Telling the Story of the Guitar

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Heard this on NPR this morning. He portrays the guitar
as _evolving_ into the Steel Guitar: Hawaiian acoustic
to Dobro to Electric to Pedal Steel.

Good radio essay, although myself and many others
consider the Steel to be an instrument that bears only
a superficial resemblance to the guitar, being more
closely related to the harp.

Tim Brookes: Telling the Story of the Guitar

That's the book the radio essay is a synopsis of.

NPR webpage with audio of the show by 10:AM

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

Jeff Lampert · From: queens, new york city

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Jeff,

Many musical instruments have metal strings.....The
Pedal Steel does not have a single fret....every
electric instrument has pickups of one form or another
and are played through amplifiers.

And if a Pedal Steel sounded like a guitar there would
be no point in learning to play one.

If I were you, I'd rush out and buy a truckload of
whatever I've been smoking :-)

The harp predates the guitar by millennia, some are
horizontal, some have pedals to change the pitch of
their metal strings, and noone knows the just when the
first person used a bar to change the pitch of banks of
strings on them. It's such an obvious thing to give a
try.

Bruce in Bellingham

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Wooden Steels Rock!

T. C. Furlong · From: Lake County, Illinois, USA

Right on Bruce!

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Thanks, T.C.

Here are a couple of interesting websites:

http://www.minermusic.com/dolceola/fretless_zithers.htm

www.harpspectrum.org/pedal/trotter_short.shtml

On the second one, look down the page for:

"Pedal or Lever Slide"

The guitar is one instrument that evolved out of the
harp, The pedal steel is another. One has a neck and
frets and one doesn't.

The piano is another.

No, the pedal steel doesn't have a neck, anymore than
it has frets. It only has a few strings compared to
a normal harp, and therefore its profile is slim and
resembles a neck. But it is just that: A resemblance.
You can't have a neck without a discrete body, and the
"neck" on a pedal steel is a _part_ of the body.

The position markers on a pedal steel may look like
frets, but they aren't.

You can make a much better "dobro" by building a
soundbox and stretching a bunch of strings across it
(many as you want) than you can from a guitar. No neck
or frets are necessary, which makes it a lot cheaper
too.

Any chance you know a Paul Furlong who used to live in
Eureka, California/Fortuna, California?

bruceburhans@earthlink.net

Bruce in Bellingham.

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 29 May 2005 at 04:41 PM.]

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 29 May 2005 at 04:46 PM.]

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

I think of my lap steel as an electric harp.
I mean, it's made of wood.

The concert harp is not so removed from pedal steel, with its array of pedals. They lack sustain, maybe that's the difference in terminology.

Marty Pollard · Posted 30 May 2005 5:22 am

Well, it's perfectly obvious; the E9 neck is descended from the harp because you can't play jazz on a harp.
The C6, on the other hand, is the progeny of the guitar because you can play jazz on a guitar.

Seems simple enough.

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Charlie McDonald,

So does the pedal steel without a volume
pedal and amp....

It's changing the tuning with the bar as well as the
pedals, more than sustain, I think.

The bar is really a capo.

Marty Pollard,

:-)

www.jazzharp.com

Bruce in Bellingham

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Wooden Steels Rock!

Larry Bell · From: Englewood, Florida

So we're totally ignoring history, are we???

Origin of the steel guitar is well accepted to be Portuguese sailors traveling to the Polynesian islands and Hawaii and bringing 'Spanish' guitars. The islanders and sailors are credited with raising the nut and playing with a metal bar (a 'steel').

Somebody 'splain to me how a harp fits into all this. Or are y'all saying that the pedal steel didn't evolve from the 'straight' steel????

I'M SO CONFUSED

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Larry Bell,

A guitar with raised strings (rendering the frets and
neck useless for their original purpose: to change the
length of the the strings with one's fingers) is no
longer a guitar.

It could just as well be any wooden box with strings
stretched across it.

Which is called a "harp".

If you removed the engine from a car and hitched horses
to it, you wouldn't claim that the buggy evolved from
the automobile...

(I hope :-)

Bruce in Bellingham

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Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 30 May 2005 at 03:12 PM.]

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Donny Hinson,

quote:
That's exactly how it happened! The pedal steel
evolved from the acoustic guitar...PERIOD!

