Before learning steel, what did you play?

James Morehead · From: Prague, Oklahoma, USA - R.I.P.

Was steel(lap, non, or pedal)your first instrument, or did you play an instrument already? How WELL did you master THAT instrument? Do you think it is important to have a background in music, OR are you better off to not have played any instrument when you take up steel!!

If you could do it all over again, what do you think the easiest way to approach steel would be??

Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

Before playing steel, I strummed a guitar with one hand and played keyboards by ear with one hand. Since I've got cerebral palsy in my left hand, I realized I couldn't fret the strings on a standard guitar, so I started playing keyboards by ear with one hand, but what I really wanted was to play an instrument used in country music, so I realized that I loved the sound of the pedal steel guitar and wondered if I could play it. I rented a pedal steel guitar to see if I could handle it. Then I got my first pedal steel in 1999 and I'm loving every minute of playing steel. Brett Day, Emmons S-10, Morrell lapsteel

Winnie Winston · From: Tawa, Wellington, NZ * R.I.P.

Before I took up steel, I played:

Piano (lesson for a few years, remember none of it)
Guitar (started age 10. Mostly folk and blues. Decent "Carter Family" style flat-picker, pretty good Travis style player.)
5-string Banjo (both old-time and Scruggs style. VERY good at it, if I may say so!)
Dobro (messed around a bit.)

I think my familiarity with strings helped. I was uised to wearing picks. Other than that, none of my other playing transferred over at all.

JW

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

I played guitar (almost totally electric)for over thirty years before taking up steel. I won't comment on the part about mastery.

I did have to decide if devoting the necessary time to steel would be worth it. There are always more things to learn on any instrument, and guitar is no exception. I've played a few other instruments also, but the steel is the first which will attain the status of being a legitimate second instrument for me.

I can't imagine a significant way in which previous musical experience is a hindrance in learning steel.

About the best way to learn, and if I had it to do over again:

I'm coming up on the completion of my third year as a steel player, so I can't say a whole lot about learning steel per se. But in a way I am doing it over again, since there are common things about learning any instrument, and you're bound to have taken a few less than optimal roads in thirty years on any instrument. I do think I know more about how to approach the learning process and what is most productive musically than I would otherwise.

Also, the steel is technically still a "guitar," so there is a fair amount of crosstalk going on in my head because of that; mostly not of a hindering nature. Really the only thing I could see being a problem with previous experience on another instrument is the tendency to visualize things for computation purposes more on the instrument one is most familiar with.

Earnest Bovine · From: Los Angeles CA USA

I wasted 20 years playing all the other instruments before discovering steel guitar.

How can anyone learn harmony (theory and general musicianship) from something as wacky as the steel guitar? The piano seems so much better suited for this. But then didn't Jerry Byrd, Buddy Emmons, and Paul Franklin play steel as a first instrument?

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

As a kid I played electric bass and then I got into classical string bass. From there I spent a bunch of years playing cello. Then I was touring with a band playing the electric bass and a little guitar. I got sick of the whole music scene and decided to play the steel mostly because it seemed impossible to play so nobody in the music bussiness world would ever bother me again. Steel really got to me because I could make the notes sing like the cello and play chords and counterpoint. I practiced too much and people started giving me money to play so I ended up back in the semi functional world of being a full time musician. After going full time on the steel I bumped into some money and spent 4 years in a conservatory studying classical composition. So I learned a bit of piano. I also found out that it takes about 3 semesters to make it back to the tonic from a V chord.

Bob

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Cello.

John Steele · From: Renfrew, Ontario, Canada

Yeah, when they start givin' you money to do it... that's when they really start messin' with your head.

-John

Ricky Davis · From: Bertram, Texas USA

Nothin'

Ron Randall · From: Dallas, Texas, USA

Started on a Sears Roebuck six string regular guitar at 14. Began playing Fender VI and PBass a couple of years later. Majored in Music for 2 years, and played electric guitar in a 20+ piece band. I never reached the level I wanted to, but I stopped progressing when the cash flow topped out. Made my money playing pre Beatles rock.
Next step, fast forward 40 years, to when I had time to learn and practice, I started on a T8 Fender with a 6th tuning, a 6th tuning with a 7 and 9 on top, and an E13th.

Progressed to SU12. I am glad I went thru the non-pedal period. I wanted to know how it was done. Might go back to non pedal.

Today I know more about guitar and bass having been thru non pedal and PSG.

Knowing stings, tunings, intervals, some theory, certainly helped learn faster.

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Stringmaster T8, Benoit 8, National Tricone, MSA U12

Ken Williams · From: Arkansas

I started playing guitar when I was about 11 years old. When I was about 15, I started playing 5 string banjo. Banjo was my main interest until I was almost out of college. Then I started on steel at age 22. I feel that the banjo playing help me learn steel with more ease than I would have without the banjo experience. I have tried to play fiddle off and on(mostly off) for the last 20 years. At this time, I can't even remember the last time I had the banjo out of the case, must be 5 or 10 years. I sold one of the fiddles, because I had pretty well given up on that. I think being able to play any other instrument is definitely helpful when trying to learn steel.

