Merry Christmas from the Beavers’ Family

[Randy Beavers]

Hope everyone has a great Holiday season!
https://youtu.be/ZpRf9aob02c

[john buffington]

Merry Christmas to you also, great playing.

[Fred Justice]

I am totally blessed by the Lord.
Merry Christmas to you and Judy as well Randy.

[Jerry Overstreet]

Just beautiful Randy. Great playing. Wonderful sound. Even made the Grinch happy.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

[Jeff Garden]

Merry Christmas to you and your family, Randy...and thanks for the music!

[Gary Peaslee]

Your talent is a blessing to all especially at Christmas time. Thank you for sharing. Wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday and many blessings in 2019.

[Craig Stock]

Merry Christmas Randy, Thanks for the new video, you are one of the best, I enjoy all your cd's that I have purchased when you played at the PSGA shows a few years back. Looking forward to anything new you put out.

Hope you have a great Christmas and New Year!

[Larry Dering]

And Merry Christmas to you and yours. Have a blessed Holiday.

[Larry Dering]

And Merry Christmas to you and yours. Have a blessed Holiday.

[Kevin Fix]

Have a Blessed One there Randy!!!! Loved it!!!!

[Rex Blevins]

Great playing Randy..

[Carl Williams]

Thanks for your gift of music Randy...a beautiful Christmas Day here in Oklahoma...🎄 Carl

[Floyd Lowery]

Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thank you for the great Christmas music. You always play so nice and smooth.

[Paul Pearson]

Merry Christmas to you and your family supper supper great playing as always love it

[Dan Rollans]

Awesome!!!!! I became an Randy Beavers fan in 1976 at the ISGC in St. Louis.
I was 14 years old. I heard this great sound coming from behind a closed door and had to check it out. There I found Bruce Zumsteg grinning from ear to ear watching Randy bring to life a brand new blue ZumSteel. I was astonished. I’m still amazed with his playing today even more.
Merry Christmas Randy and Family from myself and Steelers Choice .

[Darrell Criswell]

Randy:

Where did you get your love of Bach from?

[Randy Beavers]

A sincere thank you to everyone!

I think because music was my “sideline” for so many years, finding things that entertained me led me to look elsewhere for material. Melody always being the most important. Since we were young in school we were exposed to melodies from the classical era and I believe that ingrains itself in us. When you listen to the counterpoint melodies that accompany the lead melody that outlines the chord... well I can get lost in it. Bach’s music may do this the best. It is what we’ve been exposed to the most through television and movies especially during the holidays. There are many other composers that I like as well but there is not enough time in the day. I also wish I was better at reading music. Of course the more I do it the better I get at it. Right now I’m pretty rusty at it.

Once again thanks for the compliments. I’m thankful for them and it inspires me to keep practicing and learning.

Randy

[John Lacey]

Randy what’s been interesting to me of late is how yourself and Travis Toy have been playing C6 type licks on the E 9 neck, quite extensively I might add. Is that a path that you guys have consciously taken, or has it just slipped into your lexicon?

[Randy Beavers]

Hi John, it’s interesting how Travis and I approach this. With me I studied C6 for many years and still do to some degree. The advantage for me was I could already play these things on the C neck so I could literally transpose them a note at a time to the E neck. To me this was an advantage. For Travis he doesn’t play C6th, not that he couldn’t if he wanted to. He’s also a very accomplished guitar player that he can draw from as well. One thing we both have in common is that we don’t hear something and automatically stereotype it as a C6 or E9 sound or song. We just hear it as music and go from there. There’s no magic to either tuning for playing something, it’s all within the 12 notes. On the E tuning you obliviously don’t have the lower notes sometimes, but the top of the chord is still there. I think the biggest obstacle for some might be that we learn two completely different feels for both tunings. Travis hasn’t. He’s always just heard it as music with no preconceived notions that it had to be played on one neck or the other.

I took a break from playing for 7 years or so never touching it. It was in a case in a garage 125 feet off the back of the house. When I got back into it one of the things that bothered me was only being able to do the swing type of feel on the C neck. When I went back on the road with Lee Ann Womack I started playing a SD-10 and I wanted to have those chords, licks, and most importantly the feel under my hands at all times without a C neck. So I went to work on it. After that gig ended there were still many things I could only do on the C neck so during that break I went after those things. Today I feel like I can do things on the E neck I don’t know how to do on the C neck.

