The Steel Guitar Forum

This is really great discussion/thread showing the versatility of the instrument and has been a pleasure to read as well as listening to the variety of clips. I really dug the Bill Frisell videos with Greg Leisz. It feels like this decade could be a big breaking point for the instrument going forward, especially in the world of avant-garde, modern genres of music.

Here's a track from an instrumental session I was lucky enough to get to play on a couple of months back. This was a fun, "out-of-the-box," type of thing that originally I just wanted to add different ambient effects and non-traditional dirty type of steel(warble delays, wah, octave verb, sweeps, etc.) Yet surprisingly enough they actually wanted a somewhat clean, normal sounding steel guitar playing a melody type of thing in the verses between the weird sounding steel guitar playing.

https://soundcloud.com/eddysteelguitar/ ... e-roughmix

Cool, Eddy!

Can't find much more than this from Ivar Grydeland's new solo CD. There's a full track clip here, with pedal steel weaving in and out.
http://www.hubromusic.com/2012/index.php?cmd=29

Posted elsewhere on the Forum by Tim Marcus, this deserves a spot here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... hHYDFc4Rck
Greg Leisz with Daft Punk

A solo piece of mine from an upcoming CD with INTRA:
https://soundcloud.com/steelydannyboy/t ... randomness

Watching the live stream for nine inch nails at lollapaloza I noticed the first song had some lap steel? Though it looks a bit like a mandolin. But I have been seeing this sort of use of lap steel in industrial rock music. The whole recent swans album the seer is full of lap steel.

Anyway here is nine inch nails, steel comes in around 2:10.
http://youtu.be/vF6BXLi2OyA

I've become a huge fan of the song "Ghost Riders In The Sky" and just recently I played my steel with a rock version that doesn't feature steel, it's recorded by a rock band called the Outlaws. This band features Henry Paul, lead singer for a band called BlackHawk, on lead vocals. I listened to the song, and decided since there's no steel in it, I'll add the steel. Part of the song talks about boots being made of steel, and I figured after the line, I could do a little steel guitar part for it.

Got to see SWANS recently, Justin - even the band wears earplugs! They played this one; Hahn's e-bowed lap steel is all over it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkqF3kulYB0
Had a chat with Kristof before the show. Very nice guy, we spoke about steel most of the time. He mentioned guys like Buddy Emmons and Sneaky Pete, as well as the volume level. THE SEER made some 2012 Best Of lists, so steel is spreading into uncharted waters.

Just learned of this guy, Mike Cooper:
http://www.cooparia.com/
Quite interesting, not yer ordinary lap/Hawaiian steel music. Fish around on his site for videos and sound clips like this:
http://www.cooparia.com/discography/rayon-hula
Or his latest disc (scroll down for soundclip):
http://emporium.room40.org/products/512 ... south-seas
An older post of a lovely Indonesian song, showing Mike's straight playing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnm7KBtq53I

Daniel, that is awesome that you got to chat with the guy from swans, I've seen them a few times now (easily top five loudest show I've been to) and the seer hasn't left my car since it came out. It is such a great album.
That mike cooper stuff is pretty cool as well. Very interesting stuff and not what I was expecting.

I just moved to Rochester mn a couple weeks again and a band wants me to play with them, they sent me this song

http://youtu.be/JxvNmpSl7jU

I was unaware jay Farrah (son volt/uncle tupelo) and Ben glibbard ( death cab for cutie/postal service) had done anything together. I liked it, looking forward to playing it this week.

I think this (huge) thread is a good place to file the first video of my new band, as it is quite far from the average PSG material

Sometimes I feel uncomfortable that there has to be a conversation heading, "Different Styles", and the assumption (perhaps well-founded) that there are only one or two commonly-accepted styles (among the thousands on this planet) of pedal steel guitar.

Having said that, I'd like to share with you all the latest review, in Dusted Magazine, of the trio album "Mirage" recorded by Ellery Eskelin, Michael Formanek, and myself. There's a sample track on the site.

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/7738

Nice review, Susan!
Yes, you have a point about styles. But that's probably a reflection of how music is perceived in general - it's gotta have a category, a.k.a, pigeonhole. It's just good to know that players like you aren't restricted by that.

