You can be replaced!

Mike Selecky · From: BrookPark, Ohio

Maybe this has been discussed before - prerecorded loops for pedal steel to be used for recording - the steel guitarist is not needed anymore! This ties in with the other thread that discussed steel guitar demographics and the need for "instant" results - why spend countless hours to master a difficult instrument when it can be just loaded from a disc? It started with drummers being replaced by drum machines - I guess it's just a matter of time before we all can be replaced to some degree.
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/loop_libraries/ShowLoop.asp?PID=850

Randy Wade · From: Batesville, Arkansas, USA

There is no need to worry about this at all. Although loops may be used for a few background fills somewhere, nothing can replace a real steel guitar man with all his feeling and soul coming through those strings and pedals. Just like Thomas Kinkade paintings won't be replaced by computer clip art, real steel guitar won't be replaced by loops.

Bill Llewellyn · From: San Jose, CA

I've worked with sampled instruments for about 14 years now. While the technology has come a long way over time, a sample is still a sample, i.e., a one time recording of a note (or chord) played a certain way which you replay when needed. Every time you play that sample, you get the same thing back. Rubber stamp, no variation. You can add artificial variation to a sampled note by bending it, adding electronic vibrato, toying with its EQ, and so forth. You can even use layered samples so the same note can have different timbres depending on how hard it is struck. But all this is still far and away more limited than the infinite degree of variation one can get by actually playing the instrument in real time. I tried to get a PSG sound in my home studio using a synthesizer and eventually a sampler, to no avail. That's why I bought a PSG. The instrument is so versatile and has so many nuances that canning its sound into a sampler just isn't feasible (to me, anyhow). As an example, there is a huge difference between adding electronic vibrato to a sampled PSG note and playing that same note with natural bar vibrato. There is also a very big difference between bending a note on a steel using the bar or a pedal and an artifical bend using a sampler's pitch bend function. I could go on.

So I wouldn't worry. Some instruments do lend themselves to sampling better than others. Some (and I repeat--some) drums do. Xylaphones, pianos, percussion in general, and others. But the greater the range of nuance in the instrument, the harder it is to capture adequately in a sampler. And the PSG has an enormous amount of musical variation in its sound. Can it be canned? Not anytime soon, I'd think.

Oh yes, back to the original question.... Can I be replaced? Heck, I don't even get called in the first place!

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Bill, steelin' since '99 | Steel page | My music | Steelers' birthdays | Over 50?

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

There's a big difference between simulating a drummer with shaped resonant white noise and simulating what a steel guitar does. I've actually sampled myself both for using MIDI when I wanted to double myself or I want the single coil sound (long tones, no pedal work) when my guitar is in a too noisy electrical environment or when I needed a bank of playback signature phrases and licks played on different guitars and different amplifiers. In essence, I replaced myself.

The bottom line is that this is for a specialized situation and the prerecorded stuff had to come from a steel guitar played well.

If there is any real threat it's from some of the guitar players I've heard, who can do a very convincing reproduction of "signature" E9 licks. If your style or your job is based on licks, then this would be a real threat, but if you play the instrument, there's nothing I've heard that can compare to the range of the possibilities that the steel guitar can produce.

Jim Phelps · From: Mexico City, Mexico

I agree a pedal steel is going to be very hard or next to impossible to synthetically reproduce but at the same time I have doubts as to whether the average record-buying public majority would notice or care about the differences even if they could hear them. Of course musicians would, but we are not the majority. I think it'll be like the other instruments that have been sampled, some people think they're good enough and use the samples. Some don't and use the real thing. Either way it's going to happen anyway, eventually.

About lead guitar players copping pedal-steel licks, being a guitar player and pedal-steel player I do know something about that. I've always used bends but not to copy pedal steels (well, not anymore, anyway!) I was first turned on to guitar bends when I heard Amos Garrett's double-bends in "Midnight at the Oasis", not pedal-steel-style at all (IMO), loved the sound, have done them on guitar ever since, when I want to be more fluid, or if - I mean when -- I'm too lazy to pick up my glass slide. I've always gone out of my way to avoid the typical guitar bends that attempt to copy the most worn-out steel bends (and we all know the ones I mean!)...

