Is Pedal Steel the Most Difficult Instrument to Learn ?

[Brint Hannay]

On fiddle/violin you have to be accurate with your fingers, not just a single bar, and pinpoint accurate because you're working within a much smaller area,

Actually if you think about it, the surface area of the round bar that contacts the strings is about the same (actually less) as the diameter of the string it's touching. (engineers chime in) - anyway, the finger has a nice big pad to hit the string with. Pinpoint accuracy is more of an issue for steel I think - but both do require extensive practice to get intonation right. I think perhaps muscle-memory helps more on fiddle than steel in hitting the note correctly on the first 'press'. On Steel you have to use a number of clues, the most important of course is your ears! Then you can use tons of wide vibrato like a dobro player and fake it

But the distance between notes is so much less on violin. Seems to me that makes the "nice big pad" a disadvantage--trying to do a pinpoint job with a blunt instrument.

And the same distance away from the precise spot that puts a note way off on violin would only put it a few cents off on PSG, which, despite the obsessive concern with cabinet drop, "hysteresis", JI vs. ET, etc., so prevalent among steel players, is "close enough for music".

I'm NOT downplaying the importance of playing with accuracy, just saying that it seems to me the violin is more unforgiving in this respect.

In both cases, it seems to me that the task is mastered through muscle memory primarily, guided in the process of learning--and backed up in the process of doing--by the ears. The eyes can be helpful, but violin proves they're not essential.

All this, of course, only addresses the physical aspect of the left hand's work on the respective instruments. Though I only referred to the bowing technique in one sentence, as Matt says, that's a big challenge in itself.

The mental challenges presented by the PSG are certainly greater, by virtue of its being a polytonal instrument. The specific physical means of execution don't seem to me more or less difficult than other polytonal instruments (guitar, piano), just different.

All, of course, just my opinions.

[Tracy Sheehan]

To explain it simple,the notes on a fiddle are so close togeher,for instance,if you play an E note slighty sharp you are not sightly off key you are now in F.
Just the way it is.Any one has to have i would say almost perfect pitch ear to play a fiddle on key.IMHO

[Connie Mack]

maybe what makes the fiddle such a nice sounding instrument(steel too) is that folks don't actually play everything perfectly in key.....

just a thought...

[Brad Malone]

Here is another factor that enters the equation "Size"...you can start a child on the violin by the age of four and he or she will have 6 years or more of practice before the child starting on a pedal Steel. I just seen on TV a little girl about 10 years old who is a champion Pa fiddler. Did not catch her whole name but it started with a "V". Her tone and exactness of the notes was great. Some of these kids practice 4 hours a day and love doing it and a lot of them come from very musical families where music is their religion and music is encouraged above sports and other outlets. Most people start too late on Pedal Steel to give it the devotion it deserves...High School, part time jobs, college and sex start to enter the picture and the practice time and devotion to music gets less and less in a lot of cases.

[Don Blood]

For me, making a good sound on the Steel is much easier than the fiddle. I've spent about the same number of years on both, but especially on faster songs, trying to get that bow movement right is much harder. I can move that pick much easier than that bow.

But I'd rather carry the violin up the stairs than lug that steel case and amp, any time. I can even carry two or three fiddles at once!

[Alan Brookes]

maybe what makes the fiddle such a nice sounding instrument(steel too) is that folks don't actually play everything perfectly in key.....

I'll go for that. I've been looking for validation for years.

... I can even carry two or three fiddles at once!

...careful they don't end up like this.

[Josh Yenne]

I belive orchestral Harp may be harder but that is about it.... i SHOCK other musicians with how complex the thing is

[Josh Yenne]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harp

well...maybe not! ours maybe a little more difficult...

toss up?

[David Doggett]

Because of the short scale length, seems like playing violin is like playing way, way up in Hughey Land - not so easy.

[Glenn Suchan]

"Is the pedal steel the hardest instrument to play?" Nope. This is. Check it out... classical music, too!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gIicHZjMdI

Keep on pickin'!
Glenn

[Roger Rettig]

Despite the fact that we play using both feet, knees and hands, the coordination part comes very quickly. When you get right down to it, the hardest part is still the hands, and that puts steel on a par with any number of instruments. The pedals and 'knees' are what lend the steel-guitar that aura of mystique when we attempt to explain it to other musicians.

