Graham Griffith
From:
Tempe, N.S.W., Australia
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Posted 6 Apr 2005 6:05 pm |
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How could I have missed this thread ... and a meaty one at that!
Since the issue of standardisation has raised its ugly head I'd like to put in my two penneth worth.
Firstly, by standardisation what are we trying to achieve? I would assume an ability to avoid confusion in beginners as touted by Bobby Lee as well as a means of making the instrument attractive to these beginners. I would also assume as a means of "navigating" the plethora of tablature out there ... "an A pedal is always an A pedal ..." etc. It certainly isn't to make it easier for the manufacturers as they are very used to customising ... hence the evolution of the word "copedants".
Secondly, standardisation enables the player to refer to recorded examples of pedal steel playing and "work out the licks". Remember all the kerfuffle when a well-known player like Paul Franklin uses a new change and they all go running to get a lever that does the same. This is standardisation or, as I would like to call it, conformity. The great players don't conform ... they innovate. As long as we copy licks only, we don't evolve. It still takes pro players who have to "play the licks" at the start of their career a long time to turn their "8 hours a day practice" into anything original because they have the commercial albatross around their neck.
Thirdly Zane Beck was never into standardisation but rather into simplification. This even extended to amplifiers as I remember him saying to me that wouldn’t it be good if an amplifier just had say two controls, volume and tone. Although acknowledging the traditions of American steel guitar I believe that he didn’t really see his tuning (a pedal evolution of the Hawaiian E13th tuning) as two separate tunings but rather as a unified tuning. Although he was able to explain the tuning in terms of E9th & C6th changes, he really just played “tunes” … it was a bit like human behaviour in different environments … you modify your behaviour in terms of the company you’re with or, with music, play the idiom.
Zane’s sound was unique with Bill Stafford coming closest in my mind. Zane admired all the great players like Buddy Emmons and Maurice Anderson but admired Julian Tharpe the most. I believe that Zane had a bit of regret that his life did not allow him to play to the extent that he could attain the giddy heights of acclaim that some players attained in their life. With due respect to Bobby Lee’s views I believe that a “Zane Beck” resource is long overdue and would be a fitting tribute to a true unsung innovator.
Conformity is the true danger to pedal steel guitar (in particular) not the risk of “misleading” beginners. Once you’re locked into those licks you’re probably going to sound like muzak to most people … their ears aren’t going to prick up and say “wow”. A prime example was a few years ago when Stacy Phillips the wildly innovative dobro master played here in Sydney in a regular honky tonk room. Have you ever seen the pool table players stop and listen when you’ve been playing something with nuance, albeit acoustic? Well it happened then and that was because Stacy wasn’t being ordinary … it wasn’t even a flashy bluegrass tune. His brilliance was evident and the sounds were fresh.
Zane Beck’s lesson to me in ’78, when I was a mere 28 years old, was to play music. He didn’t want to show me licks … he was showing me tunes like “Cherokee”, “Have You Met Miss Jones”, “You are the Sunshine of My Life”, “Misty” etc. For ideas Zane listened to Oscar Peterson! not other steel players … sure he could play the country sounds and did at the VFW’s and State Fairs etc. but he was most interested in “tunes” and the music underlying them. The great players don’t innovate by copying other steel players.
Interestingly, if I didn’t want to have access to those “country” sounds, there is another pedal steel tuning which is simpler than Zane’s, with 10 strings and uses Al Marcus’s E6th approach with a low A.
That’s the tuning used by retired Sydney musician Jack Richards … a simple guitaristic approach that changes major thirds to minor thirds and the 6ths to dominant sevenths. My new Anapeg has a change within Zane’s tuning which is the opposite of Al’s suggestion … I drop the F# to E and the D to C#, (while dropping the low B to A).
I’m all for resisting the rising tide of conformity … hell, I’ve just had a hernia operation (which precludes lifting a pedal steel) and for the last 4 weeks I’ve been playing the two local 3 hour residencies on the 10 string Eharp (non-pedal) tuning which I have on a light dobro. Chord voicings that are obtained over three adjacent strings on the pedal steel now lay over 6 strings and, of course, new sounds are opening up and suggesting themselves. Necessity is the mother of invention … get dynamic … be aware of but don’t copy licks … learn tunes and become a musician. That’s what Zane would have wanted … Zane Beck and Jack Richards both taught me that.
Yours musically
Graham
[This message was edited by Graham Griffith on 06 April 2005 at 07:08 PM.] |
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