One of the things a steel can do that you won't hear me nor anyone else do on a regular guiter, unless he's converted it to a pedal guitar... is strike a whole chord and then resolve it to another, such as if you play an open E chord, then sharping the E's along with depressing your 1st (or A) pedal, or doing it from your 1st and 2nd pedals down. Try that with a regular guitar. There are some monsters of slide/bend guitar out there (Will Ray for one) but I don't think there's anyone able to do that yet. Now that I've gone and said that, probably someone will!

[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 17 November 2003 at 08:54 PM.]

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

I bought a HandSonic to see if I could play percussion instruments. A month ago I bought a pair of bongos. Guess what - I can get more expression out of the real bongos than I can get out of this $1000 electronic gadget!

I bought Acid, a "loop based" music program, just to see what all the fuss was about. Folks, this is for non-musicians. People want to patch together sounds to impress their friends. No way is this "music", by my definition of the word.

I've been into electronic sounds for over 20 years now. The only way to get real music is to have a real musician playing a real instrument. Hands on! Anything else might be clever, but it falls short of the mark, IMHO. Good for demos only.

People who use steel guitar loops get what they deserve, I guess.

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Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9),
Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

[This message was edited by Bobby Lee on 17 November 2003 at 01:26 PM.]

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

"People who use steel guitar loops get what they deserve, I guess"

There are a lot of people who think McDonalds is food.......

Bob Carlson · From: Surprise AZ.

I was wondering how many members had toyed with a syntesizer. Starski and Hutch (spelling?) was the first TV program to have the complete sound track..gun shots, car wrecks, the whole works done on a synth. I think it was done by Jon Hammer.

Now whatever program or movie you watch you only see one name after sound track.

So there is a place for a synth...but it's not making the sounds of a steel guitar.

Bob

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

What scary is that there are big name pop acts that perform with tracks. It's not hard to drop a repeating steel lick into those tracks. If DJ/rap acts are using steel samples, are they putting steelers out of work?

Actually, I don't think so. The essence of that "music" is canned, and the kids don't mind. Maybe it takes maturity to realize that human hands on instruments are always better than machines.

I'm moving this topic to the "Music" section of the Forum.

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Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9),
Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

Richard Sinkler · From: aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana

For several years I had quite a MIDI stup on stage (6 synths and samplers). Could never get a good steel sound or sample. This is one instrument that I don't think will ever be fully replaced by electronics or one of those damn B-Benders.

Andy Alford · Posted 18 Nov 2003 6:11 am

We have been replaced by other instruments that remove people from what they can not stand the pedal steel.The country music of today on radio and tv shows this.You might hear a little steel in the back ground but it is a long shot from the days when the steel was the other voice in a country song.We have been left out of the loop for a very long time,replaced by others.

Ray Minich · From: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

There's always gonna be a big difference between looking at the "simulated" stars in a planetarium and going outside on a clear moonless night and lookin' up.

Simulation never beats the real McCoy...

Brendan Dunn · Posted 18 Nov 2003 1:02 pm

I've seen robot pet dogs for sale .... soon we may be debating the legalities of marriages between humans and robots!
As a drummer I have no worry about being replaced by machines ... they end up doing stuff I didn't want to play anyway. If anything, I find more and more people who are getting tired of the limitations of their machines and now better appreciate live musicians....err, even drummers.
Of course that might well change when robot spouses become a major portion of the buying public.

Brendan Dunn · Posted 18 Nov 2003 1:14 pm

". Starski and Hutch (spelling?) was the first TV program to have the complete sound track..gun shots, car wrecks, the whole works done on a synth. I think it was done by Jon Hammer"

Bob, you might be thinking of Jan Hammer's work on "Miami Vice" in the 80's.

"Starsky and Hutch" was done by Lalo Schifrin and Tom Scott as well as a few others.

John Macy · From: Rockport TX/Denver CO

Doesn't bother me. If they are using a sample, they would have not hired a real player anyway. And someone might actually hear that sampled part and look into finding out about the instrument, and could even become a player...

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

The movie "Forbidden Planet", from the mid '50s, was the first movie produced entirely with a synthesizer (sans music). The theme, sound effects, and background score (sounds) were all done on a Moog. Back then, the producers were so afraid of "upsetting" the musician's unions by not hiring "musicians" (for the score), that the credits didn't mention "music" at all. Instead, they said "Electronic tonalities by Louis and Bebe Barron", to avoid legal repercussions.

Sure have come a long way, haven't we?

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