Learning

Andrew R King · From: South Carolina, USA

What are the first five things every new lap steel player should learn?

Nic Neufeld · From: Kansas City, Missouri

Everyone's answer will be different, but here goes!

1.) To stick with a tuning long enough to develop some familiarity and fluency with it
2.) That the answer is almost (but not entirely) never "a different guitar/amp/bar", it's almost (but not entirely) always, "keep practicing"
3.) To stick with things that feel uncomfortable at first (fingerpicks, slants) knowing time and practice will set a lot of that right
4.) Who Jules Ah See was Smile

[ok, insert whichever steel guitar legend you prefer in there]
5.) What kind of music and sound you want to make (as this will inform your choices on how you get there)
_________________
Waikīkī, at night when the shadows are falling
I hear the rolling surf calling
Calling and calling to me

JB Bobbitt · From: California, USA

I'm new too, so I only have two things:

1. Practice.
2. When you hit a plateau, change something.

I learned this after a stroke (a reason why I'm now playing with a steel bar). Our brains are amazing. In stroke recovery I learned that brains respond to workouts like muscles do. A stroke gives you some insight into "starting from scratch", or at least starting from a reduced level, and you become keenly aware of progress. Practice and repetition are key to that brain workout. I can testify to very positive results from simple repetitive exercises. The process works very well in undamaged brains.

But during stroke recovery you often reach plateaus and progress slows or stops. That's because a part of the brain is broken. But the brain can learn to go around that part ("neuroplasticity"). During my recovery, I swear I could sense the process and incremental progress. But you have to "work out" the brain, exercise it, challenge it, for neuroplasticity to happen, just like you need to work out a muscle. Changing routine, approach, duration, practice material, &tc. had a notable positive effect when I reached plateaus in physical abilities.
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"Time is an enemy"
-Bob Dylan

Allan Revich · From: Victoria, BC

I canâ€™t disagree with anything so far!

For item 1) Stick with a tuning
Here are a couple tips you might find helpful in choosing the tuning to stick to:
(all tunings are low to high)
1) C6 is the â€œSwiss Army Knifeâ€ of tunings, if you want one tuning that can do it all, CEGACE is as close as youâ€™re gonna get. Plus tons of learning material.
2) Open G: if you plan on playing acoustic Dobro, youâ€™ll probably want to use open G, GBDGBD. Works fine for electric lap steel too. Itâ€™s also easy to switch it up to G6 by changing it to GBEGBD, when youâ€™re comfortable with it.
3) Open D or E: if you are primarily a blues and rock player, DADF#AD or EBEG#BE (151351) are probably the easiest tunings for a guitar player to pick up and go with. Having the root top and bottom helps, and having that heavy bottom string is also nice for adding a bit more meat to your sandwiches.

BONUS ITEM
Bone up on your music theory. All that stuff that used to seem boring and useless when you first started playing, is absolutely essential to becoming competent on lap steel.

BONUS ITEM #2
Historically steel guitar tunings were listed from high to low when written horizontally. With most players now coming from the guitar world, that has mostly changed to listing from low to high. The clearest way to list tunings is to stack them vertically with the highest string on top.
Old School = DAF#DAD
New School = DADF#AD
ALL Schools =
D
A
F#
D
A
D
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Current Tunings:
6 String | G – G B D G B D
7 String | G6 – e G B D G B D (re-entrant)

https://papadafoe.com/lap-steel-tuning-database

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

In addition to the good advice so far: if you are going to use tabs, always have the chord progression laid out clearly with the tab, and don't pass over any section by rote. You must know how the tabbed notes relate to the chords by their scale degree.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother.

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

1) How to sit with your guitar
2) Pick hand technique
3) Bar hand technique
4) Patience
5) Watch Doug Beaumier videos

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

Here's another observation about learning. Out of a billion great guitar players, almost none of them can explain anything in detail.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother.

G Strout · From: Carabelle, Florida

I agree with everything that has been mentioned. Here are what I feel are 5 important things to playing any musical instrument.
1.Listen. Develop your sense of pitch and intonation.
2.Listen . Learn to listen to yourself play.
3.Listen. To the others in the band you are playing with/for. Strive to add to a song. Play tastefully and be accurate when you play.
4.Listen. Learn to fit in, play with musicality, tone and above taste.
5.Listen. Music is made up of many elements pitch, timbre, texture, volume, duration and form.
Play and enjoy the experience of it.
Gary
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Melbert 8, Remington S8, Silk 6 string, Rick B6, Tremblay 6 lap steel, Marlen S-10 4&4, Prestige Guild M75 and Artist Award, Benedetto Bravo, Epiphone Century Electar (the real one) and a bunch of old lap steels.... mostly Ricks and Magnatones'

Dustin Rhodes · From: Owasso OK

Jean-Sebastien Gauthier · From: Quebec, Canada

Buy the Jerry Byrd Instruction and learn it all!

Francisco Castillo · From: Easter Island, Chile

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

I find if I don't put in a solid hour a day, I'm not even treading water.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother.

Lee D Kaiser · From: California, USA

Lots of good advice above.

I think itâ€™s rewarding to learn to play a song by ear, rather than from tabs or a YouTube video. Fortunately, itâ€™s a lot easier to do that these days.

Get a program that will let you slow the tempo of a song (without changing pitch) and loop through sections. I like Audacity, which is available free for PC, Mac, and Linux. Of the â€˜audio workstationsâ€™ Iâ€™ve tried, Audacity is by far the easiest to learn.

Once you learn the notes, donâ€™t worry about playing the songs up to the speed of the original. Work on playing them well at -20% speed or whatever speed allows you to play cleanly.

Iâ€™m currently learning Don Helmâ€™s work on Hank Williams songs.
_________________
If I'd stop buying old guitars to fix, I might actually learn to play.
I haven't met a guitar I didn't like.

Jean-Sebastien Gauthier · From: Quebec, Canada

Mike Schway · From: Washington, USA

I'm new at this too. Don't underestimate single-note work. Lush internal harmonies with moving voices are nice and all that, but too much of a good thing will just sound muddy when there's a full band (hah! Laughing

) or even a backing track.

I definitely need lots of work on clean string changes without it sounding like a muddy smear nor abrupt staccato. Practicing playing painfully slowly helps.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Learn from the masters, regardless of style. Listen carefully.
Find more than one way to play everything and never stop looking for new ways.
Use vibrato consciously.
Try to make every note sound good. Every note counts.
Listen to yourself. Make recordings and be honest about your problem areas and work hard to improve them.
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Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links

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