The Steel Guitar Forum

Mr. Lake wrote:

<SMALL>Arrangers today usually write as per the pitch, within the treble clef. Taking that a step further, normally only the top three strings qualify for the treble clef, all the rest would have to be written in the bass clef. Oh woe ! I doubt I could ever master that! </SMALL>

On the E9th, middle C is the 5th string, 1st fret. Further up the neck, it's the 8th string, 8th fret. When you reach the 13th fret, all 10 strings are on the treble clef.

The E9th is pretty much a treble clef instrument. C6th is the neck that needs both clefs.

Bobby, thanks for clarifying. I thought what you wrote in the last post might be the case, but I know very little about the C6 neck. I have had no problem working with some basic reading on the E9 over the past few days so I didn't understand what the problem supposedly was about the clefs.

I'm in the 8th position for now, and I am using the B pedal and a position change to the 10th fret on the 3rd string to get the E F G notes. I decided to use the A and B pedals instead of changing positions for now on the 5th and 6th strings, even though at first I thought no pedals would be the way to learn this.

I'm just playing "Mary had a Little Lamb" kind of stuff, but I'm already recogizing notes (on the neck) I'd never thought about before.

Bob P.

Hi Mike,

I'm a beginner and would love to get a copy of your text on reading music. E-mail correct in profile.

Thanks

I have taught myself to read in what may be an unconventional manner, and I only read to learn a song or part. After that it's memory work. That way I can use what ever position I want to play the notes.

First, if the song is in C, I'll go to the 8th fret, (E9th tuning). I'm assuming you know how to play a C major scale there, and also know how to read a treble clef staff. I see the staff as "intervals", ie. (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), starting at the root note. I know these intervals on my guitar starting at any relative fret, pertaining to the key signature. I can get rusty from not reading for some time, but it comes back to me quick with practice, thinking in intervals.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Randy Beavers on 19 October 2004 at 09:12 AM.]</p></FONT>

Here is an approach that may help some in reading music on
the steel guitar.
On the matter of "note location" if you think of things in the
following way you can practice memorizing the Fretboard; an
important key to the process.
Here is the formula I use for the E9th neck.

At Fret 8...C Position (forget the pedals/knee levers)

String 1 9th tone or D
String 2 major 7th or B
String 3 major 3rd or E
String 4 Root or C
String 5 major 5th or G
String 6 major 3rd or E
String 7 9th tone or D
String 8 Root or C
String 9 Dominent 7th or Bb
String 10 Major 5th or G

The same formula for string assignment applies to
all of the key positions. You can practice this away
from the instrument while in the Dentist's office,
waiting in a parking lot, sitting on a park bench or any
time you have moments to spare for musical thought.
Some examples:
After memorizing the above you will know that the 9th
string at fret 1 is Eb; the second string at fret 5 is G#;
5th string at fret 10 is A .... etc.

Like anything else, the more you practice the better it
gets and when mastered you can apply the pedals/levers
and establish the notes in your mind by raising or lowering
as dictated by your setup.

Works for me.

Also - you can easily draw up and print out a little 10 string, 12 fret box with the "table" function of Microsoft Word, and write in the note names to give you a sort of tab helper.

Good post, Roy! At first I thought "everyone knows that", but then I realized that lots of people don't.

I was lucky enough to have been taught note reading in grade school, on a little plastic tonette in the key of C. Ever since, the first thing I do on any instrument is figure out where the C scale is.

Randy, I do think about the intervals and will focus more on the relation of the written note's intervals and the intervals on the guitar now that you've mentioned it. The second string will mess me up a bit because of the lower tuning (i.e. being sort of out of sequence as far as pitch), but I see the obvious advantage of it being that way when playing licks etc.

Roy,
I sort of know what you wrote about the intervals, but need to think about it more and make it more automatic. But what I don't get is when you said,

"after memorizing the above you will know that the 9th string at fret 1 is Eb; the second string at fret 5 is G#; 5th string at fret 10 is A .... etc."

The way I look at it, there still seems to be a whole lot of work to do, to get from point A (knowing the 8th fret intervals and notes) to point B (knowing the notes on all the other frets). I mean I can figure it out, but I don't see where learning the 8th fret will "automatically" have me knowing other frets without a lot more memorization. Maybe I misunderstood something about what you meant.

Bob P.

