Graded Examinations For Pedal Steel Guitar

Jim Robbins · Post by **Jim Robbins** » 14 Oct 2008 3:44 pm

The effect of that kind of pedagogy in performance of WAM ("Western Art Music"*, aka "classical music") and jazz has been to make the music much more boring and to stress certain kinds of easily measurable techniques that are easily talked about (mostly speed & uniformity of tone) at the expense of less easily measurable ones that can really only be heard. I'd say the latter techniques are the ones that most innovative and interesting players have -- e.g. time feel, use of intonation for expressive purposes, responsiveness to other musicians.

Calvin Walley reasonably points out that tackling material that is too difficult can be frustrating and counter productive for some students (I'm paraphrasing). But a grading system isn't the answer because music students generally and aspiring steelers in particular have very different backgrounds -- so what may be easy for one is hard for another & vice versa. If you're facing that kind of frustration, you are much better off, in my view, to get a good teacher than to buy the Grade x book filled with stuff you aren't interested in and get frustrated at how long it takes to get to Grade x + 1.

Others will doubtless disagree ...

* not to be confused with "Country and Western Art Music"

Larry Bressington · Post by **Larry Bressington** » 14 Oct 2008 3:54 pm

Anybody who has taken grade 1-8 knows how demanding and tough it is, i have been there, i will say for me, that the education was phenominal and it was all volentary education, i did it because i wanted too! But it was there for me.
I wanted to become a music teacher and in England you need a Diploma which is 1 grade higher than grade 8, and its very very hard to get, they dont hand them out because you got a qute smile.
Classical and jazz background is a very sharp insight to modern music, after all, these people had this stuff down 500 years ago.
Dident buddy emmons play classical on the steel?

Nobody here is saying that it should be mandotory, its just like church. if you beleive it, Go!

Calvin Walley · Post by **Calvin Walley** » 14 Oct 2008 3:55 pm

Jim

forget the "grading " the student simply needs to know that in order to be able to get to his OWN goals he will need to be able to do "this " with reasonable proficncy before tackling the more difficult things
in other words it would simply give the beginer a road map of how to proceed instead of wanding aimlessly

basilh · Post by **basilh** » 14 Oct 2008 4:05 pm

Alan, I think the idea is laudable, 'though the implementation may be somewhat difficult, I say lay it out and approach the RGT and London School of Music..

A lot of the negative comments here are from players who are just making excuses for not wanting to spend the time and effort and are mainly interested in playing for their own pleasure instead of becoming ENTERTAINING and fulfilled COMPETENT musicians. Probably they also feel threatened by what a structured course MAY produce (Especially if it's UK based) it could and probably would produce some players capable of recognition in more than just their home town. IMHO.

Larry Bressington · Post by **Larry Bressington** » 14 Oct 2008 4:51 pm

I also want to add;
It should be strict, and disiplined, dont give away trophy's because somebody showed up and payed the fee, which is all too common today.
IT'S ALL GONE SOFT! Weed out those who do not respect standards of the Steel guitar examination board.
Have the standards set by Big name players, a bit like congress, of say buddy emmons, paul franklin and such, ala harvard, and London school of music.

Exams should have emphisis on , playing ability, seating posture, bar control, vibrato usage, intonation, timing when played with a rythyum track, sightreading skills, knowlege of;
Minor, Major,, Diminished, Augmented, #9's TO b5's chords and scales. Chordal development through scale hamony and building exstended chords.
Jamming should also be part of it, immediate improv to resolve a lost passage and many many more inputs required to stand on todays proffesional bandstand.
After one has accomplished this, one can go into the world to develop into a player of themselves, carrying with them all that firm and solid background of music applying it to their own musical concept.

Bring the Classical rules to the Arena.
Just a damn good old fashioned regimental , no nonscence, cane whipping school. Old school!

Wouldn't you want a soldier in your trench to be firmly trained, and disiplined and fully qualified who has gaurded the palace, or do you want your local bully there to do the job?
I'll take the stiff regimental training anyday, than me training myself my way.