No. It evolved from acoustic guitars that had been
turned into harps.

If you can't change the length of the strings with
the fingertips of one hand by pressing them against
frets, while sounding them with the other hand, it
isn't a guitar...PERIOD.

Bruce in Bellingham

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Wooden Steels Rock!

Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

Seems to me you are going back in history, saying that at such and such a moment you are retroactively changing the name of an apple to an orange and therefore apple pie is actually descended from orange juice.

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Jon Light.

quote:
Seems to me you are going back in history,
saying that at such and such a moment you are
retroactively changing the name of an apple to an
orange and therefore apple pie is actually descended
from orange juice.

No. That's not what I am doing at all.

A long time ago some folks got a hold of some guitars
and turned them into harps.

Using your analogy, they changed the apples into
oranges.

Therefore, we can accurately call them "oranges".

And they've never produced anything but orange juice.

Which is rather the whole point: Apples and apple pie
already existed. We wanted something new.

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 30 May 2005 at 04:50 PM.]

[This message was edited by b0b on 31 May 2005 at 09:37 AM.]

Larry Bell · From: Englewood, Florida

Problem is that sayin' it's so don't make it so. The harp has a separate legacy, including many variations. The concert harp, with pedals, is no more related to the pedal steel than the piano is related to the pedal steel.

On a traditional Irish harp, one plays a different string to play a different note. Like on a piano. Similar to a guitar, on a steel guitar, one positions the bar at a position to effectively shorten the string. If you want to define a guitar as having frets, that's your prerogative, but there are many fretless guitars. I disagree that pushing a string against a fret is a necessary condition to call an instrument a guitar. Does that mean that when one plays slide guitar the instrument MIRACULOUSLY MORPHS INTO A HARP? C'mon. Sorry, my BULL-ONEY detector went off long ago.
(and that's all I'll have to say on this topic)

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

[This message was edited by Larry Bell on 30 May 2005 at 06:25 PM.]

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Larry Bell:

Kenny Dail · From: Kinston, N.C. R.I.P.

I thought a Harp was something placed between the lips and you could change the notes by sliding from left to right while blowing or sucking slectively through the numerous holes. The steel guitar is a steel guitar because my Mama told me that is what it was and my Mama don't lie.

She said they call it a steel guitar because you use a piece of round steel such as a knife handle or wrist pin from an automobile engine to slide back and forth on the strings
. LOL

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kd...and the beat goes on...

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

You know, I should have been using "zither" instead
of "harp", all along here. A harp that's made by
stretching strings _over_ a soundbox is a zither.

This look familiar? It's from the 12th Century. Yes, he
is playing with a bar. It has 7 strings and is called a
"guqin", the Chinese Zither.

Where That Image Is From

The first Chinese came to settle in Hawaii in 1823.

Chinese History in Hawaii

I find it easy to imagine that the Hawaiians had seen
and heard some of the Chinese play the Chinese Zither,
liked the sound, and made their own from the Spanish
Guitars that were around.

quote:
Steel guitars were originally invented and
popularized in Hawaii. Legend has it that in the
mid 1890's Joseph Kekuku, a Hawaiian schoolboy,
discovered the sound while walking along a railroad
track strumming his Portuguese guitar. He picked up
a bolt lying by the track and slid the metal along
the strings of his guitar. Intrigued by the sound,
he taught himself to play using the back of a knife
blade. Brad Bechtel adds, "Other persons who have been
credited with the invention of the steel guitar include
Gabriel Davion, an Indian sailor, around 1885, and
James Hoa, a Hawaiian of Portuguese ancestry.

Hawiian/Steel Guitar History

So no one knows for sure. Did Joseph Kekuku see a
Chinese Zither player before the above legendary
event? It is altogether possible. Hawaiian guitar,
especially the early stuff, has a distinctively
oriental flavor.

Would he have admitted that he got the idea from a
"lowly Chinese"? Doubtful. And he sure would like all
the credit an inventor is granted.

It pays to remember that the Chinese invented the
movable-type printing press centuries before Gutenberg
was born, yet he gets the credit in the history books.

Bruce in Bellingham

~
~

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Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 31 May 2005 at 12:30 AM.]

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 31 May 2005 at 01:19 AM.]

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 31 May 2005 at 01:23 AM.]

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 31 May 2005 at 01:28 AM.]

