REVIEW: Jerry Byrd Instruction Course for Steel Guitar

Ray Langley · From: Northern California, USA

The Jerry Byrd Instruction Course for Steel Guitar
“A Complete Study for the Serious Student”

Review by “serious student” and beginner, Ray Langley on January 4, 2009

Availability: www.scottysmusic.com
Price: $117 USD, including shipping
Size: 324 pages
Edition: 5th Printing
Copyright: None shown on my copy
Packaging: Three-ring notebook

First look: You will find no glossy paper or color photographs. The pages look like they were run off at the local copy center before being hole-punched and stuffed into a three-ring notebook binder. This is fine with me. I am buying information, not beauty. On the upside, the pages lie flat for study. You need to be able to study a page with the lap steel guitar in your lap. All of the diagrams, charts, scales, tab, and music notation are printed large enough that I can read them, with prescription glasses.

There is no Table of Contents or Index, which makes it a little difficult to navigate. But, I have compiled, and posted, a complete Table of Contents to the SteelGuitarForum here:

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=149235

The course comes with two CDs. Jerry plays all of the songs and some of the practice exercises and chord progression studies. The audio quality is not great by today’s standards, but it is adequate for the purpose of learning. Between each of the tracks there is an annoying 10 second tone of the first string (E) being played, “to help with tuning.”

I bought this specifically to study C6/A7 tuning. The first 117 pages are devoted to several other tunings, including songs, etc. All of them are listed in detail in the TOC at the link posted above. If I had learned to play each of the songs in each of the tunings, I would be so confused that I would have given up long before arriving at the C6/A7 sections! My goal in studying this tome is to learn enough so that I will have the tools and the knowledge to make my own arrangements of MY OWN favorite songs. I have a couple of tab books for lap steel. But, for the most part, they are the favorite songs of the ones who published the tab books. This course delivers! Time will tell, but I am certain that a diligent study of these lessons will provide ANYONE with what they need to know in order to create their own beautiful, and musically accurate, lap steel arrangements. Who could ask for anything more in an instructional course of study?

Here are a few notable quotes from Jerry Byrd:

Page 119 “C6th, the single most popular tuning ever used, quite possibly gives the player much greater chord and melody capabilities.” And, “No books now available anywhere in the world will give you the material that you will have in these three books. Nothing has been held back – no so-called “secrets” are withheld. It is all here.”

189 “We use C6th tuning for the best results in reading music, because it has easier playability than other tunings.” And, “…our main purpose here is to acquaint you with reading music well enough to enable you to buy a piece of sheet music and learn to play it, to know what harmony notes should go with the “lead” sheets…”

A great resource to use in conjunction with this course is the excellent chord-locator program at John Ely’s web site:

http://www.hawaiiansteel.com/chordlocator/generic.php

The format is the same as that used in this course! It gives you the option of showing chords using forward, reverse, and split slants. It even gives you the option of showing how to harmonize a chord with a melody note that is not a part of the chord.

The section on Scales is interesting. All guitar-type courses will have you learn the Major Scale in usually five or seven positions. You know the drill. Practice the scale from low to high, then back down from high to low, ad nauseum! Jerry Byrd has put a lot of careful thought into these five positions. Using a bar/steel, it is easier to play the ascending scale because you can see where you are going. Going the other way (high to low), it’s hard to see the next note in the sequence. So, he shows you some alternate positions for some of the notes on the way back up. I won’t attempt to explain this in detail. The scale charts do a fine job of that. But, I will say that he has structured the scales so that you are able to “see” the next note(s) much more easily. There are charts using these ideas for all of the usual keys. This alone, is one of those breakthroughs in your education that is “worth the price of the book”.

No book or course is perfect in every way, for everyone. For me, I had never heard of most of the songs in this course. But, you don’t have to master these tunes. You do have to understand the principles of how they were presented. Complete scales using thirds and sixths 2-note harmonies were not presented, although you can see some of this in the songs being played.

I would have loved to have seen coverage of the major and minor pentatonic scales, and the “blues scale”. However, with what you will learn in the major scale sections, you can figure these out for yourself later.

Also, I was surprised that arpeggio studies were not included. But, again, with what you will learn, in conjunction with some chord charts, you will be able to figure them out.

Bottom Line: This course will teach you what you need to know so that you will be able to TEACH YOURSELF whatever else you need to know, in your own style.

Don Kona Woods · From: Hawaiian Kama'aina

Ray,

You have done an excellent job of reviewing Jerry
Byrd's steel guitar instruction book.

Aloha, Smile

Don

Ray Langley · From: Northern California, USA

Thanks Don! That means a lot coming from you....

Ray Langley · From: Northern California, USA

A WORD OF WARNING TO BEGINNERS:

If you are planning to buy this course, only to skip over all the other tunings, and start right out on the C6 section, you may be in for quite a shock!

This was fully my intention. But, the author assumes that you aready know a great deal about playing steel in the many other tunings presented before you ever get to the section on C6 tuning.

For instance, the very first song you will encounter in the C6 section is "Sweet Lei Lehua". This tune was previously taught in three other tunings on pages 23, 32, and 63. It is a fairly simple melody. It contains lots of half-notes, dotted half-notes, and whole notes. Everything else is quarter-notes. So, how hard could it be?

