Bad Habit

[Bob Graff]

Lately Iv'e found my self using a lot of bar vibritoe and can't seem to quit" Iguess It helps If your not right on the exact spot but It's driving me crazy I can'y stop It. Any sugestions Please. Thanks Bob Graff

[Alan Brookes]

Sedatives or Jack Daniels or both....

[Charles Davidson]

Maybe some of that wacky tobacky,Won't help your playing,BUT you won't care. Never helped Willie's singing, but seems NOBODY gave a damn. DYKBC.

[David Doggett]

Try practicing with absolutely no vibrato at all anytime. It's not easy, but if you can ever break the habit that way, you can then begin to add a little back in.

Actually I find that booze gets me too loose, and that's when I get sloppy and too free with the vibrato (and other things).

[Ron Sodos]

I used to have a very bad habit of bar shiver. I couldn't get my bar hand to stop the vibrato. I took some lessons from Terry Bethel and while i was playing he scolded me and said, "STOP IT". I started practicing with no vibrato at all. I forced myself to keep the bar totally still. After a while i was more able to control it and use it when i wanted to....Good luck. I think its a very important factor in what the playing sounds like out front. I used to listen to my recorded playing and hated it. It sounded whiny and thin. After learning to control the bar I am much happier with what i sound like.

[Alan Brookes]

I used to have a very bad habit of bar shiver. I couldn't get my bar hand to stop the vibrato...

Me too. Every time I was in the bar my hand would shiver and I'd spill some of it. But my hand would steady after the first couple of drinks.

[Ned McIntosh]

I think we're really talking about two slightly different but related thngs here. Vibrato is the gentle movement of the bar which (as Jeff Newman so eloquently put it) gives the steel its very breath, it's life. It's a perceptible but subtle movement, and it only needs to be done where a bar-position is held for any length of time, or as the last notes are sounding in a lick, that sort of thing. Vibrato is very subtle and therein lies its beauty and strength as a technique.

Bar-shiver is a much more pronounced effect, vibrato taken to the logical extreme if you like. When it's done with taste and feeling, it is one of the best ways of wringing raw emotion from the sound of the steel.

I think I'm on pretty safe ground when I say the master of intentional bar-shiver was the incomparable John Hughey. But listen very carefully to his playing and you'll soon realise he didn't use bar-shiver all the time. He used it precisely when it was most effective. So it has its place, but the effect we need to master as players is that very subtle vibrato that Jeff Newman so perfectly described.

Practicing with a completely "dead" bar (no vibrato at all) is a very useful exercise because it will encourage you to position your bar with great precision, something definitely to strive for. Adding a gentle vibrato then gives the extra depth to the sound which is so characteristic of well-played steel-guitar.

If you can also master the use of bar-shiver to the same standard as Papa John, then your steel-guitar future should look rather rosy.

[Bill Patton]

If you add enough reverb, you won't hear the vibrato anymore.