Ken
http://home.ipa.net/~kenwill

[This message was edited by Ken Williams on 01 October 2003 at 11:06 PM.]

Jeff Lampert · From: queens, new york city

I started on 6-string when I was 15, and steel when I was 22. While the tendency is to think that it would have helped to have played another instrument, I have also found it to be an albatross. Perhaps a player is at there most formative when they are in their teens, or even younger. I have found that even though the steel has been my main instrument for a far longer time than guitar, when I arrange or sing harmony, or listen to a melody, I automatically visualize a guitar fretboard, not a steel. When I imagine a Dm chord, I imagine it on a guitar. When I see a harmony line that I want to play, I see it on guitar. I see the notes, intervals, and scales as they would be played on a guitar. This is in spite of the fact that, considering practicing, rehersals, and gigs, I have probably played 50 times as much steel as guitar in my life. But when my musical psychology was being formed, it was imprinted on a mental guitar. This is frustrating because, since I have a more natural tendency to pick out notes and intervals on guitar, I'm therefore not as fast as I could be when developing a creative musical thought on steel. I envy those players who started on steel since they don't suffer from this mental/psychological contamination. Hopefully I've described this clearly. I don't think everyone visualizes an instrument since everyone's psychology and mental processes are different. Singers for example, who don't play, can't visualize a musical isntrument - they simply hear the notes. Even though I'm not a regular singer, when I do sing a melody or harmony, or like I said before, arrange, I ALWAYS visualize a guitar. Anyway, that's my .02 cents.

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[url=http://www.mightyfinemusic.com/jeff's_jazz.htm]Jeff's Jazz[/url]

Ray Montee · From: Portland, Oregon (deceased)

Started at age7 one round hole flat top with a flat bar. Been playing steel ever since and at times quite frustrating, the discovery of how Hughey, Emmons, Byrd, or whomever did a particularly neat lick, makes the success ever so sweet. You'll never learn it all and that's the challenge. So much opportunity to be creative and original.
I learn something new every day.

Larry Bell · From: Englewood, Florida

I've played stringed instruments as long as I can remember. Ukelele at 6 or 7 (relatively seriously for a 6 year old), until I could hold a guitar, acoustic guitar at 7 or 8, then electric at 12. I played in one of Nashville's premiere rock bands in the early to mid 60s. After graduating from college, I sold all my electric instruments (DUMB MOVE -- 1964 Fender Concert, great 60's strat and ES-335) and bought a nice flat top and started playing coffee house solo gigs -- fancy fingerpicking and old blues and ragtime stuff. About that time (age 21 or so), I took up Dobro. I was hopelessly banished to slideville from that point on. I wanted fatter chords, so I switched almost totally to steel in 1974. Rarely play guitar anymore.

I'm sure that's more than you wanted to know.

I think that prepared me pretty well for steel. I knew chord and scale theory and understood how to analyze pedal steel from that perspective, so it was relatively easy to learn to adapt what I knew about guitar to steel. Technique had a jumpstart too -- right hand from fingerpicking guitar -- left from playing Dobro. Bought the steel on a Wednesday and played almost every weekend for several years thereafter -- I was awful, but jumping off the deep end was also a learning experience (at someone else's expense

).

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

[This message was edited by Larry Bell on 02 October 2003 at 04:05 AM.]

HowardR · From: N.Y.C.-Fire Island-Asheville

the radio

George Kimery · From: Limestone, TN, USA

I started playing electric guitar when I was 13. Moved on to Banjo during the college "Hootinanny" days. Studied pedal steel "on paper" through my college years. After college, got my first job. First thing I bought was a car, quickly followed by an Emmon's D-10 PP. I never played any lap steel or non-pedal. Wasn't interested then, still aren't. Some Jerry Byrd style Hawaiian might be nice, though.

I think if you approach any new instrument with a knowledge of music, you are way ahead of the game. If you take up pedal steel with no musical knowledge, you are fighting two battles simultaneously. If you know music, it becomes mostly a question of learning the dexterity involved in playing the steel, without the complications of having to learn a foreign lanquage like music on top of it.