I wish that steel guitar school was around when i started on steel. Lack of understanding, disipline, and know how, wasted away a few years fumbling around.
Solid and straightforward is what we need.
I did say that it should be VOLENTARY tests or school if one was availible.
Nuff said! Stand at ease!!!!!!!!! stand easy!

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 14 Oct 2008 5:07 pm

basilh wrote:A lot of the negative comments here are from players who are just making excuses for not wanting to spend the time and effort and are mainly interested in playing for their own pleasure instead of becoming ENTERTAINING and fulfilled COMPETENT musicians.

Basil, I've taught pedal steel, and it's a very hard instrument for most people to learn. Jeff Newman told me himself that he thought that only one out of three students of pedal steel would still be playing in two years. IMHO, it's difficult enough to keep someone interested and dedicated without humiliating their ego regularly with tests and exams. Only a few people are suited for highly structured learning environments, that's why there's only a few great music schools in our entire country. (That's also why they keep relaxing standards in most other schools.) Learning something that may not be a lifetime vocation should be an enjoyable experience, not one that has the participant jumping through hoops and being constantly compared to other players.

As for your comments about "players who are just making excuses for not wanting to spend the time and effort and are mainly interested in playing for their own pleasure instead of becoming ENTERTAINING and fulfilled COMPETENT musicians", I think those comments are elitist and uncalled for, and I'd have thought you were above that sort of thing.

"Entertaining and fulfilled COMPETENT musicians" don't all come from a college or conservatory-type background. In fact, I'd venture a guess that the majority of them don't.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 14 Oct 2008 6:00 pm

what can be wrong with approching the steel the same way?
there are lots of folks that don't need this approach, but i think it would benifit many

Then by all means - go for it. Please read the first line in my reply, and the rest of it for that matter. But there are definitely a lot of things that can go wrong with approaching learning like this, IMO. You pays your money and takes your choice.

can i like the idea and not spend a single second organizing it or arguing over proper technique? I am the student not the school board president.

Of course you can like the idea, but somebody is going to have to come up with some good ways to do this, or it could do more harm than good. This kind of stuff doesn't "just happen". Learning is not passive - the idea that one can just "do what you're told" and really learn anything deep is absurd, IMHO. Painting by numbers isn't painting.

Do you think the students at Berkeley are having no fun? Does structure and assessment equal sucking the the life out of the subject? I have had many wonderful learning experiences in which a good balance was struck between structure and fun and it has been in these instances where the teaching was the most effective for me. Surely you give your students assignments and grades?

I assume you mean Berklee (Boston), not Berkeley (California). I've known plenty of Berklee students over the years - I thought about going there myself a long, long time ago - I grew up a mile and a half from the campus. Some love it, some hate it and leave.

As far as my own teaching goes, I honestly think that rigorously graded learning exercises and graded exams are one of the largest inhibitions to learning. Like it or not, people tend to do whatever gives them a higher grade, whether or not it leads to better learning. If you think it's easy to design exercises for which higher grades always (or even generally) imply better and deeper learning, I have news for you - it ain't so easy, and I don't care what field it is. You can subvert even excellent and motivated students with this kind of thing by setting false goals.

When learning, students must be free to fail - they learn from repeated trial, failure, appropriate feedback, self-correction, and eventual success. The feedback should be just enough to send them in the right direction, but should not imply penalty. So a learning exercise should de-emphasize the grading aspect, and simply push students in the right direction when they're going wrong. This is exactly backwards from the way most educational institutions do it, and you see the result. If you must judge, final "judgment" should come at the end, when students have had ample chance to repeatedly try and fail, self-correct, and ultimately really learn.

