Getting better at blocking.

Emil Wester · From: Sweden

Hey Everyone, I got my first pedal steel guitar this christmas, and have been playing it since, and I have trouble blocking strings, I can block with the picks fine, but I need help with palm and knuckle blocking.

Do you have any exercises or techniques that can help me?

Doug Taylor · From: Shelbyville, Kentucky, USA

http://pedalsteel.com/

I highly recommend taking a look at Joe Wrights 32 moves, he has made the videos available for free! I did these moves for months and it was what made the difference for my right hand.

Paul Franklin has blocking in his course and Jeff Newman has a video called Right Hand Alpha if you can find it.

John Mcclung gives Skype lessons and he can definitely help with that along with most any problem you run into!

Jonathan Shacklock · From: London, UK

Congratulations on your first pedal steel Emil!

There are many individual ways to do this, but here's a common line of thinking which is the approach I take:

It's hard to 'palm block' (it's really more edge than palm) with a flattened hand so I try to get my right elbow tucked into my side, sit over to the right of the guitar, centred at the 15th fret, and rest the edge of my palm just to the left of the pickup (imagine a karate chop at that position). If you curl your fingers and rotate your forearm slightly so that your hand turns over about 45 degrees your picks should end up on the strings in a fairly natural picking position. This is pretty much the Jeff Newman/Buddy Emmons way of doing things. It's worth saying that not everyone can do this exactly so don't sweat it and don't do something that's going to give you carpal tunnel.

I'd recommend that if you are using two finger picks you gently rest the tip of your ring finger on the string above the one being picked by your index finger. Also that you extend your thumb a little so that it's clear of your picking fingers and so the thumb pick strikes the lower strings more or less at right angles. You can have your little finger curled under your hand or resting on the top strings, whatever is most comfortable.

Some things to remember as you pick:

-Relax your whole arm so that your hand is resting on the strings as the default position.

-The palm edge raises off the string as it is picked (revealing the note) and returns to rest at the end of the note's length. Think of it more as 'palm UNblocking'.

-The amount of vertical movement should be the bare minimum required to sound and then mute the note without buzzing.

-Often certain notes in a fast solo are semi-muted with the palm for a percussive, popping sound. So practice picking with various degrees of (relaxed) pressure from the palm on the string. You don't need to be actively pushing down.

-Your hand position, fingers curled towards the strings, stays pretty constant ie avoid uncurling your fingers to reach out for the top strings. This means tracking your whole hand towards the front of the guitar for the high notes and towards the back for the low notes.

-The palm isn't doing all the blocking on it's own. At any time you can also be using your picks, ring finger, pinkie, back edge of the thumb, left hand thumb and left hand index finger to block unwanted strings from ringing. To my mind it's always a bit of a hybrid technique.

I second all of Doug's suggestions above (although I've seen Joe Wright teaching a slight twist of the wrist motion for palm blocking which I don't go along with personally).

As for exercises, when I first started I got a lot of milage out of p50/51 of the Winnie Winston/Bill Keith book. Use a metronome and do it super slowly for the first few days or weeks until you can build it up without mistakes.

Good luck!

Scott Baumann · From: Wisconsin, USA

Really well written Jonathan. Thank you.

John McClung · From: Olympia WA, USA

Emil (and anyone else struggling with palm blocking):

Here's a video of me teaching a live student the basics of palm blocking, this may help get you on the right path. You can watch it right there on my Dropbox, or download to your own computer, I hope I have the settings right.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4u8qkv10i63wsus/AACgEghgqACb1k1MHCDF5vKva?dl=0

My method is just a twist on how Jeff Newman taught it, but I had to modify it to work with my hand.

Everything Jonathan Shacklock said is on the money, in fact he studied with me a few years back, so I taught him at least SOME of what he knows! Wink

Greetings, mate!

One point I didn't cover in the video: when you move from grip to grip, pick your first grip, hover your hand and move it to the next grip, still hovering, then drop fingers and palm into that new grip, and THAT'S when you block the grip you just left behind. It's too slow to pick a grip, block it, then move to the next grip. Hope that makes sense.

And here's my Student Mantra which I urge you to keep in mind:
Professor Twang Student Mantra: Playing pedal steel requires: Patience, Practice, Persistence, Available Time, and Faith that with all that in place, you WILL succeed at this!
_________________
E9 INSTRUCTION
▪️ If you want to have an ongoing discussion, please email me, don't use the Forum messaging which I detest! steelguitarlessons@earthlink.net

Jonathan Shacklock · From: London, UK

Hey John!

Oh yes, former student and I highly recommend live online lessons with the Prof! There is no substitute for a teacher showing technique and correcting you in real time.

I don’t know if there are players who feel that they have completely mastered right hand blocking but personally I think it’s something you constantly have to work on to maintain and incrementally improve over many years. I wish I felt like I really have it down but it’s a lifetime project in my case.

That said, sticking to John’s student mantra, I think anyone can get the fundamental technique in a few weeks or months, enough to get out and play.

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