What's everyone's practice routine look like?

Dylan Keating · Post by **Dylan Keating** » 24 May 2016 6:17 pm

This is something I haven't seen come up too often (so I apologize if there's already a thread) but I was wondering how everyone practices the steel guitar. How much time do you spend woodshedding? How do you divide your time? Do you practice technique more or playing tunes more? Or do you practice at all? I'm curious because I'm still pretty new to the instrument. What do you think is the most effective use of someone's practice time?

Dave Stroud · Post by **Dave Stroud** » 24 May 2016 8:26 pm

This is a great question. I wonder the same thing... I'm afraid the answer is to get one-on-one lessons. Could we assume $$$ is an issue??

Brett Day · Post by **Brett Day** » 24 May 2016 8:53 pm

I usually practice different country songs. The way I practice songs is to find a good song with great steel parts, listen to the steel parts, then play them on my steel, like today, I practiced with a Brooks & Dunn song called "Every River-Paul Franklin played on the record, it came out in 2002 after they featured Bruce Bouton on their records until they recorded their "Steers & Stripes" record, which featured Paul Franklin. While playing with rhythm tracks, or any other record, I like to give the other musicians-guitarists, fiddle players, keyboard players a chance before playing a steel part, unless there is a steel solo-like in "Every River" after the second chorus, then the guitar comes back in after the solo before the last chorus

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 24 May 2016 9:04 pm

I look at the steel guitar and think about practicing for a few hours while educating myself about human anatomy etc on the internet. Then I approach the steel, turn on the metronome & read thru a couple of pages of fiddle tunes, then a Telemann fantasia or 2, then maybe some random BIAB tunes, then a Bach cello or violin suite, with plenty of stops for coffee.

Steve Hitsman · Post by **Steve Hitsman** » 25 May 2016 3:36 am

Helpful little monograph... applicable to practice in general, not just jazz. I believe it may be available as a free PDF. Try a search.

Don R Brown · Post by **Don R Brown** » 25 May 2016 9:32 am

My number one rule is have fun. I vary what I do - some days I spend a fair amount of time on mechanical stuff - scales, Paul Franklin's exercise, other similar stuff. Other days I do little of that and instead work on a given song or part of a song at length. And I also spend a LOT of time prowling YouTube, finding obscure groups both here and abroad who either have steel in the songs, or have songs where I can be the steel. And there are a ton of YouTube steel instruction videos as well, don't overlook those. Mickey Adams, Joe Barcus, Paul Sutherland, the list is endless.

As for in-person lessons, I record them on a digital recorder and then upload (or is it download?) to my computer. That way I can - and do - go back and re-take a lesson I sat down for a year or more back.

We are all different, but for me the variety of my practice makes it much more fun than if I had a set, rigid routine I followed each time without fail.

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 25 May 2016 11:07 am

i lie on the couch trying to remember which pile of clothes my steel is under.

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 25 May 2016 11:19 am

That sounds sad and funny at the same time, Chris

Jim Robbins · Post by **Jim Robbins** » 25 May 2016 3:49 pm

That is an excellent question & I hope you get a lot of responses. I was going to ask something similar but you beat me to the punch.

Because of my day job my practice schedule is erratic. Little or nothing during the week, then a couple hours a day give or take on the weekends.

I try to work on things that combine technique and fretboard knowledge. Right now I am trying to get some speed picking down so I'm playing a lot of E9 and working on pentatonic patterns up and down the neck on strings 9,8,7 (using D-C# lower and raising F# to G with a knee lever with a feel stop); on strings 8,7 & 6 with E->D# lever and B pedal raise and sometimes strings 7, 6 & 5 (using B pedal, & B-Bb lever). Sticking to 3 strings, you can get lots of nice 3 or 4 note patterns, sliding up from one position to the next. I work on major and parallel minor, stick to one or two keys per practice session, and try to focus on where the first and 5th degrees of the scale are. I'll combine those patterns with doing rolls on three strings, or moving back and forth with rolls from 9,8,7 to 8,7, 6. I'll also do some pentatonic patterns using strings 6, 5, 4 and 1 to stretch out my right hand and work on pedalling. In all of the above I have recently been working on palm blocking. I'll do the patterns / rolls slow and hard and then double the speed. Then I'll work on a song with simple changes & try to incorporate the new things I'm working on with the tried-and-true licks.