I do not remotely mean to imply that rigorous exercises and teachers or mentors are not important. But the emphasis can very easily move from understanding to rote manipulation to get the exercise completed. When I see that as a teacher, I remove all the structure, dump the students into the deep water, and tell them to swim. There's an awful lot of metacognition involved in learning anything difficult or complex, and sometimes rote graded exercises don't cut it - wikipedia on metacognition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition

Bring the Classical rules to the Arena.
Just a damn good old fashioned regimental ,get down, gouge your eyes out, no nonscence, cane whipping school. Old school!

Not for me, thanks. If I wanted to play Vivaldi, I would have simply continued studying classical music. I love to listen to it, but my playing interests are different now. Plus - if you come after me with a cane, you will have your hands full.

Look - do what you like. But I don't think that this type of thing will really change the game for learning steel guitar or anything else. People have been reinventing this wheel in every discipline imaginable for decades now, and it doesn't work any better now than it ever did. For the most part, truly motivated students will learn, no matter what, and the others will wonder why.

All my opinions, YMMV, and please read the whole post before you argue that I'm dissing this idea. I think my main concern is the tone of the "grading" suggestion, not the idea of PSG exercises.

Jeff Hyman · Post by **Jeff Hyman** » 14 Oct 2008 10:00 pm

Wow. Some interesting info flowing here.

1. Some teachers are good musicians.
2. Some students may become good teachers.
3. Some students don't like the teacher.
4. Both come to the table with their own level of natural born talent.
5. Both may come to the table with taught talent.
6. Some are lost without sheet music.
7. Some prefer using feel and the number system.
8. List goes on and on....

I support all sides of this, but lean more toward Dave and Donnys feedback. Music is a great gift. Figure out how it best fits your lifestyle and go for it. Shouldn't be any right and wrong. Just my opinion.

basilh · Post by **basilh** » 15 Oct 2008 1:40 am

One other thing to note Alan, the people who bandy around the names of Buddy Emmons etc. as an argument AGAINST formal qualifications are NOT speaking on behalf of their named examples, indeed they don't even know what musical qualifications their examples have, I think.
The perceived threat is the main motivation for the negative comments.

Just as a guideline as to what depth some of the replies have, one well known player and aficionado was told jokingly by Jerry Byrd that in the studio "they don't play the minors" and to "ignore them".., That person sincerely believes the statement as the truth.

Some of the top pro's are not exactly forthcoming with EVERYTHING they know, and remember that the really top pro's past and present only post here infrequently, the 99% of the membership aren't quite at that level and maybe the tone and subject matter of THEIR responses outline just why.
Of the 6000+ members there's only a dozen or so who are really at the top of their profession.
Of course the criteria of what or who is a top pro is (Amongst the majority of the forum members) subject to personal biased interpretation, In my, also biased opinion, the yardstick is well defined as the Players like Paul Franklin, Buddy Emmons etc. would state as THEIR favourites.

I suggest that you keep an "Open Mind" on the remarks made here as they're not the bee all and end all of really informed opinion.

Alan Cook · Post by **Alan Cook** » 15 Oct 2008 2:42 am

Thank Basil

It would be great to hear what some of the top players think about this subject, so if you're listening speak up.

Alan

Don Sulesky · Post by **Don Sulesky** » 15 Oct 2008 3:27 am

As I see and hear it too many players spend their time trying to play and sound like their favorite players.
They learn every lick just as they played it.

When it's time to play a song they haven't played before they are completely lost and can not improvise the melody or anythig close to it.

That's why I advocate to learn and play your own style and play the melody as you hear it, not as someone else played it.
Don

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 15 Oct 2008 3:45 am

Calvin Walley wrote:this is why so many stop posting

I haven't, you haven't; it's still an open forum.
Good to see you still have an avatar.

any new thought here is always met head on with nothing but put downs

In this case it's a big thumbs down.

You can do that with certification for tuning pianos, to gain your status as a Craftsman in the Piano Tuners Guild, but it doesn't make you a better tuner beyond the basic skills gained within a year.

