Steel guitar without pedals is a long game

Mike Neer · From: NJ

I have the benefit of age, mellowing, and hindsight to let you know that it's a long game.

I know I wanted it all, and fast. I was mistakenly under the impression that "hey, I'm a pretty damn good musician, this should be a snap."
The part that was a snap was hearing how bad I was.

Don't let any of this get you down. Let the knowledge that it's not all some kind of magic give you inspiration to work harder on the little important things. Most importantly, use your ears and be honest. It's not just playing the right notes, it's playing the notes right. Really focus on getting a phrase right, because later on the skill you just developed will present itself when it's most needed. And by "right", what I mean is the way your mind hears it. We hear things in our minds with expression--the notes don't just sound like Atari-generated notes in our brain (unless that's your thing, and to be honest, if you haven't heard the ragtime pieces by McBit, you don't know what you're missing!)

I can remember sometimes reading Ray Montee's posts, which were always a joy to read. But every once in a while, something he'd say would rub me the wrong way. There really is no one way to do it, but if there was one way to do it, it would be with everything you've got. And with the patience of a monk.
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Bill McCloskey · Posted 25 Jan 2024 9:02 am

Imagine there was no standardized tuning for guitar. No standardized number of strings. no standardized teaching methods because there was no standardized number of strings and tuning.

That is the position every steel guitarist faces. It is a daunting task.

Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

I’ve just gotten back into steel after an 8+ year ‘break’ - it wasn’t so much a loss of desire as just…well opportunities to play with others on an equal level - there is only so much to sitting in your man cave playing to backing tracks….that’s not why I enjoy playing music. But, there is the challenge to get beautiful music out of a strange instrument like Bill says.

Back when I dabbled with pedals I noticed all the great players were mostly seniors with decades and thousands of bar gigs behind them. I was in my 20s and had no concept of the years of dedication required.
I do sometimes think learning at a young age is vastly different than as an adult where you have goals and ambitions…a kid will just sit for hours being entertained by it all - that’s how I was at 12 - hours just playing with no critical objectives, I was learning without knowing it

Like Mike, I see as I’ve aged that it’s no contest against anyone but yourself- I am more than happy now to sit on the deck and play my frypan.
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Bill Hatcher · From: Atlanta Ga. USA

no way you sounded "bad".....

i had a conversation with reese anderson. i told him what i liked most about his playing was that it did not take long for me to forget that he was playing a steel guitar. his improv, his phrasing etc. he did not sound like a steel guitar player....he sounded like a musician who just happen to be playing steel.

sometimes we let the steel guitar lead us around by the nose. we should play music on the thing and not fall into its traps.

i been on the forum since day one...in fact even since b0b had it on another alt platform.

not a whole lot has changed......thats not really the way it should be.

Andy Volk · From: Boston, MA

Good point, Mike - phasing is everything. It doesn't always come naturally to me. I have to work at it.

Bill, I really want to look at the steel as merely the tool I have at hand to help me get out the music the way I hear it, but if I'm honest, there a lot of days where it takes me for a walk rather than the other way 'round.
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Dean Gray · From: New South Wales, Australia

Great advice, thanks Mike. It’s all a long game. My wife is a classical cellist and has no tolerance for poor intonation. She heard me doing “target practice’, i.e. progressively larger intervals along the same string. I thought she was going to compliment my diligence and hard work. Instead, she said “shouldn’t you be doing that without looking?!!”
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Robert Murphy · From: West Virginia

I am 74 years old and at the end if my first year if cello. Truly humbling. Good for a laugh every day. Keep the faith.

Dean Gray · From: New South Wales, Australia

Mike McBride · From: Indiana

As January draws to a close, so does my latest monthlong attempt to learn to play "music" on my lap steel. I've played sax, bass and standard guitar in bands and in front of audiences 40-50 times in the last decade but cannot get comfortable on a lap steel. As a teen, I was a varsity athlete in football, baseball and wrestling but I cannot play golf for crap. The parallel is striking.

I've been a member of SGF for almost 20 years!

On February 1st I will yet again put the lap steel in its case and back in the corner of my den until next year!