Every now & then I'll stumble across some lick that I ought to know but don't & practice it in different contexts until it feels comfortable, like one or two moving lines against a single pitch.

Sometimes I've done pedal exercises -- picking on 6,5,4,3 and rocking different combinations of A, B, C and Franklin pedals. Also I've done volume pedal / knee lever exercises moving chromatically on strings 10, 9 & 8 while keeping constant volume. I find those to be useful if I haven't been playing for a while but it doesn't take much to get those moves back in shape. However they are good for the ear / muscle memory.

As a warm up, either for practice or at a rehearsal or gig, I'll do some paradiddles with pick blocking on strings a whole tone apart, usually starting at the top of the neck & working down by whole tones, so there are a lot of unisons and you can work on intonation. I'll do those with thumb & 1st finger and thumb & 2nd finger). Somewhere I read about Buddy Emmons doing paradiddles as a warm up and if it was good enough for him .... I'll also do rolls across standard grips. So by rolls, I mean TITIMTIM, or the reverse, MIMITMIT; or TIMTITIM / MITMIMIT or TIMTIMTI / MITMITMI where T= thumb, I = index, M= middle.

For a while I was working a lot on alternating thumb/finger picking & working on a couple of fiddle tunes - Blackberry blossom and Goldrush -- moving across the neck, trying not to pivot from my elbow but keep the right hand at the same distance from the rollers.

At times I've practiced the Franklin bar hand exercise regularly, and also worked on slants, for improving intonation.

Of course like any normal person (for a steel player), I'll mess around with songs, or learn something by ear, or work out an arrangement of a tune. I don't use tab much although now and then will browse the tab section of the forum to plunder ideas.

Then there's C6 ...

Apologies for the long windedness. I'm not putting this out as 'this is the right way', it is simply what I do right now as an OK psg player. I'm really hoping others will chime in with similar or greater levels of detail about how and what they practice.

Jim Robbins · Post by **Jim Robbins** » 25 May 2016 7:03 pm

PS - and for those of you who can play but no longer practice - whether for laundry issues or some other reason - what was your practice routine, to get your chops to where they are?

Paul Stauskas · Post by **Paul Stauskas** » 25 May 2016 9:02 pm

I've been playing about a year and a half. I really enjoy scale run pick-blocking exercises when I can find them or make them out. I spend a lot of time transcribing phrases/solos/licks that grab my interest. I'm really bad about devoting time to playing to jam tracks.

Lane Gray · Post by **Lane Gray** » 25 May 2016 10:18 pm

My practice routine was/is (I don't practice near as much as I used to. Items with letters are what I did when I was starting out. Numbered items are current behavior)
A) exercises from the Winston Keith book, or other exercises recommended by Mike Auldridge, my teacher. For the chromatic strings, I STRONGLY recommend Weldon's ride from "Ride, Ride, Ride."

B) I'd pop in the tape from the most recent Mike Auldridge lesson (he would tape each lesson and give the student the tape) and go over what he'd taught again.

C) something from tab that I wanted to learn.

D) harmonized scale exercises on adjacent strings, then spaced strings.

E/1) something from the most recent gig in which my fingers failed to produce the line in my head. Sometimes that's my fingers not knowing what I had in mind, and sometimes it's not knowing where to find it.

2) some Mickey or Bobbe video with a lick I want to learn.

3) someone here or Facebook asked me "how do I do X?", so I sit down and compose my thoughts before grabbing the camera.

4) sitting down to figure out a steel lick I just heard on someone's record.

5 (my favorite)) putting on a CD of someone not a steel player, listening for licks or phrases to steal. Love the horn lines behind Al Green, and B3 licks from McGriff, McGriff, or Levy, and several others.

Here lately, I can play anything I can think of playing. My challenge to myself is finding new things to think of.