Pedal steel, like the sitar, is a lifetime endeavour.
Qualifications create limits.
Or to quote tbhenry:
"Instead of spending the time creating hoops, and jumping through hoops created by others, I would rather spend my time on the bandstand nmaking music. This whole idea is totally ludicrous!!!!! What next?????"

Bob Hoffnar · Post by **Bob Hoffnar** » 15 Oct 2008 7:31 am

There is not much of a market for traditionally stuctured musical studies for the pedal steel. Who do you see as your students ? I go to the conventions and they can hardly get anybody to go the standard workshops. When a truly great teacher like Joe Wright offers ways to study the real meat and potatoes of being a musician he is generally met with blank stares and empty rooms.

With that bit of happy news I say go ahead and put something together and see what you come up with anyway. Don't wait for any sort of international consortium. It will be quite a bit of effort but may be workable at first if you start small. You may discover a hidden market and do the instrument some good. You will need to do the work by yourself if you want it to happen. Once you get your system into practice there will be time for variation.

Billy Murdoch · Post by **Billy Murdoch** » 15 Oct 2008 8:42 am

This is an excellent subject and has turned out to be very interesting indeed.
No replies Yet from big timers.
There are a great many courses available for beginners,these range from being very basic to very advanced.
If,for example the student were able to follw and play everything contained in the Winnie Winston book,He would be well on the way to playing the instrument competantly.There are numerous ways to advance by studying theory,technique and all the other courses available.One on one instruction is not always easy to arrange,depending on Your location but A good teacher is probably the best way to advance Your ability.
All the info is out there for the student,dedication is required and the student will have to set His or Her own goals.
Studying for a degree of sorts would,in My opinion be a very expensive way of learning, and in comparison to the other methods would not be cost effective.
Dedication will produce results.
Billy

Keith Murrow · Post by **Keith Murrow** » 15 Oct 2008 9:05 am

I guess if it helps some people, I say go for it UNLESS it gets to be a situation where those who go through the program (providing you can even get it off the ground) suddenly start trying to lock others who haven't gone through it out of gigs. "Oh, I'm sorry, you have to be at least a Certified Level IV player before you can play in this town."

Mark Treepaz · Post by **Mark Treepaz** » 15 Oct 2008 9:45 am

Keith Murrow wrote:I guess if it helps some people, I say go for it UNLESS it gets to be a situation where those who go through the program (providing you can even get it off the ground) suddenly start trying to lock others who haven't gone through it out of gigs. "Oh, I'm sorry, you have to be at least a Certified Level IV player before you can play in this town."

As absurd as that may seem Keith, I was sort of thinking the same thing.

Twayn Williams · Post by **Twayn Williams** » 15 Oct 2008 10:51 am

Alan Cook wrote:I have seen a couple of threads that have touched on this subject but I thought I would put my idea forward and see what people think, so feedback please good and bad.

I recently studied for grade 4 classical guitar and after trying to progress for many years on the instrument I found the grading system very helpful for a number of reasons.
1) Gives the student something to aim for or work towards.
2) Stops you working on pieces outside your technical and musical ability.
3) Provides a sense of completion and achievement.
4) Helps you to know where to go next (next grade)
I know some people just love to play they have a list of songs or musical achievements they want to learn and they get on and do it. Also some players have better opportunity to learn from and play with other musicians and steel players. Ok these are some of the arguments for and against grading and I’m sure you can and will bring up many more.

Having done the grade 4 for classical guitar and starting to move to 5 I thought it would be helpful if there were a grading system for steel guitar.

How it could work?

1) Steel Guitar Forum devise a grading system for pedal steel guitar and maybe Lap and Dobro.
2) Volunteers from the SGF would form a Grading System Team/working party
3) 6 grades to be developed 2 beginner 2 intermediate and 2 advanced would be written up and agreed.
4) 3 pieces would be selected for each grade from existing material e.g. Jeff Newman workshops, Winnie Winston book (all with permission of course)
5) An aural awareness for each grade devised (time and pitch)
6) A musical knowledge test devised for each grade around the real methods used today e.g. The Nashville Numbers System.
7) An improvisation section developed at each level where the student would have to play chords fills and solo over a recognized song or chord sequence.
6 workbooks with CD guides produced for purchase from the SGF.
9) Examinations could take place at the St Louis, Dallas and Ireland festivals
10) Examiners would be the best volunteers from the top players.
11) The Team should aim to get the system recognized by the main music colleges and universities in the US and UK.

