Slide Rules

I had another lesson this weekend, this time with Gerry Hogan in Newbury. He organised the late, great Newbury Steel Guitar Festival. In so doing has got to know the likes of Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Jeff Newman, Paul Franklin, Joe Wright..
In fact about every steel player I’d ever heard of (which is not many) he has a picture of with him!

Gerry is another really nice bloke, really enthusiastic and encouraging (
- something you need from time to time when confronted with 10 strings, three pedals, a volume, some knee levers etc). He was very polite about my playing (much more so than BJ, but I kind of prefer the hard truth approach).

We looked at a few chord/scale shapes. I’ve been trying to learn how to noodle using 6 chords, something you hear a lot on the steel guitar, so Gerry showed me a few moves going between A&B down and then moving down two frets to and dropping the Es.
And also creating a dominant 7 sounds by moving the 6 shapes down a tone/ two frets.

He also pointed out a couple of technical problems that I had
- I was playing with my right arm raised. This prevented it from relaxing, and also meant that my picking hand rotated anti-clockwise a little.
- When I finished a phrase I often (somewhat dramatically!) raised my picking hand up off the strings. Doing this I immediately lost my reference and would be less likely to be able to find my position on the strings again. He suggested practising always keeping my little finger in touch with the fretboard. Keeping your hand low then becomes second nature, _and_ it assists your muscle memory by giving it a point of reference.

Gerry charges £150 for a half day lesson that includes a CD with all the playing from the lesson and some delicious cheese and ham sandwiches for lunch!

http://www.steelguitars.co.uk/

I’ve been recording myself recently. A painful step to take but a great way to hear what you’re doing wrong.

My Volume Pedal use was glaringly horrible in a number of ways:

Overuse - everything was a fade in
Consistency - the volume of the psg relative to everything else varied
Timing - because everything faded in I was always behind the beat

I practised loads to improve this but wasn’t getting anywhere so I scoured the Steel Guitar Forum for inspiration.

Quite a few different opinions on there, some even saying that the use of a volume pedal on a steel guitar is a bit of a cheesy cliche and that relying on right hand articulation was your best bet. I’m gonna keep my volume pedal and follow these tips that other SGF users had to offer:

• Keep the normal operating level of the VP at about 30 - 50%.
• Use the VP for sustain rather than swell.
• Do this by increasing the volume on longer notes/chords as they fade.
• Practise keeping the volume consistent by returning the same place on the VP each time you hit a note. This is hard.
• Practise moves that use your right knee while keeping volume even

don’t use it!
One guy said that the main job with the volume pedal was not using it. Which I think, err, speaks volumes. . sorry.

Some players said they almost never had the VP full on.

Unplug it
One thing that a number of player recommended was playing with the VP unplugged. Not just not using it for while, but having it under your right foot, just unplugged.
Your foot still plays the pedal and you kind of think that your doing something with it. Then when you actually plug it back in what you’re doing with the pedal sounds so exaggerated you back off.
I think it’s easy to become immune to bad voluming when you practise and this stops that happening.

Limit it
Another thing that’s been suggested is limiting the range of your VP. Some have adjustment pots for this, restricting the movement of the pedal was also suggested.
I used my first VP with a limited range, my new Goodrich one doesn’t have the pot and I prefer it without.

Get one designed for seated use
Lastly, getting a VP that is suited to pedal steel playing is important. It has to be comfortable in the all the way off position, and ones designed for guitars require you to lift your foot up too far.

Get one designed for steel
Very last thing that b0b from the SGF pointed out: a PSG VP should have a 500k pot. Apparently this is because the VP being in the 30 - 50% position most of the time, a lot of treble is lost from the signal to ground. hmm

on a blogging roll today, but i’ve felt inspired on the psg recently.
not good at it, but inspired!

another thing I’ve found really helpful to my practising is playing really really slowly.

just taking a phrase and really slowing it down, paying attention to every detail I can think of. not just playing the right note but being able to craft and nurture every little moment of its existence.

these were things I concentrated on:

vibrato - slowing it down, varying the frequency and depth
the transition of the pedal changes in relation to the bar changes
the volume pedal - where in the phrase to i want to back off or swell

One of the things that Winnie Winston suggests is trying to play with your eyes shut.
I’ve started doing that and it’s brilliant.

Very frustrating to begin with, not least for my neighbours, but pays dividends.

In my opinion it cuts out the middle man:

why, when you want to make a note change by an audible amount, translate that into a distance, as visible on a fretboard, and then try and then try to effect the change using your eyes?

Surely it makes more sense just to do this by ear.
Just by practising this you get a better feel for how far your hand need to travel to change pitch.
you also get in the habit of moving to slightlty flat of your destination note and then gradually rising to it by ear.

Another thing that BJ Cole pointed out in my playing was that my vibrato stopped and started whenever my concentration was taken up by something else: pushing pedals, lever, picking. even just moving the bar.
He encouraged me to try and maintain vibrato at all times and just vary the frequency and depth.
Kind of reminded me of what it looks like to play a theremin but i’ve never played one.

Difficult thing to do, keep the vibrato going with all the other stuff to do, but practice does pay off.

I think the most obvious place where I noticed this was sliding between notes but keeping the vibrato going. Just makes everything a bit more cohesive.