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Topic: Making steel arrangements from six-string arrangements |
Curt Trisko
From:
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
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Posted 25 Jun 2015 6:48 pm |
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Every now and then I'll hear a guitar arrangement in a song and want to replicate it on steel. But there's a lot a steel can do that a guitar can't and vice versa so aside from deconstructing the guitar arrangement, I'll have to customize it a little bit. For example, a steel guitar can use dyads to make single note guitar runs more interesting and to compensate for replacing an effects-laden guitar sound with a dry steel sound. I also have to get creative for what replace strumming with.
Here are a couple songs that I'm working on:
https://youtu.be/wjA2f7Pukws
https://youtu.be/lI4vgVs77OU
My question is this: as far as improving my skills, does the practical benefit of this outweigh if I had just spent the time doing normal steel exercises and steel playing?
I can think of three benefits offhand of fooling around with songs like this:
1) I feel like my right hand gets a better workout. For many songs, my hand moves up and down strings more and sometimes I use unusual grips.
2) I really have to concentrate on the sound I'm making and whether it carries the same force and feeling as the original guitar part. For normal steel playing, it's easy to think about playing as pure mechanics... you trust that as long as you have good technique that you're doing the song justice... and so you don't pay as close attention to it.
3) It ends up being a interesting music theory exercise. For me, retaining music theory knowledge, and how it relates to the fretboard is hard. It's too easy to forget it once you're done using it. Because I already have to concentrate hard when translating six string to steel, I think it sinks in more than if I'm just playing lazily. |
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Jim Pitman
From:
Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA
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Posted 27 Jun 2015 5:21 am
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I think any time you dive in and get obsessed figuring out a tune it's beneficial.
One of the more inspiring PSG moments I had as a listner was standing a few feet away from Loyd Green who was playing instrumental versions of a bunch of pop songs. He was warming up for his stage precense at the St Louis convention many years ago.
One thing I took away from that was how he attempted to imitate the dynamics and nuances of the human voice.
I've also chose a few iconic guitar leads to figure out:
Alman Brother's Jessica - both harmonizing parts at the same time.
Johnny A - Sometime Tuesday Morning, pretty much a jazz tune with some downtown chords and interspersed melody.
Vince Gill's Take Your Memory with You, guitar lead verbatem. (I think he was trying to emulate PSG anyway).
I've also figured out Beatles' Yesterday, in the manner Loyd would do with combined vocal meloday and chord mix.
I'll often run these tunes as a practice exercise or when I've had the cahnce to play a short solo gig, no tracks just steel.
Not to discuourage you, but the original pop version of that first Chilly Peppers tune has a slide part that is a good example of what not to play in my opinion. It's way out of tune. |
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Joachim Kettner
From:
Germany
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Ian Worley
From:
Sacramento, CA
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Curt Trisko
From:
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
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Posted 27 Jun 2015 2:36 pm
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| Jim Pitman wrote: |
| Not to discourage you, but the original pop version of that first Chilly Peppers tune has a slide part that is a good example of what not to play in my opinion. It's way out of tune. |
| Curt Trisko wrote: |
| I really have to concentrate on the sound I'm making and whether it carries the same force and feeling as the original guitar part. For normal steel playing, it's easy to think about playing as pure mechanics... you trust that as long as you have good technique that you're doing the song justice... and so you don't pay as close attention to it. |
The slide part, for what it is, fits the song well. The song is called "Scar Tissue", so some pitchiness and dissonance fits the theme. With a steel guitar, we can do the string bends and slides very precisely. If I'm trying to replicate slides and bends on a six-string, I really have to pay attention to the character of it or else it loses its meaning.
Here's the guitar solo that we're talking about:
https://youtu.be/wjA2f7Pukws?t=2m45s |
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Jim Pitman
From:
Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA
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Posted 28 Jun 2015 8:53 am
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| Curt I agree. Perhaps that bit of dissonance makes the song. It's funny what qaspect becomes identifiable and makes people want to hear it again. After I hit the submit button that occured to me. |
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