A rough outline and lot of work I know, but I think it would be beneficial for the recognition and future development of the instrument. What do you think??

Alan

I like this idea a lot. It makes perfect sense to me. I don't know why their are so many negative views posted. It'd be an excellent way to codify the divergent teaching materials currently available into a structured learning program that could be worked either with a teacher or alone.

The tests sound very similar to the juries we had to take at the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri in Kansas City (say that 3 times fast

) that counted for half your grade in the class. It's the most nerve-wracking experience I've ever been through. After that, recitals were a piece of cake

chris ivey · Post by **chris ivey** » 15 Oct 2008 10:57 am

would pitch be based on the perfect pleasant style of buddy emmons, or the out of tune method everyone seems to enjoy (except me) of jimmy day?

Drew Howard · Post by **Drew Howard** » 15 Oct 2008 12:53 pm

Les Green · Post by **Les Green** » 15 Oct 2008 1:20 pm

I personally have nothing against the idea. If someone wants to do it, fine, but I have to go along with Donny, Jack and Charlie McDonald. In my opinion Charlie hit the nail on the head. I'd much rather spend my time on the bandstand that cramming for exam's like I had to do for my Ham license. Got to give tbhenry some credit also. Missed his post.

Kenneth Farrow · Post by **Kenneth Farrow** » 15 Oct 2008 2:49 pm

How 'bout uniforms, badges of rank, different colored berets to designate elite corps, tamper-proof identification cards, prerequisite time-in-grade rules, and like that??

Drew Howard · Post by **Drew Howard** » 15 Oct 2008 3:26 pm

codify the divergent teaching materials currently available into a structured learning program

Codify materials? You mean the ones by Buddy Emmons, Jimmie Crawford, Winnie Winston?

The methods are all different, I'd call that teaching "style".

If Berklee or GIT offered a degree in steel guitar then we'd be getting somewhere. For one thing the tunings are too many, too divergent.

If you guys want to establish rules for book learnin', why don't you write your own method first and see how that goes over?

Twayn Williams · Post by **Twayn Williams** » 15 Oct 2008 5:39 pm

Drew Howard wrote:For one thing the tunings are too many, too divergent.

For the basics:

- E9 for PSG, 3 pedals/2 knees
- C6 for lap steel
- open G for dobro

doesn't seem like that many to me...

Larry Bressington · Post by **Larry Bressington** » 15 Oct 2008 6:00 pm

I'd would definatly exspect to see a dress code! Polished shoe's, Trousers, Long sleeve shirt that has seen an iron recently, [just for the exams though]

No jeans, monkey boots, or Budweiser T-shirts for the examination board, MAYBE A DINNER also!

Just an added touch, away from the learning side!

Don Drummer · Post by **Don Drummer** » 15 Oct 2008 7:05 pm

For those wanting input from the pros lets consider the two main methods that have been around for a while. First and formost you have the Jeffran College model that is graded;beg, intermediate, advanced. It uses formal demonstration,tabulature and a discusion of music theory and common sense application of what is learned. Another less formal approach are the teaching tapes done by Mike Johnson, Bruce Bouton and others that talk you through the process without much else. Either way works depending on your learning "style". I convinced that Pedal Steel and 6 string players learn by doing then through a reverse engineering process figure out why it works the way it does. This leads to a knowledge of music that benifits the player and others through a understanding the "mechanics of music". Also, a determined player will intuitivly know at what pace he or she needs to proceed to succeed. Don D.

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Graded Examinations For Pedal Steel Guitar

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