Fun/Relaxing way to practice intonation w/ breathing drone

[Jacek Jakubek]

I recently started practicing my pedal steel again after barely touching it this whole YEAR (Steel Guitar delinquent.) I've been having such a good time these last few practice sessions that I regret having taken the time off.

Here's my favorite practice: Playing along with a drone note that you make with your breath by blowing into a melodion. A melodion is a lightweight, plastic, keyboard thingy with reeds in it. See a picture below of my Suzuki melodion mounted with Velcro onto a mic stand. You blow into the white tube.



I got some cheap plastic clothes-line clips at the dollar store that I use to clip onto the melodion to give me the drone note I want. You can use more than one clip (see picture) to give you any major or minor chord that you may want for your drone.

Here's why practicing with a breath generated drone is much more fun than with a pre-recorded drone:
- You can vary the timing of the drone notes any way you want with your breath: Play one bar with drone, leave out the next, do staccato drone notes, long fluid ones...infinite combinations.
- Vary the volume, intensity of the drone note.
- Do a humming "MMmmmmmm" sound with your voice along with the drone note. This is very relaxing and helps to train your voice along to your steel. An advanced version of this would be to hum a different harmony note along to your drone with your voice...Lots of places to take this.

I mentioned it's relaxing. You can get in a kind of yoga-like meditative relaxation state after a few minutes of playing along with the breath-drone. That's because you can breathe out slowly into the melodion, like 15-20 seconds per breath, which is 3-4 breaths
per minute (normal breathing is around 12-18 breath per minute...a big difference!) This is probably the most enjoyable part: Learning steel guitar while becoming a seventh-level yoga master at the same time!

I want to get a tube extension for my melodion so I can put it on the floor, instead of mounted on the mic-stand (so it's not as loud being right next to your ears and you can blow into it harder.)

You can get the suzuki melodion I have here: https://www.long-mcquade.com/23339/Guit ... w-Case.htm. Sweetwater has a Hohner model that looks similar (it's $50): https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... 2-melodica

Try it. It's super FUN and RELAXING.

BONUS Funny Story: The plastic clips I got were not deep enough to reach the black keys of the melodion. I spent a lot of time filing the plastic clips with a bastard file so that they could clip onto the black keys...Then I realized I could have just clipped the black keys from the other side instead, like you see in my picture

[Sandy Inglis]

That's great - thinking outside the box!
I don't need any more project at present but I like how you think.

[Jacek Jakubek]

Thanks, Sandy.
This is how I will always start my steel practice now, just playing whatever along with the melodion for a few minutes. Rushing straight into tabs, instructional material, or backing tracks can be too much at times and sometimes it makes me want to avoid practicing altogether.


You could probably do the same thing with a harmonica on one of those wire harmonica holders on your neck like Neil Young uses, but you won't get as many different notes as the melodion.

[Larry Dering]

I prefer the heavy breathing drone. Adding another dimension.