Tim Marcus of Milkman Sound Demonstrates Effect Pedals

[Rick Bernauer]

Here's an interesting video I ran across with Tim Marcus of Milkman Sound playing pedal steel with various effects pedals. Interesting for those interested in using the pedal steel outside the standard country context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SelD2fBqTG4

[Tommy Auldridge]

Sorry, but this strikes me as an example of noise for people who are not able to play any kind of normal music with chords and stuff like that. Most people prefer something with a melody. This guy spent good money for that steel guitar. WHY? Just my opinion.

[Bill Miller]

Sorry, but this strikes me as an example of noise for people who are not able to play any kind of normal music with chords and stuff like that.

Oh I think Tim is more than capable of playing country style pedal steel. The objective of this video is to show that the instrument can have appeal to people who aren't exclusively into traditional steel guitar sounds. I'm mostly into classic country but I don't see it as a bad thing for pedal steel to be taken up by other musical genres. Quite the contrary.

[Roger Rettig]

If that's Tim playing under the opening sequence then he's clearly capable of playing well in a more traditional style.

[Tommy Auldridge]

Okay, I understand that. But, you can accomplish that sound with a $200. six string lap steel. Why not? You don't need pedals if you're not going to play more than one string at a time. Thanks, Tommy.....

[Dave Mudgett]

I dunno, man. I think much of what Tim's doing here would be pretty hard to replicate on a 6-string lap steel, although I suppose a really good nonpedal player can probably do a lot. Except that, as Roger says, the opening sequence really sounds like pedal steel to me.

But I think all of that is pretty much beside the point. A pedal steel guitar is an instrument to create music. It has an enormous potential to create a lot of very different types of music, many of which have not really been explored all that much.

FWIW, there are some people (not necessarily steel players) out there who really insist that what they want can only come from a nonpedal steel, as if a pedal steel can't, somehow, do things that don't use all its pedal/lever capabilities. I don't get it - to me, a pedal steel guitar is a steel guitar that can be used equally well with or without the pedals and levers.

This is a demo demonstrating different ideas of how to use guitar effects pedals with a pedal steel - it covers a pretty wide range, and I see applications. But I play lots of styles of music on a number of instruments. I would probably do more music outside the bounds of 'normal' pedal steel, but an awful lot of people - I mean non-steel-players - seem to have this fairly fixed idea of what pedal steel can and should be used for, and would never think about having a pedal steel in a band. I think a lot of that type of attitude is a sort of musical tribalism. I don't think this is helped by the attitude that a lot of pedal steel players have - that it's some how circumscribed in its application. But I think the stereotyped pigeonholing of the instrument is a problem.

You should understand that I really love traditional country music and pedal steel's critical role in it. But there are lots of other types of great music out there, and pedal steel could have a role. In fact, it does now, but there is definitely resistance, some of it pretty strong.

[Ross Koeberl]

Just because you can heat up your food in the microwave is no reason not to own an oven.

Thanks for posting the video, Rick. I always appreciate hearing how some non-traditional-country pedals sound on the steel. Wish there were more videos on this sort of thing, it would really help open people’s perceptions up to the infinite sounds made possible by a steel guitar (and probably lead to me blowing more money on gear)!

[Mark Eaton]

For a general guitar magazine, there was a really good article on pedal steel a few years ago in Premier Guitar.

Russ Pahl was one of the players featured in the piece, and he comes from the school of "there's more than one way to skin a cat."

He had this to say:

Ten or 15 years ago I decided I could not beat guys like Paul Franklin—he is the best at what he does,” says Pahl. “I needed to find something I was the best at. I realized guitar players don’t sound like Charlie Christian today because they’ve been changing their sound for the last 50 years. Pedal steel guitar hasn’t changed sonically since 1975—they still use the same big pickups through clean amps. I use a two-pickup guitar built by Sho-Pro with a Strat-style neck pickup and a Tele-style bridge pickup in the same position along the scale as a guitar. I treat pedal steel more like an electric guitar—more of a texture thing. I use tube saturation with lower-output pickups. That gives the distortion a more pleasing sound. It lets guitar pedals work like they were designed to work.”

If you missed it the first time around when we had a thread here, check out the link to the article:

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/ ... tar?page=1

[Jonathan Lam]

I just can't even believe what I'm hearing. What are we doing if were not playing the kickoff to honky tonk angel or Juke box Charlie?

[Gordon Hartin]

these were some effects i was using a few years ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzEhsS-2EBU