Joe A. Roberts · From: Seoul, South Korea

“We choose to play steel without pedals, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard!”
-John F. Kennedy, 1962

Sebastian Müller · From: Berlin / Germany

The most important thing with music making is(in my humble opinion) to have a channel, you need a reason why you play and you practice, besides only enjoying yourself. In my case, I had a band very early on so the goal was crystal clear, learn more songs to perform them live with my band. And the fact that we play a obscure instrument in nowadays standards is a good and a bad thing at the same time. Bad is that we don't have proper or standardised tunings and teaching methods and the fact that it will be hard to find other steel players in our hometowns that you can watch playing live. It also has it upsides, if I attend a jamsession I already have the bonus of playing an unusual instrument and almost all people appreciate this. This is why I don't share the pessimistic view in regards to the future of our instrument, yes, it is tremendously less popular than it used to be a long time ago, but so many people love the sound of it, be it pedal steel or non pedal. It is also easier to get your foot into the door playing with great bands because the competition is not as strong as if you would play standard guitar for example. And we do have the internet that provides more and more info about our instrument. Not to forget our lovely forum here that helped me a lot in my progress, be it learning from forum mates or receiving encouraging feedback from the community.
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David DeLoach · From: Tennessee, USA

Having to work for living sure gets in the way of making music Smile

I've had a few seasons of unemployment where I was totally devoting my time to lap steel. I was arranging songs as fast as I could write down the arrangements. I eventually had to stop arranging so that I could spend time actually burning the arrangements into my hands.

I'm in a place now where, although I'm still working full time, I have the time and energy to put a few hours each day into music.

A typical day looks like this:

* Play thru my repertoire of classical guitar songs in the morning before work. This takes about an hour.

* At night after spending time with family, I'll run thru a bunch of scales, modes, and arpeggios on my archtop, play thru some fingerstyle and/or flatpicking arrangements on guitar - and sporadically I'll run thru some lap steel tunes. Now and then I spend some time on mandolin or fiddle or banjo.

What I'm finding/experiencing is just spending time in MUSIC improves my playing on all styles and instruments.

For instance, I rarely play my fiddle these days, but spending the hours on guitar and lap steel has improved my fiddle playing. I rarely play piano, but I find my piano skills improving even though I never practice piano. And while I don't spend a LOT of time on lap steel, I'm finding my lap steel chops improving - and especially my ability to arrange (last week I was able to arrange a harmonization of the head of Gershwin's A FOGGY DAY in Leavitt tuning in about 15 minutes). There are time now when I'm driving and will see and idea on the lap steel neck simply based on theory and my knowledge of my 8 string tuning.

It's a slow climb, but it seems time on one instrument can improve the skills on other instruments by building transferable skills such as finger dexterity, ear training, theory, memory, and just overall musicianship in areas such as phrasing, intonation, and tone.

I hope that when I "retire" I can spend more time on lap steel every day as it is such an incredible instrument with so much untapped potential.
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Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

Mike Neer · From: NJ

I don’t think the fiddle or steel playing benefits from time away. Those instruments, at least the steel in my experience, have to be touched almost daily. They are two of the most difficult instruments to play.
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David DeLoach · From: Tennessee, USA

Tim Toberer · From: Nebraska, USA

Lately I have been realizing that I almost never play my guitar anymore, so I started trying to get back into it a bit. I can say without a doubt that playing steel guitar has opened up a ton of new ideas on guitar. I would say it has improved my playing. Mostly because I was pretty stuck trying to learn more complex tunes, and the steel guitar has really changed the way I think about music in general. To make any real progress on an instrument you have to play every day, which is tough when life inevitably gets in the way. At some point most mortals have to decide, do I want to be great at one instrument or play bunch of them. I am kind of at that fork in the road right now. Do I want to play music or build instruments??? I think especially guitar and steel guitar, support each other in a very unique way, and I have no plans on giving up either one.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Yes, I believe that thinking in "steel guitar" helps you to narrow your perspective of the vast amount of musical info that we are confronted with.
We adopt new ways of thinking about harmony that summarize things in a more digestible way. This has worked for me over the years and has led to me being able to wander off into my own harmonic territory with reharmonizing. I just hear and think of music differently now than before.

Having limitations can be one of the most liberating things.
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