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Topic: Has Pedal Steel Influenced Your 6-String Playing? |
Chris LeDrew
From:
Canada
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Posted 22 Jan 2007 9:05 pm |
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Lately I find myself wanting to sound like Lloyd Green and Tom Brumley, even when I'm playing my Tele. I'm really getting off on steel-flavoured stuff like chromatic riffs and two-note runs. I'm thinking pedal steel even when I'm playing regular guitar. It's only been happening for the past month or two. Some of the pedal steel riffs applied to the 6-string are just plain flippy, and it turns heads - sometimes in amusement, sometimes in bewilderment. I really like it. I'm not talking about bends as such.......more like general attitude, approach, sensibility, etc.
I'm aware that a lot of 6-string pickers (who cannot play pedal steel) have adopted steel "bends" to regular guitar.....but approaching it from the other side, already being a steel player, feels different to me. I already know the nuances that make pedal steel so unique; everytime I pick up the guitar now I want to emulate pedal steel. It's great, actually. A whole new world has seemed to open on 6-string because I've learned pedal steel.
Has anyone else experienced this?
_________________
Jackson Steel Guitars
Web: www.chrisledrew.com |
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Papa Joe Pollick
From:
Swanton, Ohio
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Posted 22 Jan 2007 9:45 pm
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 Yep. All of my years playin lead guitar I was always thinkin steel. The reason I played lead rather than steel was for the money.Found out real quick that the steel was the last hired and the first fired,at least around here.I learned a lot of 2 and 3 note licks with plenty of bending and usin the vol.control..Now that I'm retired from giggin I seldom touch a 6 stringer unless it's on my lap.Shudda moved to TX.  PJ |
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Michael Johnstone
From:
Sylmar,Ca. USA
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Posted 22 Jan 2007 9:53 pm
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| Not me. When I play 6-string I want to get away from steel.I have a jazz box and put big flatwounds on there and play without bending at all. When I play solid body electrics I play jazz, blues and R&B funk mostly. When I play country I just play steel. Having said all that - yeah steel does influence my guitar playing but more in terms of C6 type voicings and internal motion in chord progressions than bending and E9 pedal steel emulation.It's a losing battle anyhow.I could never do on guitar what I can already do on steel so why not just do something else.Others may differ.......... |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 22 Jan 2007 10:33 pm
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Most definitely. Not the physical aspect of the instrument - in fact, playing pedal steel has freed me from trying to emulate it on guitar, which I used to do a lot.
I'm back more into jazz, blues, and funk. But like Michael J., it has reshaped the way I think about the motion of chord voices to an extent that even studying jazz guitar didn't. Now I'm reading and listening much more to guys like Johnny Smith and George Van Eps, whose philosophy is/was to completely control voice movement, no matter how hard it is to make the reach. Being able to do things on pedal steel that were really hard reaches on guitar made me real unhappy with my guitar playing. Actually, that's good. |
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Jim Walker
From:
Headland, AL
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Posted 22 Jan 2007 11:40 pm
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There is no doubt the my steel playing has infected my Tele playing. I think both instruments are working together to take away what sanity I have left! 
All kidding aside I took what I knew about playing lead on my B-bender Telecaster and applied it to steel at first but now I see myself applying what I have learned on steel and trying new things on the Tele. I think it's a beautiful thing!
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Show Pro D10, Session 400 |
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Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 2:25 am
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I guess...but lately I have been playing , or at least looking at playing more pentatonic on the steel, like the typical Clapton licks..
it is just a guitar, as sideways as it might be
t |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 3:17 am
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Yes: I no longer play six string 'cause steel is so much more fun!
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Durham, NH
dbmCk mUSIC |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 3:38 am
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| Playing steel has made me more confident about changing positions up the neck on six-string - not necessarily sliding up while holding a note (guitar-face recommended ) but just jumping to a different spot. For example, there are classical-type progressions that might require you to end one sequence at the fifth fret on your little finger, then start up on your index finger at the tenth fret. I used to have a rock-based pathological fear against taking my left hand off the neck, but I'm in recovery now... playing steel seems to have made me more aware of distance motion, without the exact tactile feedback of fingers-on-frets. I even made my latest Warmoth Fenderstein without position dots on the front of the fingerboard (though I still have my sneaky side dots that only I can see, placebo rather than methadone hopefully). |
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Ernie Pollock
From:
Mt Savage, Md USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 5:28 am Yeah!
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I think many of the things I learned about in the 70's on steel & theory have been applied to my standard guitar playing, most of the good stuff I have ever known about music came from my steel 'edumacation'. I just wish I could apply that to that damned saxophone of mine!!
Ernie Pollock
http://www.hereintown.net/~shobud75/stock.htm |
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Jerry Hayes
From:
Virginia Beach, Va.