My point is that, if I want to lower the string I happen to be playing, the thought-process is a split-second long, and the appropriate knee is already moving the lever. Not at first, I grant you, but that came much faster than I expected. I compare it to using a clutch on a stick-shift car - when learning, one seems to spend for ever jerking and stalling the vehicle, then suddenly you've got it, even though you though it would never come!

Using the pedals and knees is just like that - a matter of learning their functions, but, as I said, the hands are still the toughest hurdle. I should know - thirty-five years later, and I'm still not even close to where I'd like to be on this instrument!

In the end, what separates me and a thousand other steel-players from the master-players is our lack of real touch - with either hand. Volume-pedal control is maybe next on that list.

Having dabbled with violin, I'd have to say that it is surely the hardest instrument on which to achieve a professional level. I did my first studio job on a PSG only months after buying my first one - that'd be out of the question on a violin! I'm in awe of a skilled violinist's touch.

[Bobby Burns]

I started playing guitar when I was about eight. At around ten I started banjo, and shortly after that, the mandolin. I started the fiddle about 14. Each one of these added new techniques, but still used a lot if the ones I was developing on other instruments. When I started the steel at 19, I thought that it was the biggest challenge of my life. The bar was clumsy to hold, pick usage was different that the banjo, ten strings to try and find the right one, let the string ring when needed and block when not needed, palm blocking, pick blocking, pedals, knees, volume pedal, not to mention just learning to tune the darned thing. Even to someone who understands stringed instruments already, a steel can be overwhelming. Sure the fiddle has it's share of challenges that take a lifetime to master, (let you know when I get there) but it does not intentionally change it's tuning around while I chase it looking for the right note. I guess my opinion would be different if the steel was my first instrument, but in my case, steel is harder.

[K.J. Tucker]

I am a newbie and I am playing a lap steel and I feel that it is the hardest to try to learn for an ole man of 55 it ain't easy to play , but I am pursuing on so in TIME I guess .

Later

Tuck

[Donny Hinson]

I think pedal steel is easy to make noises on and play simple stuff with, very challenging to play well, and nigh on to impossible to master (at least, in it's present state). It's so complex an instrument now that I just don't see anyone really "mastering" it, except in some limited musical genre. We do have a good many players that have reached what I would call the "very accomplished" level, though.

Still, I don't think we have anyone who can do on pedal steel what Liberace did on the piano.

[Brad Malone]

Then I bought a Fiddle took a few lessons and sold it.<<

If you bought a fiddle you were probably too old to start learning it...kids should start on the fiddle when they are about four or five years old because the learning curve is extremely long.

[Brad Malone]

Still, I don't think we have anyone who can do on pedal steel what Liberace did on the piano.

Donny I agree with you...every time we push a pedal or knee lever we completely change everything ..it is akin to rearranging the keys on the piano. Smart People that have been playing the pedal Steel for 20 years discover new things almost every time they sit behind it...a lot of 6 year old kids playing the fiddle but I have not seen any 6 year old kids playing the pedal Steel.

[Alan Brookes]

...I have not seen any 6 year old kids playing the pedal Steel.

They couldn't afford one. I played lap steel for 40 years before I could afford pedals.

Besides, their little legs wouldn't reach the pedals, and it would be an enormous extravagence to build a small one which they would outgrow in a few years.

...I don't think we have anyone who can do on pedal steel what Liberace did on the piano.

No, there's nowhere to stand the candelabra...

[Brad Malone]

They couldn't afford one. I played lap steel for 40 years before I could afford pedals.<<

That's why kids have parents...if parents can buy Video games they can buy musical instruments.

[Steve Feldman]

.....
and lastly, i learned the uilleann pipes over the winter(let me say that i have a long way to go on this one ). a vastly more complex instrument. one that is also slightly different in fingering than flutes or whistles. you also have to separate your arms from your fingers in playing. it is very similar to the steel in that way.

i can say with my own assurance that the pedal steel, the fiddle and the uilleann pipes are the hardest ones i have learned to play. but everyone is different. the flute is hard to master because of the breathing.

so, i think it's impossible to say what instrument is hardest.
...

As I said on page 1 above, the Uilleann pipes are beyond anything I've seen described here in terms of complexity. One arm strapped to a bellows and pumping, the other squeezing a bag, two hands on the pipe, and your thigh closing the end hole on the pipe, occasionally lifting it up to actuate a note. Good grief!