Bob,
I think Roy was using the key of C as the easiest example, the general point being that at any home fret, you need to know two things:

a) what scale degree each string is (e.g., the 1st and 7th strings are the 9th pitch, the 2nd string is major 7th, 3rd and 6th strings are the 3rd, 4th and 8th are the roots, etc. This is often easiest to learn for the Key of C, or 8th fret.

b) then you must know (quickly, and this is the part that for me needs practice to get quicker at) what (letter) note IS the 9th, 3rd, 5th, etc. for every key. So that when you move your bar around you can calculate those two steps (a) and (b) quickly enough.

That's why Roy said that once you've learned these relationships at the 8th fret for the key of C, you can move them around. So at the 1st fret (home base for key of F), you would know, quickly, that the 9th string will be the flat-7 of the key, or an Eb, etc. When you move, the numbers stay the same, but the letters change.

Hope that makes some sense. If not, I'm sure Roy can explain it better than I can.

For a reasonably complete education in the working terminology and staff symbology of music, Band in A Box (BIAB) is hard to beat, ..plus you can hear the results.

To move the above information to the PSG, several programs are available. At least one has been offered for free on this forum.

The basic of these PSG/stringed instrument programs is that you input your tuning and your assigned changes, then specify your activated changes and see the desired scale position/location on the neck.

I tried to talk Dr Peter Gannon of BIAB into integrating one that I wrote into BIAB several years ago, but with no success.

If you are interested, send me an e.mail request, and I will e-mail you some printouts from my program so that you may see what can be done. What I send will be in terms of the tuning/setup that will be on an instrument now being made for me, but will illustrate the program functions. You can edit the forms so you can substitute your own setup information into them.

No, the program is not for sale as maintaining/explaining it would take too much time.

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by ed packard on 19 October 2004 at 12:14 PM.]</p></FONT>

Thanks for the follow up to my post Jim. I could not have done better.

What Randy said about the intervals is pretty much how I do it, too. One other trick to help you figure out which "position" to use, is to quickly scan the notes and see which chord they belong to. If you're reading classical music then there won't be chord symbols to look at, but sometimes--depends on the music--the notes in a given bar will be mostly the notes of whatever chord is being outlined.

Once the music starts getting complicated this doesn't work so well, but it's a start, and it makes the task of figuring out which fret to play a given note at a bit easier. If you know that the notes in a given bar outline a C chord, then going to a standard C chord position will probably give you most of the notes right at that fret.

Check out the Prelude from Bach's cello suite no. 1 for an example of how this works--you should be able to find the sheet music free on the internet somewhere.

-Travis

Roy and Jim,

Thanks. That is understood now. "Just" have to do the work.

Thanks to everyone. I think there is a lot of great information here that will be very helpful.

Bob P.

To me reading notes is fine and easy to do. But I read one time in a Buddy Emmons course somewhere. That there is a simplar way of doing things on the steel. But people actualy over look it. If they would concider the Key structure to the song they where playing, and not figure in notes ,but in degrees (numbers) In studing theory and writing a theory book years ago published by Keith Hilton on regular guitar. I learned the ins and out of notes by Number. In doing this I also learned there isnt any type of music i cant play on my steel guitar. To me the number system was more quicker than notes. Cause actualy you are just playing notes at a distance away from a root note. Whether you have a chord change or not. You still playing in distance away from that root chord. But Bobby is write the E9th is more of a treble instrument with the lower C being the 10th string first fret. The bottom neck takes bothe cleffs. As far as what position to play in. I look over the music first and see how far the Bass notes on the music are going to extend down, Then Judge that lowest note to be my octave of that particular song.Then i go up a major scale of the key from that bottom note.trying that as the treble cleff or middle scale. Cause the pedal steel is such a versatile instrument. But i never bass the middle C on the neck anywhere cause every song doesn't have a middle C note in it.

------------------

Hello,

Jazz guitarist Ted Greene made a good point in one of his jazz books about the pros/cons of being able to play a musical note in several positions on any instrument. He said that often musicians think of this as being more difficult. How do you know which position to start reading/playing from? When, actually, it can be an advantage. We've got more choices as to how/where to play to the notes we're reading. He said it's all in your mindset.

I think it helps, too, if you can determine the key signature of the tune before you start reading/playing the tune. In other words, if you see no sharps, flats, it's in the key of C, one sharp = G, one flat is F, etc. That will give you a position or two that might be a better place to start reading that particular tune from. Maybe the 1, 4, of 5 position of the tune's key signature is a good place to start. Of course, if there are accidentals, then....it's tougher.

One big advantage any fretted instrument has over a piano, of course, is the ability to modulate keys. It's a lot easier to move the song up 1/2 step on our instrument than on a piano.

I think reading music is like anything else, it gets easier the more you do it.

SK

Dewitt Scott did a book that gives notes on one line and tab on the other. great book I have had it for years.

ernie