Paul King · From: Gainesville, Texas, USA

I played lead guitar and mandolin when I was a young lad. My mother swears up and down I snuck a stick into church one night trying to play it like a guitar. I have played about as long as I can remember. Playing lead definitely was a plus in learning the steel. At 19 years of age I bought my first pedal steel and the rest is history. I rarely pick up a guitar anymore and probably could't play a mandolin if I had to. I have had more fun with a steel than I ever thought and I guess one reason is there are so few of us compared to other instruments. You can find guitar players all over the place but a steel player is hard to find....Paul King

Larry Robbins · From: Fort Edward, New York

Played guitar,mandolin 5-stging banjo for about30 yrs.How well?I wont say that I can play just anything on them but,it got to where I could play anything I wanted to with very little trouble.I allways wanted to try steel but thought that it would be too hard.Went to Dobro then on to lap steel for a few years.Finally,my wife said"you learn stuff too fast,what you gonna learn now?"So I took that as permission to go out and buy a steel.You married guys know what I mean.Ha,Hathe steel is more of a chsllange than the others were but so far I'm doing ok and haveing the time of my life.
If I had to start over I would....get some lessons.there are not many steel players in this neck of the woods and all the vidio's that I have seen,seemto help but nothings as good as the real thing.Oh yes...and I would have joined this Forum a lot sooner!!
It has sure helped me a lot and you guys are some of the nicest people in the world!
Where else can someone like me rub elbows with some of the best steel players in the world?

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Sho-Bud ProII
"there's been an awful murder, down on music row!"

Rick Aiello · From: Berryville, VA USA

John Cox · From: Texas, USA

Piano&nylon string guitar somwhere in the late 60's,early 70's.
J.C.

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

Started quite young on drums...family could never afford a full set of drums, so that idea got dropped. I immersed myself in electronics for about 5 years, and then took up straight guitar in my early teens, and played in about a dozen bands (rock and soul). In the early '60s, I went to the Hawaiian guitar, and a couple years later, to pedal steel. Played a little banjo for awhile, and tried the violin (couldn't do anything with that). "Noodled" with keyboards for awhile, but never went very far with them, either. Played steel for the last 40-odd years, but not too regularly in the last 5. (Taught steel for about 2 years.)

When I work now, it's either fill-ins, or an occasional session job. Guess you could say I'm "over the hill".

[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 02 October 2003 at 08:40 AM.]

David Doggett · Posted 2 Oct 2003 7:41 am

It helps to start any instrument very young. If you stick with the one you start young on, you have the best shot at being world-class, at least in terms of technique. Learning other instruments early definitely helps in the transition to steel. Horns or fretless strings help the fingers and the ear. Keyboards help with theory and the fingers. Guitar helps the fingers (if you finger pick), and teaches the E neck (going up the neck with bar chords is just like using the steel on the E9 neck - same chords at same frets).

My checkered history:

Piano - lessons in classical music from 2nd grade til Jr. High, when I quit to play football. I think the piano is the best instrument to start all kids on, because you learn to visualize scales and chords and intervals. It also trains hand-ear cordination into all fingers of both hands, and also feet.

Organ - had lessons on a small organ for about a year. Good for the feet.

Sax - played alto and bari in the school band from 6th grade through high school - marches, broadway tunes, pop, classical. Horns train your ear to play in tune. Played in a rockabilly band in Oxford, Mississippi around 1960.

Guitar - early guitars from Sears catalog and Beale Street pawnshop. Started in high school and played finger style folk and blues, including bottleneck. That got me going on strings, open tunings and slide. Sat at the knee of Fred McDowell and Jack Owens (from Skip James hometown, and played his style).

Dobro & lap steel - started with a regular guitar and a raised nut. Got a 7-string Raybro (with one tuner broken). Borrowed a friends old 6-string lap steel and played weddings and parties in Jackson, Mississippi. Lived in Nashville and learned some bluegrass from the people who started the original Station Inn two blocks from where I lived near Centennial park. Played in dives around town (including the old Broadway Club) with a young guy from Texas named Rick Dyson.

Pedal steel - got a Maverick from Bobbe Seymour and started on pedal steel around '74. Went back to school in Knoxville and played in a country rock group with Pam Tillis.

Quit everything but guitar at home for about 25 years. Recently started everything back up again. You'd think with my history I'd be better, but the real pros have no fears from me.

But I'm having a great time anyway.

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Student of the Steel, Fessy S12U, Emmons S12 E9 P/P, Carter D12, Nashville 400, Fender Squire, Peavey Transtube Supreme into JBL 15", 1968 Gibson J50, '60s Kay arch-top, 7-string Raybro, customized Korean Regal square-neck, roundneck Dobro 90C, 1938 Conn Chu Berry tenor sax, '50s Berg mouthpiece, Hamilton upright piano, Casio keyboard. You make it, I'll play it (sort of).

Rick Collins · From: Claremont , CA USA

...the radio.
...and sometimes with static.

Nicholas Dedring · From: Beacon, New York, USA

Piano for about twelve years, until I started college, and just didn't keep up a schedule with it.

Picked up tenor saxophone (having messed with it for a year in Junior High) when I was 19, still play that, but steel has occupied enough of my mind that I am also falling off on the horn, just haven't practiced diligently.

Bought a lap steel to fool around with, but never felt it made a lot of sense to me... pedal steel is the first thing in a while I have dug in to really work on. Lap steel did make me realize why you want pedals, tho.

richard burton · From: Britain

Stylophone.

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