I've played fiddle for some time. I find that much easier than the steel, but the pipes are on a whole nuther wavelength....

[Alan Miller]

In a post some months ago Bobbe seymore said that pedal steel was an easy instrument to learn, that chord changes are easy with the pedals and levers and key changes are easy etc....most would agree with him on that I would guess .
I think the difficulty for some learning pedal steel is getting the coordination of the pedals ,knee levers, volume pedal, picking hand and bar accuracy spot on.

I know a very good sight reading musician who plays several instruments extremely well with 35 years experience, he got a pedal steel a year ago and is still totally lost with the picking and bar control and he practices two hours a day. Its an alien creature to him and I can see little improvement in the year he's had it, its as if his brain is not wired up for it.
It is strangely uncanny to watch this otherwise competent musician struggle so badly and I cant seem to help his progress.
So yes for some it is a most difficult instrument.

[Tommy Shown]

Despite the fact that we play using both feet, knees and hands, the coordination part comes very quickly. When you get right down to it, the hardest part is still the hands, and that puts steel on a par with any number of instruments. The pedals and 'knees' are what lend the steel-guitar that aura of mystique when we attempt to explain it to other musicians.

My point is that, if I want to lower the string I happen to be playing, the thought-process is a split-second long, and the appropriate knee is already moving the lever. Not at first, I grant you, but that came much faster than I expected. I compare it to using a clutch on a stick-shift car - when learning, one seems to spend for ever jerking and stalling the vehicle, then suddenly you've got it, even though you though it would never come!

Using the pedals and knees is just like that - a matter of learning their functions, but, as I said, the hands are still the toughest hurdle. I should know - thirty-five years later, and I'm still not even close to where I'd like to be on this instrument!

In the end, what separates me and a thousand other steel-players from the master-players is our lack of real touch - with either hand. Volume-pedal control is maybe next on that list.

Having dabbled with violin, I'd have to say that it is surely the hardest instrument on which to achieve a professional level. I did my first studio job on a PSG only months after buying my first one - that'd be out of the question on a violin! I'm in awe of a skilled violinist's touch.

I am in in agreement with Roger about the violin.It's takes so much precision to play one. I mean you can move a finger maybe a thousandth on an inch and still be too sharp or too flat. I have tried the fiddle same thing. There's only a couple of songs I can play on it.
Tommy

[Eric Jaeger]

I think there's a distinction between knowing how to physically produce a good tone from an instrument and knowing what to play on the instrument. I agree that getting a good tone out of a fiddle is very hard, and that getting the intonation right is pretty tough as well, but in most cases the fiddle is a single-note melody instrument and covers a couple of octaves or so.

By contrast, it's really hard to know *what* to play on PSG. Four or five octaves, multiple inversions at multiple locations, chord melodies with sliding tones... ecchh...

Does the distinction make sense to others?

-eric

[Calvin Walley]

i think what scare's and confuses many(myself included ) is the madding amount of musical tech talk
it was a long time before i got it in my head to
(1) learn the C scale
(2)learn to transpose it to other keys
(3) just play the damn thing

i know there are a lot of guys on the forum that can talk music with the best of em
but that can come later,
if a person just gets the basics behind them then they can get as deep into music theory as they can handle

[Robbie Crabtree]

I was told by my first steel teacher that it is the only instrument that you need to use both hands, both knees, and both feet to play. I took some fiddle lessons and guitar lessons and played a little sax in school. My opinion only,Steel guitar is harder.

[Calvin Walley]

speaking only for myself

i got bogged down in all the gobbly goop
trying to play from tabs and trying to understand to much of the music theory .
in some ways i was overthinking it and as a result i was in a constant state of confusion
by learning the C scale and learning it well then learning to transpose it to any other key
you learn to "hear " what note comes next without thinking about what that note is
it is not required to know what note you playing as long as it fits
if you think about it everything we play is "part" of a scale by learning to hear the "flow" of the scale you will soon learn
where the note you want is without much thought it won't matter in the least if its a 7th or a minor
you will know where it is without knowing what it is
learning music theory is great but what good is theory if you can't use it . or if you don't understand it
i hope this make's sense to anyone reading it