can sell all the rest at a huge profit. They laughed at the Wright brothers!
You're going to want all the weight you can muster out of a thimble - for slides and bars I find there's a 3 oz. minimum and you're headed for twank-tone. Brass and bronze are marginally heavier than steel, and a lot easier to work. Another source you could look at for starting prototypes are plumbing end caps. They're made to fit whatever size pipe, 5/8", 3/4" etc. And they're threaded inside, so to size them larger it's easier to remove threading than it is to cut solid brass. |
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chris ivey
From:
california (deceased)
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Posted 31 May 2013 1:00 pm
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| and you can screw them onto your thumb! |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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