The Steel Guitar Forum

You're right about that of course, Basil. Thanks for making that clear.

Here's one for Yah !!

It's platitudal dispensation time !!

I think everyone is right !! EXCEPT those on the left !

Oh boy. Can't you hear Brad rattling the keys? Maybe I can get this in before we get locked and while Alan is still around . . . ?

I have been thinking alot about your very intersting dissonant post. Do you think that the human brain actually needs in some subconcious way (and even finds pleasurable) the process of resoving these imperfect tonal sounds in order to recreate the whole?
If music and musicians could be perfect like a computer--if such a thing even exists--and played, we may even find it very fatiguing an/or boring to listen to? Like those band in a box arrangements. Even rhythmically when set on "swing" for instance, it is too perfect to really feel like swing because it is the slight imperfections and give and take that makes the music breathe and actually give it life?

Great . . . now this will be closed for political content AND being off topic!

But not before I get it a little closer to being back on topic when I say that the easiest slanting guitar I ever had was an Excel Jerry Byrd model at 22 1/4 inches.

Didn't someone in the forum once mention that Don Helms uses a Stevens type steel ? Does Don not use 3-string slants, or what's that about ? Or maybe that's not what they said . . . never mind . . .

Ed, I was under the impression that Don Helms rarely did slants.

Scott said :-

If music and musicians could be perfect like a computer

Three perfect sine waves with no third harmonic content, heard simultaneously as a perfect chord mathematically calculated, would sound awful, it's the third harmonic and SLIGHT variencies in pitch correlation that make it sound "NICE" to our ears, which are at the best of times a very flawed device with a far from flat frequency response and limited dynamic range.

The whole point of Don Helms' tuning is that he can get most of those chords without slants. I saw a recent youtube video with him appearing to use one, and I've heard a few people say that he did but I've never heard anyone confirm it. Bobbe Seymour knows him- maybe he will pop in and enlighten us.

I've seen Don Helms use forward slants on the low strings when he wasn't really playing a lead part. There are no slants at all in his Hank Williams Songbook.

I think his low strings are tuned A C# E, which would make the forward slant another major chord (second inversion 5 1 3). I couldn't really hear it because he was just padding in the background when he did it.

In his interview in Andy Volk's book Don Says that he Rarely uses slants. He goes on to say that it is absolutely necessary to use some. The book is fascinating. Get it.

basilh wrote:...it's the third harmonic and SLIGHT variencies in pitch correlation that make it sound "NICE" to our ears...

That's why impossible slants become possible. The ear is not only tolerant, it positively loves all those overtones.