What did learning how to play pedal steel like look for you?

Justin Emmert · Post by **Justin Emmert** » 21 Aug 2020 5:04 am

I played guitar and bass for many years before starting pedal steel. I found a local teacher through the forum who actually required the student have prior musical experience. I took about 6 lessons from him and learned basic grips, right hand technique, major and minor chords and 7ths. From there, I bought a bunch of Newman material that solidified the basics i learned from my teacher and added major scales, single note and harmonized. I stayed at that basic knowledge level for several years, mostly due to not playing or practicing much. I did play in an Americana band for a year or two during this time as well. I cringe to go back and listen to my playing then.

A year and a half ago, I got the bug again and really wanted to improve my playing and knowledge. I enrolled in Paul Franklin's full course and it was for sure a game changer. My playing and understanding of the instrument is now far beyond where I was stuck for years. I'm playing and understanding material I never could have done 2 years ago. Now I am double dipping with Paul Franklin's method and Travis Toy's Tutorials. Without going into detail, I'll just say that the pros play and teach via intervals and that is the way to go in learning steel. Can you believe I played the steel for years and could not tell you the notes of each open string? I now learn new songs at a much faster rate, play faster, cleaner and in tune. My basic theory knowledge is better. I can tune my instrument correctly. I could go on, but I wish Paul's method had been available 6 years ago. There's no telling how good I would be or could be....

Dick Wood · Post by **Dick Wood** » 21 Aug 2020 5:44 am

My story is really pretty simple. I had learned to play guitar at age 12 then switched to bass then in 1979 I bought a steel. I took lessons from two teachers for around 4 months and they both urged me to go to a club and ask to sit in which I did. I was very raw but I got hired the first night.

I had the basics down pretty good so I would buy or record songs the band wanted me to learn and I would try to have them somewhat memorized by the next gig.

I just learned the melody and signature licks as close as I could and it has worked great all these years.It boils down to having the desire and drive to stay at it and do it until it sounds right.

Bill McCloskey · Post by **Bill McCloskey** » 23 Aug 2020 3:33 pm

Posted to wrong thread

Michael Douchette · Post by **Michael Douchette** » 24 Aug 2020 4:58 am

- Have you ever taken lessons? If so, what did your teacher have you working on?

No. I got my education about steel being a rhythm guitar/harmonica player in the Nashville studio world working with friends like Buddy, Stu Basore, Sonny Garrish, Lloyd Green, John Hughey, Doug Jernigan, Pete Drake, etc.
Then I got to USE that education when on a Sunday night in May of 1980 Tammy Wynette's bandleader called me, telling me they fired Sonny Curtis and he wanted me to come play steel. (I had messed around on a Maverick that Lloyd helped Dad get for me when I was 16, with a set of his picks I still have. Then I had an Emmons student model, then a D10 and decided as much as I loved steel I was never going to be able to play one properly.)
Monday I called Paul Sr., asked him if he had a single neck laying around I could borrow to try out with Tammy. I went and picked up the baby blue SD10 I ended up owning and playing for 30 years. The rest of Monday and Tuesday I tuned and tried. Wednesday I auditioned. Thursday we left. Friday I played a high school gym, Saturday I played Giant Stadium in front of 30,000 people.

- What sort of frustrations did you run into as you learned?

That I couldn't play all the licks I wanted to on harmonica that Sonny asked me to twin with him. MOST, but not all. THEN, tuning. Buddy and Stu set me straight on that.

- What role has both your local pedal steel community (if there is one) and the online forum community had in your learning journey?

My local community was all the greats I got to do sessions with. They were a HUGE help.

- What is your process when you sit at the steel to learn new material?

Well, for ME it's listening to the singer's demo, writing a chart, paying attention to the lyrics, and going for it.

Ben Birdsall · Post by **Ben Birdsall** » 3 Sep 2020 12:23 pm

I'm not nearly far enough into my steel guitar journey to talk about how I've learned, but I certainly match your descriptions of formal musical education.

I grew up playing cello in orchestras, starting in 4th grade. I carried that all the way through college, playing chamber music and in orchestras, but throughout that time played pieces of increasing technical difficulty hand-picked for me by conductors and my teachers from classical repetoire. I wasn't ever taught to think about music theory or what I might want to accomplish as a player, just to play the piece of music in front of me as accurately as possible.

Because of that, I stopped playing music pretty much entirely after college, and didn't do anything for a decade or so. I bought a dobro to play with friends who were good guitarists, but struggled to do more than just play straight chords and that petered out quickly.

After close to a decade of not really playing any music I picked up fingerstyle guitar, including instruction, and have since picked up lap steel and now the pedal steel I always wanted to play. (I got into dobro because it was the acoustic version of the pedal steel sound I couldn't get out of my head.) The amount of good instruction available through this forum and other sites online is extremely valuable, but more than that I appreciate how much non-classical musical instruction is designed to help me play the things I want to and get the music in my head out, rather than just train me to be a cog in a larger musical machine. I love classical music and the cello, but my musical second life (as it were) has been much more fulfilling because of the agency I have now that I didn't have as a young cellist.