This very first song (Lesson 1), in C6 tuning, is presented on page 122. It is 39 measures long in 4/4 (common) time. It contains:

18 Forward Slants
7 Split Slants
2 Reverse Slants

Some of the other tunings you will need to wade through before getting to this point in the course are:

A Major, E Major, E7th, C# Minor, C# Minor 9th, E13th, and B11th!

In a nutshell, it seems you already have to be a "Slantmeister" before you arrive at the C6 lessons. If this tune were in my own "top 20 favorites", I would just bite the bullet and go for it. But, I had never even heard of this song. So, this addendum to my original review is merely a word-to-the-wise.

==========

I am going to take a look at the "Basic C6th Nonpedal Lap Steel Method" by DeWitt Scott (Scotty). This one seems to be more geared to rank beginners, like me, who want to learn this tuning. And, this book/CD DOES contain some of the thirds and sixths harmonized scales that I was expecting to see in Jerry Byrd's course.

http://pedalsteelmusic.com/instruction/nonpedal.html#MB03

And, in the next few days, I have some (C6) DVD instruction on the way from Josh Cho. I am confident that I will learn great things from Scotty and Josh. By then, I may be able to jump back into the Jerry Byrd course. It may sound like I am just being lazy, but I am not willing to learn seven other tunings to arrive at the ONE I really want to know more about.

Paul DiMaggio · From: Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

I received my copy of Jerry Byrd's instruction course for steel guitar this week.
Mine has an index that includes all the lessons in the book and a list of what is played on the cds with the corresponding page number in the book.
After I ordered the course and Ray posted the table of contents,I got to wondering why the man who was the biggest proponent and developer of the C6th tuning would insist that one learns the other tunings first.And he does insist,because he has put all the basic techniques into these tuning lessons.eg.In A major he has lessons on tab,palm blocking, forward slants and in and out bar movement.In the E major and 7th series he has harmonics,vibrato and reverse slants etc.
I'm now up to the E series and I think I'm beginning to understand why he has done it that way.
IMO you get a history lesson on the development of the steel guitar over the years.You become more familiar with the instrument through tuning and in some cases string changes.
He uses the song Sweet Lei Lehua as a constant for all tunings so you can see the differences and similarities between them.There is no scale work until you get to C6th.
The cds are great.I guess you can turn off Jerry's playing and use the backup tracks.I'm leaving him in because then I know when I'm not in pitch or have lost the tempo.And besides,I get to play along with Jerry Byrd!How sweet is that??
This course is a little expensive but well worth it.I would recommend it to anyone from beginner on up.

Derrick Mau · From: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Paul,

Jerry has gone through all the tunings with the same song to show the student that as tunings evolved, you can get more done with less work; meaning that you'd have less jumping around the frets with the bar.

With Jerry's C6, you'll find that everything in can be done within close proximity, especially doing Hawaiian vamps (turn-arounds). It gets my vote as the most versatile tuning for all styles of music, which is why I use C6. Very Happy

Jamie O'Connell · From: Medford, Massachusetts, USA

The stuff in B11: Rainbows Over Paradise, Sand, Steelin' the Chimes, and How D'Ya Do is just gorgeous. Although it might be possible to play those in a different tuning, there's good reason why Jerry Byrd always played them in B11.

Josh Cho · From: New York, NY (orig. Honolulu, HI)

You could try playing Sand and How DYa Do in C6, but I think you'd lose all the rich harmonies.

Not that I ever tried. A year ago before I was into making my own arrangements, I called Scotty and asked him if he had the TAB to How DYa Do in C6.

He said no, so I told him I was going to try to transpose it. He just laughed and said to send it to him when I was done Laughing

Being that Scotty's been holding his convention for longer than I've been alive, I never questioned this ... and didn't even bother to try.

I just learned to re-tune real quick and play Sand and How DYa Do together in the set... Laughing

_________________
Lap-n-Console Steel Guitar Lessons

Paul DiMaggio · From: Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Canada

I have heard "Sand"in C6th.Johnny Pal does it on Youtube.Some open strings used and it doesn't flow like B11 does.

Bill Leff · From: Santa Cruz, CA, USA

There was a video of Billy Hew Len playing How Do Ya Do recently that was posted here that I'm pretty sure was either played in C6 with a high G (or perhaps it was the same tuning a third down - A6).

I could tell because Billy was doing slants where he wouldn't have to have done them had it been B11.

Comments Derrick?

Derrick Mau · From: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Hi Bill,

Billy is using an A6. Strings 1-4 is the same as in a B11 until you get to parts of the song where you have to use the lower strings, then you'd have end up slanting or just playing two note chords. You're not going to get the rich chords as Josh says. The B11 tuning falls very nice with this song but you can still do justice to the song using a C6. Very Happy

Derrick Mau · From: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Just did a fast slap together recording of Sand in C6 (short version) so one can here how it sounds in this tuning.

http://freefilehosting.net/download/444ge

Just learning how to do some home recordings on this new 16 track recorder so don't mind all the mistakes.

Derrick Very Happy

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