Ear training the lever changes

Mitch Adelman · From: Pennsylvania, USA

I know this forum is filled with the very best steel players and was curious about parallel melody lines made with knee levers. Being a life long guitar player, I've learned that if you can't sing it to yourself, you really can't play it.
Musicians know how important ear training is for improvising melodies. What troubles me is hearing the knee levers within melodies either going in different directions or following the obvious melody line. Do most steel players actually hear the parallel melody lines made by the levers in their mind (like singing) or just kick in the lever automatically as just part of a lick? I have trouble hearing (mind singing) when or where the levers are used .Any suggestions in overcoming the knee ear training hurdle?So many combinations its seems very hard to sing all the lines in a grip to yourself at once. Maybe I should just shutup and practice more! Thanks for your thoughts.

Gabriel Stutz · From: Chicago, USA

This is a great subject. I'm a relatively new player (4yrs), and I've really just started delving in to this subject myself. It still boggles my mind a bit to think through a descending harmony line played with the knee levers while playing an ascending line with open strings and pedals. The internal harmonic motion is the whole point of the pedal steel, and it sounds so beautiful when done by the guys who have it buttoned up, but it's easy to blow if your in my spot. I'm more than willing to blow a line on stage until I get it right, so that's what I've been doing, but any advice would help me, too.

Gabriel

Fred Glave · From: McHenry, Illinois, USA

I'm not sure if I understand your question fully, but it sounds like your describing having an "ear" for music. Playing by ear is a necessity. Learning scales, chord inversions, and the positions up and down the fretboard and what the pedals and levers do, will eventually get programmed into your brain/ear and you'll be able to learn songs, or licks, etc. easier as time and practice goes by. A little music theory won't hurt a bit either.

Michael Johnstone · From: Sylmar,Ca. USA

Explore your tuning until you've internalized what everything does and where everything is without thinking about pedals,strings,frets, picks,bars,fingers or levers. Then when you think of a change or musical figure,your body will do the appropriate dance to get to the nearest,easiest way to play it. There's no time for analytical calculation,or self-conciousness when you're playing music.There's only one way to get there and that is to put in the seat time behind your ax.

Oh by the way - no one ever fully gets there. You just get close.

Greg Simmons · From: where the buffalo (used to) roam AND the Mojave

Mike;

I am going to print out the above and attach it to the inside lid of my pac-a-seat.

Good to see and talk with you, and see you and Greg Leisz embody your post when you played in Joshua Tree last Saturday Very Happy

_________________
<i>ï¿½Head full of this kaleidoscope of brain-freight, Heart full of something simple and slowï¿½</i>
-Mark Heard

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

Try practicing harmonized scales using different pedal and lever combinations. Start with strings 3 and 5 using the AB pedals. Then switch to strings 5 and 6, same pedals. Sing a melody and then use those harmonized scales to play them with the higher string being the melody note.

After that play harmonized scales on the strings 8 and 5 using the A pedal and E half step lower lever. In the key of C major start on the 1st fret with the 8th string lowered and no pedal. The next step in the scale is a whole step up on the 3rd fret. To get the next step let off the lever and push down the A pedal. Continue like on that for several hours every day and in 5 to 7 years it will seem normal.

If you ever find out what the other strings and pedals do let me know !

Here is a hint I got a while back: Take any phrase you can play and find 2 different places on the neck to play it exactly the same.

Have fun, Bob
_________________
Bob

Tim Marcus · From: San Francisco, CA

thats something I actually try on all of the instruments I play - learn something in 2-3 different positions.

Its pretty nifty with the steel, because you automatically have the pedals up or down positions. I usually spend time working out the scales and licks in both positions, then venture to find them in positions I may or may not know beyond that.

I used to do the same thing on 6 string guitar to practice. Really, nothing beats this technique for becoming one with an instrument. Just gotta practice it a lot!

Ray Minich · From: Bradford, Pa. Frozen Tundra

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

Bengt Erlandsen · From: Brekstad, NORWAY

When playing parralell lines there is not a whole lot of different combinations. Learning(understanding) how a certain order of intervals occur in a scale is required. Example, Harmonizing a Cmajor scale in 3rds you only use either major3rd intervals or minor3rd intervals and they come in a specific order like this
Maj - min - min Maj - Maj - min - min Maj

Learning to play the scale without using pedals will tell you where you need to either lower/raise strings to get the desired interval. After that it comes down to locate the correct pedal/lever to raise/lower the string you want.
Also any scale you want to play should be possible to play on one string only. If you can't play the scale on only one string you will eventually overload the brain trying to remember patterns/pedals/levers playing across the strings.

Certain patterns across the strings will be remembered/recognized but the rest is much easier if understood.

Bengt Erik

Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

I find one of the biggest and most fun challenges, and one of the coolest things that make the pedal steel unique among musical instruments, is what I think of as the "slither effect", where instead of moving in parallel as a harmonized scale, a harmonized line glisses from position to position with the different lines moving at different times and/or by different amounts or in different directions--as for example in the third solo in this Curly Chalker clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdAQe4qa85o

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