Jordan Stern · Post by **Jordan Stern** » 3 Sep 2020 1:32 pm

Thanks for the awesome replies gentlemen.

Ben: Thanks for sharing your experiences with formal music education. Finding a way to offer agency to 60+ students in a large ensemble setting is a problem that music education scholars have really had a hard time dealing with, this is part of why there is so much research being done with informal music education contexts right now. Personally, I really enjoy structuring my own steel practice around what I want to do, when I want to do it. I will hear a piece with a cool lick in it, and decide that I will dig into that in my next practice session. That feeling of ownership of the entire process is great, and very different than simply trying to read a page as accurately as possible as you said.

Michael: What an awesome story! Sounds like a great confluence of ambition and opportunity. Having that musical foundation to build your steel skills didn't hurt either I am sure.

Dick: Sounds like you jumped right in the deep end of the pool! I have had many steel players tell me that the best way to learn is that trial by fire on the bandstand.

Larry Jamieson · Post by **Larry Jamieson** » 5 Sep 2020 7:43 am

I started Uke at about age 7, by 9 or 10 I was learning guitar chords. I had a rock band starting at age 15. In school I learned baritone horn and string bass, both bass clef instruments. I always liked the sound of pedal steel and when I saw a pedal steel for sale in a music store about 1972, I bought it.
It was a new MSA Semi-classic, 3 pedals, one knee lever.
I could not find any teachers where I lived, but I stared working on it on my own, find out where the chords were, what the pedals and knee levers did. At the time, I was playing bass in a local country band.
I 1974 I read an article in Parade Magazine about the Hank Thompson School of County Music at Claremore Jr. College in Oklahoma. I had the GI Bill so I signed up. There, I took a private lesson once a week from Gene Crain. He showed me how to play "Steel Guitar Rag" and helped my learn some scales and how to move around on the neck. I was also assigned to be the steel guitar player in the school country performing band. We rehearsed for about 3 hours 2 to 3 times a week and played shows to promote the school and give the students performing experience.
I also, through a student from the Tulsa area, was introduced to a Tulsa band leader and he hired me to play steel with his band. Playing in the two bands gave me lots of practice and helped my development as a player. I had to sink or swim.
During the summer of 1975 some students and I put together a band and did some touring in an old bus. More experience, more practice.
After I graduated I went on to OSU, got married, started a family and my steel wound up in the closet for several years.
In 1985 I moved back to my home town in upstate New York and went to work in my dad's music store. A guy came in one day and wanted to find players to start a country band, so I got the steel back out. Rusty... like starting over from scratch. I had always wanted more knee levers so I traded steels until I wound up with a Zum with 3 and 5. Now, between customers in the shop I would put on country records, listen to the steel parts, and try to cop some of the licks and fills. I never got to be a hot player, but I could back up a singer and play a lead part that worked for the song. I played steel with that local band for over 20 years until the band leader passed away.
I should also mention that I had a terrific music theory teacher at Claremore Jr. College, Ken Downing, a Jazz sax and piano player from the Tulsa area. I have taught steel guitar to several students over my 35 years at the music store and I always teach theory along with technique because it is so essential to playing the instrument. That's my story...

Jordan Stern · Post by **Jordan Stern** » 5 Sep 2020 9:01 am

Great story Larry! This is the first time I have heard of the Hank Thompson School of Country Music, thanks for pointing me in a new direction for some new research! It sounds like it was a great program, and I really wish we had more of these (The commercial music program at South Plains College in Texas is the only place I know of where you can currently study steel at the college level). I think it is awesome that y'all had a country performing band, I always love seeing ensembles at the college level that can lead to real, paying gigs for its members.

It sounds like your background makes you a very capable teacher of the instrument, and I like your emphasis on teaching theory. I am thankful for my background in music theory, as well as my experience playing other instruments as I am learning to play pedal steel. My first day I was able to start pushing pedals and say, oh, there's the IV chord, here's a V, here's a vi, etc. I couldn't imagine starting this instrument from scratch without that background, talk about a mountain to climb all at once!

Thanks again Larry.

Tucker Jackson · Post by **Tucker Jackson** » 5 Sep 2020 9:43 am

Jordan Stern wrote:I am thankful for my background in music theory, as well as my experience playing other instruments as I am learning to play pedal steel. My first day I was able to start pushing pedals and say, oh, there's the IV chord, here's a V, here's a vi, etc.

Your comments sparked a memory... before my first steel was delivered and I knew nothing about how to play, I was reading a post on the Forum about learning the PSG. Somebody was cracking wise and said something like:

Put bar on strings
Pick strings
Step on AB pedals
Slide up 2 frets.

I didn't know what that would sound like, exactly, but the first thing I did after unpacking my steel was to try out that move. "Oh! It's a I-IV-V chord progression!" And I was literally on my way to self-teaching with that framework established. I want to thank whoever posted that a couple of decades ago for getting me started on the instrument.