Tony Glassman · Post by **Tony Glassman** » 26 May 2016 5:45 am

......mainly just practicing medicine these days

Josh Braun · Post by **Josh Braun** » 26 May 2016 8:40 am

Here's my routine fwiw:

1) Start with single note runs and exercises, both to polish and warm up

2a) If I have material to learn/prepare for a specific gig, I'll spend time doing that. Often that involves transcription.

2b) If I don't have something related to a specific gig, I'll work on transcribing something I heard that I like

3) I try and learn as many cliche licks and stereotypical intros/ending as possible - doing some Ray Price stuff now.

Note that #3 is due to me coming to the steel from an indie rock/Americana perspective. I love classic country now, but I didn't grow up listening to it, and I haven't been involved with projects that do a lot of it. Ergo, I like to spend time learning what might be considered more cliche vocabulary.

I think the crux of my personal pedagogy is to balance technique with transcribing. Those seem to yield the maximum results for my time.

Gary Lee Gimble · Post by **Gary Lee Gimble** » 26 May 2016 9:39 am

including but not limited to, repetition, until it sounds right, or, my rear end is sore from accumulated seat time...

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 27 May 2016 10:11 am

Jim Robbins wrote:PS - and for those of you who can play but no longer practice - whether for laundry issues or some other reason - what was your practice routine, to get your chops to where they are?

I suspected if I wanted to play "Rainbows All Over Your Blues" I had to start playing simple stuff like "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain". I still can't play the "Rainbow..." solo. Maybe only because I'm not devoted enough.

James Jacoby · Post by **James Jacoby** » 29 May 2016 3:14 am

Gary Lee Gimble wrote:including but not limited to, repetition, until it sounds right, or, my rear end is sore from accumulated seat time...

Your practice regimen sounds the most like mine, Gary. Lots of reps when I'm learning a new lick. I first learn it slow, then slowly increase the speed. I practice with lots of different types of music--Bakersfield, rock, jazz, etc. Like you, loads of seat time. Sometimes a few days away from the steel, for some reason, helps me play better. I always use the licks, I've learned, at practice, so I don't get rusty on them. most of my practice time is playing with the radio, CDs, tracks, and doing the physical part of playing, trying to improve tone, precision, and learning the instrument, so I don't have to think about anything except the sound that comes out, when I play. This has worked well, for me, without taking lessons, studying music theory, or spending time trying to learn someone else's system. This works great for me, but probably isn't for everyone. -Jake-

James Kerr · Post by **James Kerr** » 29 May 2016 12:19 pm

I'm not at all sure what to think about so many people, who can obviously play Steel, spending so much of their life studying what other people do, and trying to copy it exactly.

James.

Lane Gray · Post by **Lane Gray** » 29 May 2016 4:23 pm

I try to copy someone else's lick exactly in the living room. As soon as I believe I can play a Dicky Overbey lick "right" once, it's time to play it my way. I learn their "words" so that I can speak them in MY sentences.

John Booth · Post by **John Booth** » 29 May 2016 4:47 pm

I do my usual speed runs till I get bored, then I learn some of Mickey Adams kickoffs and such, by mid afternoon I'm playing with backing tracks, then I get on my computer and attempt to write symphonies using VST Instruments, then the wife comes home and makes me knock off all the noise.
JB

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 30 May 2016 2:15 pm

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 30 May 2016 2:16 pm

the very first thing i did upon bringing a pedal steel home was to tape a piece of paper to the neck that showed the main positions of the major and minor chords up and down the neck with the different pedal choices. get familiar with them.
then start trying to follow along with your friends in the basement. you've got a 3 note arpeggio at least at each position. start to pick out a few melody notes during the confusion.
repeat 1000 times and then start listening to simple licks off recordings you like and try to find them.
then you'll be on your way!
play along with others all you can.
after that it's getting familiar with songs and parts your band wants to play.

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 30 May 2016 2:45 pm

I do three things in the shed: write music, reinterpret the music of others, try to construct great ideas for improvisations or solos. I am interested in tailoring my playing to specific sounds I hear in my head, nothing else.

There is always the stuff necessary to keep chops up, and I tend to go back to that when I am missing the mark. You know, scales, etc.