Let’s face it, pedal steel guitars weren’t built for comfort. At least mine wasn’t, but I think they’ve come a long way since the ’60s.

I’ve spent a bit of time during my recent practice sessions paying attention to what my body is doing. With the idea in mind that trying to relax what I’m trying to do physically will allow me to focus more on what I’m trying to play.

I’ve found the more I’ve looked at it, the more I realise that I am in contortions most of the time and need to sort this out.

The main culprit? My left foot. I tend to move it and lift it up much more than I should.
When it’s lifted, I am off balance and need to compensate for this by leaning, or using other limbs. Limbs that are most likely trying to do push, pull, press, raise or any other of the multitude of psg operations.

I’ve tried to keep my left heel locked to the floor as much as I can to improve this. And to reduce the movement of my heel when switching between AB and BC pedal combinations.

I saw a YouTube post that recommended(for an ABC setup) having your heel between the B and C at all times and just swivelling your foot. This means you point straight at the B and C pedals and at a slight angle when you swivel left to the A and B pedals, making it a little easier to roll your ankle.
It’s working for me.

Also been trying not to lift my left foot off the floor when raising B and C together.
Dunno why I got into the habit of doing that but it makes me lean at a weird angle and throws my playing off.

Another thing I’ve been paying attention to is where I’m sitting in relation to the guitar:
To far either way and the knee levers in the opposite direction become a stretch, and stretching == bad.

Volume pedal placement I find tricky. I’ve got long legs and big feet and it’s most comfortable to have the pedal out the side of the guitar, but this makes using the right knee levers difficult. I’ve found just a bit right of between the two knee levers works best for me.

Any advice welcomed!! And if I’m talking please tell me that too

I went for a PSG lesson with BJ Cole, who is probably the UK’s foremost pedal steel guitar player(I’m new to the psg scene, so dont flame me if you reckon are the UK’s foremost psg player!).

What a great guy! very chilled out bloke and awesome player.

He asked me to play something, and then assessed my playing with the words “you’re kind of snatching at the strings aren’t you?!".

Needless to say, it was a fair observation.

A couple of hours later, having gone through a Jimmy Day phrase in a lot of detail, with particular attention to vibrato, voluming and not attacking the strings too hard I was on the way to playing with a little more sensitivity and feel.

I would thoroughly recommend a lesson with BJ if you fancy a visit to north London.
£60 quid well spent. And then I got a congestion charge fine.

http://www.bjcole.co.uk/

Thank you BJ!

I watched this steel tutorial the other day. Some useful stuff on there. One thing it touched on, something that I’d heard players do but hadn’t got around to trying myself was 6th chords.

A sixth chord is simply a chord with the 6th scale tone added into it.

e.g. C maj contains C, E, G. if you add A then you’ve got a 6 chord.

Not to diffficult.

What John was saying in this video is that when you have your A and B levers down, you effectively have an A6 tuning on your open strings.

Playing Lines with 6th Chords

Playing strings 6-7-8 at the third fret (to make the example in C) give you C, A and G.
The nice thing about this is that this inversion of C6 puts C at the top so it is a great candidate for playing melodies harmonised with a 6 chord.
Using this little three string chord (2nd inversion C6 with C on top) you can use the top note as your melody note and play tunes with the chord by moving up and down the fret board.
This seems to be a big part of the steel guitar idiom, particularly lap steel.

Another C6 shape you can use is dropping your Es (means something different in Brixton). This gives you a B6 chord on your open strings(excluding the 9th string). If you play strings 5-6-7 in the same position as the A and B lever shape, you get the same 6 chord, but up a tone.

Now I can use a little more lateral movement and dont have to run up and down the fretboard to find your notes.

so I talked about how I was trying to learn how to block in my last post. Been getting more into the Jeff Newman vid. He talks about your crease line a lot as illustrated in this image:
. It appears that Jeff’s crease line is also known as the heart line, so there’s gotta be a C&W song in there somewhere.

To get your blocking working properly, Jeff says you need to keep your crease line over the highest string that you’re playing as the crease line is the furthest point from you that your hand is effectively blocking. In order to do this, obviously, you need to move your hands to position your crease line when you are playing different strings.

The other aspect of moving your hand to position it relative to the strings that you’re playing is that it means the action you use to pluck the string is more consistent. You’re not having to stretch or curl your fingers and therefore can result in a faster technique. He explains it better than I do..

Another thing I’ve found is that sitting with my head directly over the guitar helps in a couple of ways. primarily you can see where your left hand it so you can move more quickly and accurately to the correct fret position. But also you can see the strings and where your right hand and fingers are in relation to the strings.

Wow! The excitement of it! My first blog, my first response. Thank you Greg you made my day Greg, it turns out, is another newcomer to the pedal steel guitar here in South London.

Anyway, i hadn’t blogged for a while and Greg inspired me to get back on the case.
I’ve been doing a bit of right hand practising recently. Trying to develop my ‘bounce’ trying to get my palm blocking going, trying to develop some articulation and speed.
Hard work, I’ve found.

I’ve been basing most of my practising on instruction from Winnie Winston’s Pedal Steel Guitar and Jeff Newman’s Right Hand Alpha video.

The idea here is simple: you play a note, then just before you play the next one, you block(damp, mute.. i found the terminology a bit confusing) all the strings with your palm to stop them ringing. Then you play the next note, and only the next one cos you’ve stopped all the other ones.

You end up with you right hand going up and down and this is known as your bounce.

And it’s pretty hard work trying to develop your speed but it does come on in the end.

One of the key things here is to try and make you right hand little finger remain uncurled while you’re playing. This keeps your right hand flatter and means that you block more strings. It’s hard work though.
I remember learning to play the 6 string and trying to stop my little finger on my left hand from sticking up. Seemed impossible at first but just happened in the end, so I hope the same happens here.

Another little tip that came up in the Jeff Newman video was that if he is playing a pair off strings, he will use his thumb and finger rather than two fingers as it produces a better tone. More of a bell like chime than using two fingers. Try it, it works. Very Eric Johnson!