This is a hard question to answer and I hope I’ve done it justice. No matter which way you go about it though, knowledge of theory is the only way to get there, IMHO.

[Travis Toy]

First off...Merry Christmas Randy! One of my favorite players, and I’m glad to call you a friend.

John, I really think Randy summed it up for me already, but I can tell you my specific path. When I started playing steel, the instrument I had was my dad’s MCI, which was a SD-10. Even though I knew a lot of the things I was learning were played on C6th, I never let that stop me from trying to figure them out on E9th. It was all I had, so that was my only option. It is indeed the same 12 notes, and although there are obvious voicing differences, and note range differences, it doesn’t change the building blocks of what makes a chord, or music. You can make any chord on the E9th that you can make on the C6th...it just might be voiced differently. The same with single note lines...you just might have to play a little bit of it in a different octave. Ha. I think E9th is actually largely unexplored by most players, because they default to C6th for any sounds that aren’t stereotypical for that tuning. There are times when I wish I had learned C6th, but honestly, most of the time I’m glad I went down the path I did, because necessity gave me a deeper knowledge of the tuning than most acquire.

I really do think many players are limited by what others have stated should and shouldn’t be played, or can and can’t be played on a particular tuning. That’s a shame, because it’s all there waiting to be discovered, and it’s all just music.

-Travis

P.S. - Side note...that last paragraph also applies to the opposite tuning. E9th sounds on C6th. All there as well. I think Paul has just done a new lesson on that very topic, and I’m sure it’s terrific.

[John Lacey]

I want to thank both you fellas for responding so elegantly on this subject. I play and enjoy both necks over the years and have always used the C neck as the experimental fun neck. Back in the early 80’s I picked up a U-12 Sho-Bud and made it universal a la Jeff Newman. That sent me down an interesting path that I found was both challenging and frustrating. It made sense because of the univerality of the tuning yet frustrating trying to mentally adapt the 2 tunings into one new one. Also frustrating for me was trying to get that tuning in tune. It culminated into me being asked to do an instrumental (Remington Ride) on a national TV show and it coming out essentially out of tune, not to mention in the key of Eb which made our fiddle player mad. Listening back to that episode made me decide to sell the U12 and go back to a D10, which I did.
I think you guys are right about the preconceived ideas formulating one’s prejudice towards the double tuning when the instrument should really be heading towards a single tuning. By simply playing those notes well and eloquently on the E9 neck, you’ve shown how it could be done. I think that it’s been well worth the effort. Happy New Year to both and I hope to have future conversations with both of you. Thanks also for your video efforts which are much appreciated. Yours truly, John Lacey.

[Mark McCornack]

I realize this post is almost exactly one year old, but I think it’s seasonlly apropos to give it a well deserved TTT.
Randy, your playing is a huge inspiration to me and I’m hopeful that you will continue with your work and also that you’ll post more videos in the future. Happy Holidays!

[Joe Goldmark]

Randy, I've always been a fan and you're a great player. Travis, the other benefit you get is not having to carry a D-10 around! John, reading your last post makes me think that we've all had (and still have) horrible moments and bad gigs. It's amazing we keep playing. The times when it all seems to work and we're getting tone and we play up to our ability makes it all worthwhile. But even great players have embarrassing moments. There's just too much technique, and tuning compensation on this instrument.

Joe

[Hook Moore]

Merry Christmas Randy and family..

[Dale Rottacker]

Merry Christmas to you Randy and the rest of the Beavers family, and thanks for this beautiful arrangement. You were my first inspiration to what was available on E9th. I’ve always been a Big fan of C6th, but never connected with it like I’d like, so hearing what you get from the top neck along with Travis and Jody Cameron... I think you’re all somewhat responsible for the way I approach the tuning. I’m not a music theorist, but just a lowly hunter and pecker, but when I find one of those “off” “C6th” type voicing’s, I’m pretty thrilled.

Thanks again for the inspiration and blessings in the coming year.