Bob Carlucci · From: Candor, New York, USA

My particular pedal steel evolved from either a comb with toilet paper on it or a nose harp. I am not sure which as yet. I am researching it and will have my answer soon.

Meanwhile it is my humble opinion that a pedal steel GUITAR is indeed a GUITAR.... bob

Rainer Hackstaette · From: Bohmte, Germany

Bruce Burhans · From: Bellingham, Washington, USA

Rainer Hackstaette & Bob Carlucci,

The pedal steel is simply not a guitar. Not even
close.

It would be much more accurate to call a ukelele or
mandolin or banjo a guitar than it would be to call a
pedal steel a guitar.

And playing a modern harp would be much better
preparation for playing the pedal steel than playing
the guitar would be.

Because harpists don't fret strings, they have pedals
that change the pitch of their strings, and they are,
of necessity, very good at blocking, something that
guitarists are usually completely oblivious of, because
it is such a radically different instrument.

Conversely, if your ultimate goal was to play the guitar,
you would be much better off learning to play the banjo
or mandolin or ukele first, than to choose the pedal steel.

I can play the guitar very well. And not even being
able to fingerpick really helps my pedal steel playing
much: I'm having to completely re-learn right hand
technique because of the sophisticated blocking that
the pedal steel requires.

Of course, the knowledge of music that I gained playing
the guitar and other instruments is invaluable.

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 31 May 2005 at 04:53 AM.]

Bill Ford · From: Graniteville SC Aiken

This has evolved into a very interesting/enjoyable post. Has anyone scrolled to the bottom of the page, and listened to "Steel Guitar Rag" played on the pedal harp??...interesting.
www.harpspectrum.org/pedal/trotter_short.shtml

BF

[This message was edited by Bill Ford on 31 May 2005 at 06:12 AM.]

Lee Baucum · From: McAllen, Texas (Extreme South) The Final Frontier

Finally.

Something new to argue about.

Dave Van Allen · From: Doylestown, PA , US , Earth

And with a premise as specious as many other rehashed topics... YAY!

The name is "Pedal Steel GUITAR", and the evolution of the instrument in it's present form started in the 1890's with a GUITAR (The previous origins of the guitar are not the issue...)

I have a book from 1917 named "The Peterson Method of Playing Guitar with Steel in the Hawaiian Manner"

Rewriting history to support one's assertions is the purvue of the desperate or corrupt. Not that anyone here is either of those things.

David Doggett · Posted 31 May 2005 7:07 am

The idea that Hawaiians thought of playing a GUITAR with a slide after hearing Chinese zithers played with a slide is very interesting. However, virtually all of Bruce’s other reasoning is either flat wrong, or specious semantics. The fact that a pedal steel now has many strings and pedals, making it more harp-like, is what is known as parallel convergent evolution. It is an historical fact that essentially all early steel guitarists were guitarists who converted their guitars and techniques to steel guitar. The 6-string tunings were derived from the six guitar strings, not the diatonic harp string tuning. Although the strings were no longer held to the neck and frets, they were “fingered” with a hand-held bar over the same frets. The sound boxes under the strings were guitar bodies. All of the early steel guitars were made by guitar manufacturers. Although a case can be made that eons ago the guitar divergently evolved from the harp, that is not at all clear. The guitar did not come from the European harp, but came from Middle-Eastern instruments with necks and only a few strings. Some of these had fretless necks for sliding. Clearly the pedal steel guitar converged from the guitar to have some harp-like features such as chromatic strings and pedals. The steel guitar did not diverge from the harp to have guitar-like features. It is a complete surprise to me that anyone would consider finger-picking and palm and finger blocking to be foreign to the guitar. Growing up in Mississippi I learned guitar exclusively with finger-picking and palm and finger blocking, the same as many Mississippi blues guitarists. No conversion was necessary when I moved from guitar to slide guitar to Dobro to lap steel to pedal stee. To this day I cannot flat pick. Furthermore, many bottle-neck blues guitarists use both fretting and sliding together.

Are there any specious semantic arguments remaining? I don’t think so. However, the Chinese zither connection to Hawaii is very interesting. We need to know if the Chinese zither with a slide was in fact still played in China in the 1800s, and if any of the Chinese who immigrated to Hawaii actually played one.

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