Learning Pedal Steel

[Barry Hyman]

I have been learning pedal steel since 1972. For 35 years I was a pretty serious student, and for the last three years I have been an absolute fanatic, with no real interest in anything else.

But, partly because I live someplace where pedal steel guitarists are few and far between, and partly because I am a stubborn "rugged individualist," I have been teaching myself, rather than using books, tab, video, or private lessons.

How do I teach myself? With difficulty, yes. But luckily I have been teaching others for more than thirty years -- hundreds of guitarists and a few dozen bass players, plus a smattering of banjo, mandolin, keyboard, percussion, pedal steel, harmonica, fiddle, and slide guitar students. Some classroom teaching, but mostly private lessons...

I have had students who were brain damaged, psychotic, dyslexic, addicted, obsessive, depressive, developmentally disabled, and just plain stupid, and I have had about a hundred students who claim to have attention deficit disorder.

So luckily I have some tools for dealing with my own deficits and disabilities. I can observe my own playing and figure out what needs to change and what needs to be improved, just as I do while observing any other student.

So yesterday I had a big breakthrough. Left hand, left hand, left hand! When I first started playing pedal steel I was already a serious guitarist, used to having fixed frets, and my terrible intonation drove me crazy. So for decades I have concentrated on intonation with my left hand. And recently I have re-examined how I mute the strings behind the bar, and have experimented with more pressure on the bar when I go for the higher frets, which is helpful.

But yesterday something that I often say to guitar students turned out to be an epiphany for me: I am always telling them to hold the flatpick near the tip so they can feel the strings. There are no nerves in a flatpick, I tell them, but somehow they have to learn which string they are about to pick and exactly how the pick is going to set the string to vibrating.

So yesterday I realized that I have always concentrated on where the bar is (intonation) rather than what the bar feels like as it moves around on the strings. I have to somehow extend my "nerves" into the bar so I can feel how it is touching the strings!

And as soon as I started thinking about that, and paying attention to exactly how the bar caresses the strings, then my tone improved a lot. I have been struggling trying to get chords with that exquisite tonal blend that the great country players get, so I have been trying lots of different right hand approaches, and have tried hundreds of different eq and reverb settings on several different amps. But as soon as I stopped thinking of the bar as an inanimate object and started imagining that I could actually feel what it "feels" as it touches the strings, then I was getting tone that would make a dead man smile.

In recent years I bought a new steel, a new bar, and a new volume pedal. I have critiqued and improved my left hand, my right hand, my pedal work, my knee movements, and my volume pedal technique. I have stayed awake many a night thinking of new chords and new scales and new tricks. But all that time I was pushing that bar around as if it was just a piece of steel rolling around on some strings. As soon as I thought of it "caressing" those strings, and tried to feel the strings through the bar, instant magic.

Hope this is of interest to someone else. I just thought that a progress report on my personal pedal steel quest might be entertaining or useful somehow. This is all I think about these days, and my wife is tired of hearing about my pedal steel obsession, so I guess I just had to tell somebody...

[Stu Schulman]

Barry,I hear ya loud n clear bud!

[Dave Harmonson]

It is a sort of support group here. Hi I'm Dave and I'm a Pedal Steel addict.

[Barry Hyman]

I should make myself clear. My wife isn't tired of pedal steel -- she loves it almost as much as I do, and she is very fond of listening to my various bands and recordings. She is just tired of hearing me talk about it!

[Larry Robbins]

A big Hello,Barry from Fort Edward NY.
Just up the road Always good to know there are other steel players in this neck of the woods!...actually, there are a bunch of us!

[Anthony Locke]

That is really interesting. I am self taught as well, been playing console for about 8 years, and about a month and a half ago, started playing pedals too.
When I practice these days, it's on pedal. I've found that alot of the same principles that apply to lap/console steel, carry over to pedal.
The main focus for me is training my brain to tell my arm and hand to relax, and let my feet and knees do the work when it comes to doing chord progressions. Especially during faster tempos where I automatically want to start moving the bar all over the neck.
It sounds like you made a great breakthrough in finding a physical connection with your guitar. It reminds me that alot of information can be gained by simply FEELING the object in which you are using, and getting rid of the unnecessary.
Thanks!

[Jeshua Lehman]

If ya'll in Upstate NY ever have a gig or just want to show a beginner some trick you should email me at willflemingthe1st@hotmail.com; I could use the experence of see a real steel guitar player play. I live in Ballston spa. I have been playing for about a year on a carter start and am trying to figure the thing out.

[Gary Morgan]

sorta like steel hearted steel headed and steel trying

[Gary Morgan]

sorta like steel hearted steel headed and steel trying

[Barry Hyman]

Yesterday I did my first psg gig since discovering the new left hand approach I described above. One of my bands played at an indoor winter Farmers Market for four hours, and it was delightful. My increased sensitivity in the left hand means it is more relaxed, my vibrato is smoother, the diads and chords blend gorgeously, the slides are more graceful, and the general tone has definitely moved up a notch. I am a tone fanatic, who has specialized in quality of notes rather than quantity of notes for decades, but now it is even better. And all because I imagine that I have sensory nerves in the bar that feel the strings underneath!

[Larry Robbins]

Hey Barry,
Post where your pickin' these days. There are a couple dozen other steel players in your back yard that would love to come and support you! ..If were not playing that night / day ourselves! a bunch are members here but dont post too much!
The more the merrier

[Barry Hyman]

To answer Larry's question:

Wow! Pedal steel players around here? I have been telling people that there are more bears and moose per square mile in Washington County than psg players!

The first Wednesday of every month the Hill Hollow Band that I play psg with hosts an "Open Jam" at a roadhouse called the Brunswick Barbecue and Brew, which is on Route 2 between Troy and Grafton in Cropseyville, NY. It's an odd situation, not exactly an Open Mic. The way it works is that we play a short set, then anyone who wants to sign up can get up and sing and/or play, but they don't usually play by themselves -- we bandmembers back them up. So I usually sit at the steel all night, playing along with whatever we get. There are some really really good players and singers, and a few really bad players. Almost always country, bluegrass, and acoustic rock -- cover tunes that we all know -- we discourage singer-songwriter types who want to do their originals by themselves -- the crowd doesn't like that nearly as much. Hill Hollow has a great fiddle player and a great sax player, and sometimes there'll be ten of us up there, with banjo, accordion, a couple of tasteful and soft country-savvy horn players, some really good singers, etc. It's usually a lot of fun -- why don't you guys bring your steels and we can do a multi steel orchestra? The next one is 2/3, 7 pm...

[Brett Day]

Barry, I'm a steel player with cerebral palsy in my left hand and I taught myself to play songs on steel, even though I took one lesson. I was eighteen when I started and I was still in high school and every day in school, I was wishin' I was at home, makin' the steel cry.Now, I do a lot of practicin' on steel, playin' along with songs on records and I now play steel guitar shows, so I spend a lot of time playin' steel.

Brett