Little Breakthroughs

Bill Duncan · From: Lenoir, North Carolina, USA

I started playing the Steel back in April of this year. To say that it has been difficult is an understatment!

But, just this week I have begun to notice some little licks creeping in, and I don't know where they're coming from. I also can tell a difference in my tone, and I really like it. When playing backup, my hands are actually starting to go to some useable notes for achange!

Nothing has changed in so far as equipment is concerned, only my picking, I reckon. Bill Duncan
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You can observe a lot just by looking

Lewis John Foote · From: Dorset, UK

howdy, glad to hear it, new enthusiasm kicks in, its food for steel playin, lew.
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pro1,s two round fronts, one square front, sho-bud, S12, LDG,1977, built by paul franklin sen, [THE PROFESSIONAL]nice all original, bandit65, nash, 400, profex 11,match-box, 7A,DD3, delay,various accoustic guitars, amps, and other necessitys,

Stan Paxton · Posted 16 Nov 2008 11:16 am

Hey Bill, that's great Exclamation

I done that a few times myself, wonderin where did that come from? Now I wonder where does any of it come from. ....You will get to a plateau place in your playing from time to time; that is where you need to get a new steel; a new instrument always motivates, trying to justify the expense Laughing

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Mullen Lacquer SD 10, 3 & 5; Mullen Mica S 10 1/2 pad, 3 & 5; BJS Bars; LTD400, Nashville 112, DD-3, RV-3, Hilton VP . -- Gold Tone PBS sq neck; Wechter Scheerhorn sq neck. -- "Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone." -anon.-

Les Anderson · From: The Great White North

Hey Bill, it's a great feeling, isn't it?

We as humans rarely learn everything in one big swoop. Our brains are geared to grasp and retain information in bits and pieces until it gets enough info to start correlating that info into something that makes sense to our conscious mind.

You will find that your steel playing will go seemingly stagnant for a bit then take a huge jump that even surprises you. We all go through it.

Ned McIntosh · From: New South Wales, Australia

Progress then plateau. Becoming more comfortable with the instrument. Insitinctively moving to the right fret, voicing the chord right or getting the pedal sequence just right...and so it goes. That seems to be the way the steel guitar allows us into its secrets. Inch by inch. Lick by lick. Day by day.

You can search for a particular lick and not find it for weeks, then suddenly you play it without thinking and find yourself staring at the fretboard and wondering just how many more secrets there are hidden within this instrument. It has an infinity of secrets, for those who stay long enough to look.

You begin by trying to imitate the steel guitarists who inspired you. Gradually you develop the "Lloyd Green tone" or the "Buddy Emmons sound". As you hear more music you hear more steel players and you realise there are as many ways of playing this thing as there are people who play it. In searching for the tones of the famous, what you are doing in reality is learning to develop your own tone, your own sound.

This instrument beguiles us with the "fatness" and richness of its tone, the sparkle of its highs, the deep-throated growl of its bass and the incredible way it can flow through chord-structures like a limpid river flowing past rocks in summer heat. Each day spent playing - whether in a band or just practicing - is a day well-invested in the noblest of human activities, discovery. In our case we are blessed by being able to couple discovery with the making of music, something which is deep and innate in the soul of every human being. Music is a culturally-defining characteristic. It is as if the gift of hearing motivates mankind to seek out pleasant sounds with which to delight the ear and the soul.

For those of us who have had the great good fortune to fall under the spell of this instrument, each day we practice rewards us. Perhaps not immediately, but eventually the reward is there. The pure pleasure of the sounds we produce from the mechancal contraption that others find so intimidating is its own reward. Being recognised and enjoyed by other steel-guitarists is a double reward. But the highest reward is perhaps the pleasure we bring to those who enjoy the nusical genres in which the steel-guitar is prominent. We will never know who these people are, but it is enough to know they exist and our intrument pleases them as much as it pleases us.

Bringing it back to the personal level, beginning steel-guitar is like climbing a tall and forbidding mountain. But each step lifts us higher and onwards. Practice is what we do to reach the next level, knowing as we do there is always one level beyond that, and so on. Do we ever master this intrument? I very much doubt it, much as a great concert violnist would not claim to have mastered his Stradivarius. But we reach an accommodation with the instrument and our need and desire to play it. We invest ourselves in the steel-guitar, and time brings the dividends.

Even the simplest accomplishment, learning to palm-block cleanly for example, is a very satisfying step. Our long journey with the steel-guitar is just a series of little steps, one after the other.

We are the truly fortunate ones, beguiled and bewitched as we are by the steel-guitar. Life will never be quite the same again.
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The steel guitar is a hard mistress. She will obsess you, bemuse and bewitch you. She will dash your hopes on what seems to be whim, only to tease you into renewing the relationship once more so she can do it to you all over again...and yet, if you somehow manage to touch her in that certain magic way, she will yield up a sound which has so much soul, raw emotion and heartfelt depth to it that she will pierce you to the very core of your being.

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