The Steel Guitar Forum

bo..'throwing up a prayer' is a very cool way of putting it. i throw up many prayers nightly and thanks to someone it usually works out ok!

If we don't get out of the thinking that everything has to be done by some rule and like someone else did it the steel guitar WILL be a thing of the past. Even the die hard fans that make the steel shows are diminishing. Sure the old standard take the melody from the last few bars and make that an intro worked well for it's time but things are different now. If players spent as much time thinking outside of the box as they do about the decline of the steel maybe the dang thing wouldn't be disappearing. Think in terms of melodies from your gut and see if that don't help you a bit.

[quote="Lane Gray"]was completely ignored by the Big E, when he raided "Honey" by John Coltrane (not, thank God, Bobby Goldsboro) for the classic intro to Night Life.

Speaking of Buddy, I don't hear the melody in his intro to Ray Price's "an Eye for an Eye (you can hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFj680v3 ... ata_player if you like)," but I do hear four bars o' awesome.

Ditto Lloyd on "Meanest Jukebox In Town"

Or those walkdowns that kick "Proud Mary" or "Tulsa Time."

]quote]

My point exactly. That stuff was not the norm but it worked great. In the contemporary Christian music, your gonna need to think less like a traditional steel player to make it fit the rest of the music. It's about making music and not so much about playing traditional steel guitar licks.

I had to learn the number system, when I started to do studio work. It was hard at first. Sometimes I can visualize the lick or the run in my head. Also while at home tab has helped out grately while
I practice all the time.
Tommy Shown
SMFTBL

Tommy, that there is where I regret letting my reading go.
When I was with the Burlington Opry, the fiddler carried a notebook of staff paper. If there was an intro or ending that didn't wanna lodge in his memory, he'd just write it down in Standard Notation