C6 Practice Tips, Chord Grips, and Theory Questions

Alexander Belanger · From: Las Vegas, NV

Hello everyone, I have spent probably 3-4 hours a day at the pedal steel for the last month and am curious how to best go about practicing PSG now that I will not have as much time to play with school starting. I play a Carter Pro (8P,5K) with the standard Buddy Emmons C6 copedent.

What, in your own experience, have you found to be the best use of your time when practicing? What resources helped you learn the best when you were learning the instrument? Do you think that it is better to learn a whole bunch of songs and how to move around the fretboard? Does every guitarist just play by ear (this is mostly a joke, but still)??!

I am enrolled in Paul Franklins PFM on modern music masters and that has provided me with a lot of information (maybe even too much at times, haha), but now I am feeling a bit stuck in my progression of the instrument. One thing in particular that I am still trying to figure out is how to play minor 7ths. I know that by sliding back two frets and pushing down P5, you can get a Dom 7th sound, but I am still unsure how to access that minor 7th sound. I know that you could play strings (7,6,4 - omit the 5th of the chord) Full P6, half pedal P5, and that gives you a Dom 7th sound, but is there any other way that you can get the same sound?

I apologize in advance if this is a question that is easily remedied by a more comprehensive understanding of music theory, key signatures (Circle of fifth/fourths) and just what keys work well together, but I am just trying to learn as much as possible. Thanks in advance!
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Nick Krol · From: Rhode Island, USA

When you play an Am with no bar/pedals, the G string is your 7th.
With p7, you get an Em7 with no bar.

Minor 7 chords have the same notes as the relative major 6 chord

C6 -> Am7

G6 -> Em7

Etc

Herb Steiner put together a great resource to help with stuff like this

http://www.herbsteinermusic.com/C6_essay.pdf
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Tom Spaulding · From: Tennessee, USA

Check out the "C6: Chord Pockets (Maj and Min) lesson in The Paul Franklin Method...or hop on the Facebook Group and ask Paul if you need more info!

Wayne Baker · From: Altus Oklahoma

Modern Music Masters. Trust granpaw...
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Wayne Baker
USAF retired, three wars, 21 years, 18 countries. God bless the USA

Alexander Belanger · From: Las Vegas, NV

Thank You! Ok yes, I remember looking at this chart! So if I were to use any of these chord grips on the open strings I would get my A-7 (A,C,E,G - 8,7,6,5) So if you were to play like a C-7, would you use these some chord grips on the 3rd fret? B-7 on the 2nd fret, D-7 on the 5th fret, and so on? I am curious about the fretboard shapes and pockets that can help me find these chords more easily. A minor is the relative minor of C major, correct?
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Tom Spaulding · From: Tennessee, USA

Yes, the intervals do not change by moving the bar to a different fret.

Am is the relative minor of C maj

Tom Spaulding · From: Tennessee, USA

TIPS:
The material on the chart is intended to be memorized until you no longer need to refer to it.

The chord grips should be memorized by their intervals, not note names. 1 - b3 - 5 - b7 is the Min7 formula.

Pick any grip, play it lowest note to highest. Name the intervals out loud as you play them. Then play them highest to lowest note. Then alternate randomly until you have memorized the intervals in the grip. Do this for all grips.

Practice singing the intervals from the Root. Sing “One - Flat Three”, “One - Five”, “One - Flat Seven” etc until you have trained your ear to hear them before you play them.

This is essential info that must be absorbed or you will eventually plateau and get stuck if you move on too quickly.

Alexander Belanger · From: Las Vegas, NV

I am focusing on the intervals primarily. I have memorized the changes that each pedal makes to said intervals, I just don't know a lot of the theoretical knowledge that comes with time and playing with people.

It is very insightful to have these -7 grips pointed out so that I could apply them to all 12 keys. I had no idea that you could form a -7th sound for the relative minor using the notes of the relative major, and thus you could get the -7th of the desired key by sliding up 3 frets and picking any of these chord grips.

This is the first instrument I have really ever learned and so I am also just trying to familiarize myself with the notes that are each interval. I appreciate the tips very much and I look forward to implementing them into my practice session a little later today. Do you have any picking/blocking exercises that you enjoy outside of those shown in the PFM?
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Tom Spaulding · From: Tennessee, USA

There are some very handy PDF lessons in The Paul Franklin Method on basic music theory that you could spend some time with.

Rick Beato does a great job of explaining theory on his YouTube channel. If you want more in-depth info, spending a little time every day learning some theory concepts and applying them on your instrument goes a long way.

Just keep working on the exercises within the Method itself, those are Paul’s preferred and probably the best ones to work on.

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

I would say time management is a practice skill. When first learning, a student needs to know how much time to spend on each aspect of playing - technique, theory, songs, “personal discovery”, etc., especially if your time is limited by other life obligations. Everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are different, so it is a question to pose to your teacher. If you’re in Paul’s MMM course, you have a pretty good guy to ask there…

Tom Spaulding · From: Tennessee, USA

E- G - B - D is Cmaj9. 3-5 7-9 (no root)

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

Andrew Frost · From: Toronto, Ontario

Regarding time management, there's a lot of 'mental practice' one can do while away from the instrument. Waiting for a bus, walking, etc, you can go over scales, grips, voicings, tunings, pedal combinations and all of that stuff. To paraphrase Winnie Winston, "the more time you spend lost in thought about your guitar, the better a player you will be..."