Now that is some different styles.Here's one from Dire Straits Im sure its Paul.But I like the simplicity of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFUoEbym ... 4C5968A36B

Susan, I have had this thread bookmarked right next to my "Steel Guitar Forum index" for months now, and I check in periodically to get my weird on. I haven't seen any anti-country* sentiments expressed on it at all. It's just a fantastic tool for both my own listening and, as a reference tool whenever I run into the anti-STEEL sentiment existing as a subset of the anti-country** mindset.

There's probably not one six-stringer out of thirty that has an awareness that the steel can do all of the above. Your friends (yes, maybe?) but among rockaboomies? The closest they got to it was Steve Howe and David Gilmour going "Woo-oo-WEE-EEE" on Yes & Pink Floyd albums, respectively. My teen-ish guitar students had NO IDEA so much different stuff existed! (And, Pelican & the Red Sparows ARE the "future of pedal steel" - it's already HERE.)

I do wish there wasn't "The Wall" between "real steel guitar" and all these noisy kids, but upon close examination, the wall appears to be made out of corncobs and chaw - I'm pretty sure I know who built it. And it wasn't Buddy or Paul or Gary or you or any leaders - thems be dollar-store, budget corncobs.

The ultimate solution is simply that under "Operating System: Planet Earth" the old people die and go away. And the kids become the new old people... flip, flip, flip, flip... and there's nothing "tragic" about it, it's just the way we do things around here. There have been +=60 billion people or so on the planet, so far - imagine how crowded your living room would be if they DIDN'T go away!

*(ooh, I used the "C" word!)
**(oops - I did it again!)

Good points, David.

If you go to this page, under Scot Livingston's name, you'll see that this whole theme is now on facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/jguig/

Certainly many - maybe most - of us still love steel in country music, in all its variant shades, but many hanker for some spice in their diets.

I don't think anyone has posted Jr. yet.I forget what he calls that thing ,but I would like to have one. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jun ... ORM=NVPFVR Look close,he has a steel guitar pickup mounted in that tele.

That's Junior's Guit-Steel.

This is why I bought a pedal steel. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jer ... ++you+tube

Elton Smith wrote:This is why I bought a pedal steel. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jer ... ++you+tube

That's also the hard way to say http://youtu.be/9MTVsd3f8r8



Click the YouTube logo on the Bing search video page to get to the real source URL.

Hey,bOb that tuning thing you posted on the thread was pretty interesting.Done anymore with it?

I ran across this.Zane thats great. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYxbAyU7k1s

I heard this song this morning on the radio. The band consists of two sisters who are making waves.

The steeler is Mike Mogis playing on a GFI. He also has his own studio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPWrX9PJAOs

Jan Viljoen wrote:I heard this song this morning on the radio. The band consists of two sisters who are making waves.

The steeler is Mike Mogis playing on a GFI. He also has his own studio.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPWrX9PJAOs

That was pretty great, never heard of the before. Going to have to check them out.

I was watching old Mark Lanagan videos (one of my favorites) and came across this one I had forgotten about (I'm also a big queens of the Stone Age fan)
http://youtu.be/ogWou6NxZpU

Well, if posting "mere" Telecaster-benders like Jerry Donahue (!) is allowed, I get to worm in the best composed guitar solo since, well, just great, that's all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9858hw77vQ4

Vince Gill, playing for a room full of musicians (Chet Atkins, for one). The solo starts at 2:15, and at 3:22 he unloads the mother of all bendy Telecaster licks of all time. He plays the exact same solo at Crossroads (one chorus shorter) but this is the best version - like a redneck Mozart or something. Pulls the whole dang crowd outta their seats, too - for a guitar solo. I can listen to this over and over. Roll over, Amadeus.

Link to a 2 part video posting by Bob Hoffnar:
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopi ... 12#2137512

Chas Smith - 10" EP Cold Blue Records
http://open.spotify.com/user/128573997/ ... 49St1Craqz
The second track is on youtube in case you need to have an account.
http://youtu.be/udBa88Imk0Y