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 6:52 am
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To me, my steel and guitar have influenced each other. I was a lead guitar player first but always played that with a thumbpick and fingerpicks so when I took up steel that really helped. I went from a Fender steel right to a 12 string in the seventies as I wanted that low E string like my guitar had. Since then I've always played both instruments in most bands I've been in and have always tried to be able to play anything on steel that I did on guitar and vise-versa. example: If I'm playing something like "Working Man Blues" I'll try to do a steel ride almost like it was a guitar ride. A lot of licks and tricks from each instrument work great on the other. On my regular Saturday gig I play steel and lead in a trio and just leave my guitar strapped on behind my steel and since I play both with the same picks it easy to go from one to the other. My guitar is a single wide BMI 12 string and the guitar I use mostly when doubling is a Schecter Strat............JH in Va.
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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!! |
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D Schubert
From:
Columbia, MO, USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 7:02 am
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| Yes and vice versa. |
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Ben Jones
From:
Seattle, Washington, USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 9:02 am
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| the area where I guess it has had the most effect on me has been in regards to theory which I payed very little attention to in my twenty plus years on the 6 string. |
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Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 9:08 am
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I'm not a guitar player, but learning pedal steel did make a big difference in my approach to harmony.
Harmony as taught in traditional texts such as Piston teaches that a chord is what occurs at one instant during the playing of several single voices. Altho I read Piston, I didn't totally buy this at first, before I started playing steel. The problem was that my self-taught harmonic concepts were based too much in the circle of fifths, using root position or random inversions based on the sound of each chord without regard to where each of its notes came from or would go to later. If I needed the sound of a 7th or 9th etc, I would haphazardly add voices for a moment.
That all changed when I got a steel guitar. How can you not think of harmony as horizontal voice leading once you have mashed on those pedals? |
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Jim Peters
From:
St. Louis, Missouri, USA, R.I.P.
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 1:37 pm
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Not directly, I don't think. Having music on the brain for longer periods of time has helped my musicianship, but not the steel directly. JP
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Carter,PV,Fender |
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Fred Glave
From:
McHenry, Illinois, USA
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 4:40 pm
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| Definitely made me pay more attention to chord inversions and different scales on 6 string. Have to say I've improved my 6 string playing quite a bit, even though I don't play it nearly as much as my steel. |
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Roger Rettig
From:
Naples, FL
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 7:16 pm
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When I first tackled pedal steel, I was trying to get single-note guitar-type lines out of my ZB. Over the years, and unrealised by me until now, I've shifted to a place where I play six-string totally finger-style, and I constantly play using string-grips and tight chord inversions to play a melody.
I think steel guitar has pushed me in this direction.
Strangely enough, I was noodling on a lovely old Telecaster in Joe Glaser's repair shop in Berry Hill a few years back, and he asked me if I happened to play steel. He said he could tell from my approach.
RR |
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Chris LeDrew
From:
Canada
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 7:47 pm
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I find myself trying to emulate the fluid way in which Lloyd Green switches from 16th notes to 8th and quarter notes as he ascends and descends chromatically. I don't hear that approach as much in 6-string players.
As a side note, I think it's interesting that virtually all pedal steel players also play 6-string. In fact, it is so prevalent that it is taken for granted in this thread. Nobody has chimed in and said, "wait a minute, I don't know how to play regular guitar." I think there was a thread a while back that asked if there were any steel players who did not play regular guitar at all. I seem to recall that there weren't many.
_________________
Jackson Steel Guitars
Web: www.chrisledrew.com |
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John De Maille
From:
On a Mountain in Upstate Halcottsville, N.Y.
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 8:34 pm
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| I've had a Parson's-White, B string bender on my 66' Tele, since 1974. I guess one has influenced the other, being that, I started to make sounds on a Maverick in 1974. One hand sort of washed the other. It was a lot of fun trying to copy the sounds of both instruments. But, I have to say that, for me, the pedal steel has won out in the long run for my musical expansion. |
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Klaus Caprani
From:
Copenhagen, Denmark
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 9:15 pm Most definetely!
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I always tried to emulate PSG by extended use of my whammy-bar as some sort of "hand-pedal". By some coincidence the reaction of the whammy on the G & B strings on my guitars (adjusted so the whammy floats) almost gets into the same voicing as an AB change.
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Klaus Caprani
MCI RangeXpander S-10 3x4
www.klauscaprani.com |
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Bob Ritter
From:
pacfic, wa
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 9:33 pm
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I get equil frustration from both.
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Let's go catch a steelhead |
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Marc Weller
From:
Upland, Ca. 91784
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Posted 23 Jan 2007 11:08 pm
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What a great thread:
I kept them totally seperate at first. I played straight ahead jazz gigs on my heavily strung archtop, and straight country gigs on my steel. After awhile, I started getting out my Tele for country gigs. Now I'm almost never playing jazz gigs, and I get out my Tele and try to sound like Don Rich on about a quarter of the tunes at a typical coutry gig. My archtops are feeling neglected. Here's my Tele sound.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=17723&songID=4785095 |
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