J D Sauser · From: Wellington, Florida

Guitars are 2-dimensional layouts... PEDAL-steel arguably even 3D.
But lets keep our feet off the pedals first and thus on firm ground. Smile

C6th is fundamentally different to E9th. It's a non-pedal tuning to which pedals have been added to alter chords or make other chords by altering the notes. E9th is a "system" tuning which originally worked wonders with even only one pedal.

Most will tell you that the tuning actually has more than one (C6th open) chords but 3:

- CMaj6th rooted at the 7th string
- Am7th rooted at the 8th string
- FMaj9th rooted at the 9th string.

To really "see" what it going on, I suggest to anyone to consider raising their bottom 10th string (C) to D for at least a while until understanding what else is going on: F is the minor third of Dm, and Dm is the relative minor of F like A is the relative minor of C.
Since both Majors chords are a 4th respectively a 5th apart of each others, so are the two relative minors. Once one has grasped this, since we don't need to play the root to everything, one can tune the 10th string back down to C... but some may discover that there's more in the tuning with a D on the bottom. But that's not the subject. Just once you understand it, keep in mind that the 9th string (open F) is the minor 3rd degree of Dm11th out of that position.
Too many only see a partial minor 2 frets below with P7 engaged. But once you "see" that relative minor of F, you got ALL the strings to play out off.

But for the argument's sake, now we have:

- CMaj6th rooted at the 7th string
- Am7th rooted at the 8th string
- FMaj9th rooted at the 9th string.
- Dm11th rooted at the 10 string.

maybe some will say "aha!... so we could also argue that the bottom D is the Major 3rd of Bb!", and they would be right. But let's stay with the 4 chords above.

Since the instrument is 2-Dimensional, we've now only covered the y-axis (ACROSS the strings).
This is the part where Maurice Anderson would say "now, let's organize the neck!"

Maurice called these 4 bottom strings "Root TRACKERS". Meaning that where ever you would go with your bar, the chord constellation will "travel" with it.

The idea is to first now spread these chords out to become ONE chord ALONG the string (x-axis).

In order not to name fret numbers, create a map in constant modulable distances, lets speak of the X-Chord in XMajor and Xminor:

The relationship between the 7th string rooted position and the 8th string is of a minor 3rd or 6th respectively. Thus, to bring the 8th string position to be a Chord X root, wee need to move UP 3 frets.

The relationship between the 7th string rooted position and the 9th string is or a 4th or 5th respectively. Thus to bring the 9th string position to be a Chord X, it would have to be moved up a 5th which is 7 frets.
Which places the 9th string root, 4 frets above the 8th string root.

The relationship between the 9th string root position and the tuned up to D 10th string position is of a minor 3rd or respectively a 6th, and thus it needs to be move up a minor 3rd (3 frets) up from the 9th string position.

So now we find Chord X or any chord roots based on the following formula:

7th string + 3 frets = 8th string, + 4 frets = 9th string, + 3 frets = 10th string, (and since we now covered 10 frets, which is 2 frets shy of an octave) + 2 frets = 7th string and so forth.

You have to be able to "see" this map blindly!

Now, I know some already will be ready to say "but these are NOT all the same chords!". No they aren't. But on C6th you will discover that most pedal and knee levers and their combinations do change the minor positions (strings #8 & #10) into Major Triad ones (7th and M7th) and that both Major positions (#7 & #9). Additionally, we play with a bar and you should pretty quickly recognize that being able to raise the m3rd into Maj3rd with it is part of the "juice". Major positions are really also grate to play m7b5 over them, because they m3rd, b5th and in the case of the 9th string pos. even the b7th degrees are ALL neatly lined up just one fret below the root position!

I would suggest to explore and form pockets from these 4 positions in a Dominant (7th chord) context. Which readies the explorer for The Blues, which still is the foundation of Jazz and Bebop.

Once these positions are built out (pockets), with riffs formed and even ability acquired to seamlessly travel from position to position to the left and the right, the question I asked myself was "WHERE is IV?"
I should learn to recognize the 2 positions where IV is right on the the same fret, one string over to the back (#7 to #9 & #8 to #10) and also "see" the map unroll and "see" the next IV-position to the left and the next to the right off all 4 positions.

Western Music, and with that I don't mean Country & Western exclusively, but most music originating West of the Middle East, tends to move in 4ths (the circle of 5th read counter-clockwise.

The next level is to analyze the "Roots Environment" at every of the 4 positions and know the relationship of any of the 3 strings relative to any of the 4 strings assumed as a root.

When you got that, you have "organized your guitar's neck".

From there it's Technique, Musical understanding, Musical Experimentation.

... J-D.
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Was it JFK who said: Ask Not What TAB Can Do For You - Rather Ask Yourself "What Would B.B. King Do?"

A Little Mental Health Warning:

Tablature KILLS SKILLS.
The uses of Tablature is addictive and has been linked to reduced musical fertility.
Those who produce Tablature did never use it.

I say it humorously, but I mean it.

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