The Steel Guitar Forum

Remember that the Beatles started off trying to sound like the Crickets and Carl Perkins. It wasn't until they figured they couldn't do it and just decided to be themselves that they progressed.

Alan Brookes wrote:Remember that the Beatles started off trying to sound like the Crickets and Carl Perkins. It wasn't until they figured they couldn't do it and just decided to be themselves that they progressed.

That, and when they stopped eating onstage.

Herb Steiner wrote: That, and when they stopped eating onstage.

Good point, Herb! This is not brought up nearly enough.

I went to see Sarah Jory play last Saturday. Such an amazing sound. She just seems to be lost to the outside world when she's playing, and totally at one with her pedal steel. She may have started out wanting to sound like Lloyd Green but sounds just like Sarah Jory.

BTW, equipment wise, It looked like she was playing her white Magnum through a Peavey Nashville 112.

Ray,

Are you sure you're not being hard on yourself? I had a Sho-Bud for years. I, like most steel players, copped a few of LG's licks. If you ask me, playing a LG lick on a Sho-Bud, one cannot help but sound a little like LG!

Ray, there is no controversy. It's plain and simple, cut and dried.

To sound like someone else, you'd first have to be that someone else, and I've not seen that take place yet in this old world....

Sarah J., sounds exactly like herself, because she IS herself. And I'm just glad I sound like me, because it kept me from Chasing Rainbows, that would have otherwise led me down a wrong road that would never end. It could be considered as a dog, chasing after his own tail, and leading nowhere. As it was, I got exactly to where I wanted to be.

Folks have to learn that sure you need to learn all the licks you can from everyone who plays, whether or not they are at the top of their game or at the bottom. Most everyone I ever heard play, had something they played that caught my attention.

I had (and still have) my heros to this very day. And, they were, most anyone & everyone who played pedal steel in that era. I couldn't begin to name them all, for fear of leaving someone out, and yet they all had an influence and should get the credit they truly deserve. Because without them, it wouldn't have happened. I sure needed those cuts on records to learn from. Without them, I'd never have played pedal steel. And yet I still, never sounded like any one of them.

That has nothing to do with what brand of steel nor anyhing else, other than the fact that none of us are anyone else other than ourselves, regardless of who you are. You'll sound exactly like YOU...............

I've gone through the same thing on 6-string a number of times over the years and come to the same conclusion: I'll never be Roy Nichols, George Barnes, or or a teenaged Lenny Breau any more than I'll be Joaquin, Herb, Ralph, Lloyd or the Buddys, but occasionally I'll try to channel one of them at the top of a solo just for my own amusement and a fresh outlook.

It's fun, and I almost always end up with a couple of new tricks in the bag.

Lynn Frazier rocks!!

This is an old post, but I believe it is still highly relevant. I have recently been asked to join a Merle Haggard tribute band in the UK. Our first gig is tonight and I have been woodshedding Norm Hamlet's parts for weeks. What sounds simple and basic in fact is not easy to get the exact phrasing and feel. All players have their signature licks and Norm has his, but the more I get into his playing, the more I realise what a great player he is and has been over the last 40 years. I can get fairly close at times, but it is still me copying another player and nothing more.

It's the same thing with Roy Nicholls' lead parts. We have an incredible lead player in the show, but can he sound like Roy? Definitely not but he has had great fun in learning his parts. Like fingerprints and faces, our musical output is unique to us all and that is to be celebrated. Better to be that way than a second rate copyist.

What a great topic. It's more than the ear. It's more than the feel. It's more than the equiptment. The big boys also have fine tuned techniques going on that are very very personal. To get it "just right" is a very subjective thing.

Great revisiting this older thread that speaks to so many of us about our desire and motivations!

For me it's like so much in life, it's about choices... all the macro and minute choices that go into playing, starting with who influenced us or made us want to play, but continuing on with what guitar we settle on, how we adjust the amp, use the volume pedal, and all the minute adjustments we make to bar control, hand position, and all the myriad techniques and details. No matter how closely we listen and copy another player, each of those adjustments result from our own choices, as they did with him or her.

When I started playing I was most impressed and influenced by Buddy, but I joined a band the same day I got my first steel (and Buddy wasn't playing a Maverick then, either!), and I had to come up with stuff to play right then, without some years of copying and study. The second band I was in played all original music, so I had to come up with everything from scratch. I'm very glad things worked that way, and that I got on the path to my own sound.
These days I revisit players I love, and take what I can... but I'll always just sound like me. I'm glad.

Learn the notes to the lick and phrasing, and make peace with the rest...You'll sound LIKE him at your best.... That's about all a man can do, and that's about all he should do

if i remember right lloyd is left handed, so his left brain is controlling his picking hand. in left handed people the left brain is the emotional and "artsy" side while the right brain controls speech and logical thinking, motor control etc. it's just the opposite for right handers. this seems to be a great advantage since most emotion comes from the picking hand. so get a left handed steel if your right handed.

I listened to Buddy, Pete, Jimmy and Lloyd as a kid playing lap steel. Naturally, there was no way I was going to replicate them. It wasn't until much later, though, when I first heard my hero, John Call, that I bought a pedal guitar.

Playing in bands in the 70s and 80s, I had to emulate a lot of the country rockers. When we did originals, I tried to sound like Call. I racked my brain but was never happy with what I came up with. I just didn't have the same imagination as him and couldn't understand why. Recently I've learned that before he played steel, he played trumpet, guitar and bass, and also plays sax, banjo and dobro. He was in his high school marching band. He knows a lot more about theory than I do. Etc., etc., etc. I'm now resigned to the fact that I'll never be able to fill his shoes because I've never walked in them.

Winnie Winston said PSG playing is all in the hands, and the feet, and the knees, and the brain. We all know it also takes heart. I think the physiology of the player makes a difference, too, as well as the equipment. Some players can play barefoot, some need cowboy heels; some play pinky under, others pinky out. The pedal action on some of the newer steels makes my old 'Bud feel like a dinosaur. How many of us have the same KL set up as the next guy? We'll never be able to replicate exactly what we hear because there are too many variables.

Steal and learn from others, but put all that in your little bag of tricks and shake it up a little. What will come out is you.

Or so I've been told lately and am trying to digest '-)
Lynn

Play from the heart and be as creative as you can. To me, the sound and tone you get comes from how much feeling you put into your playing, and sometimes I think it depends on your steel, your amp's gain settings.

Brett

An interview someone had withBB King kind of summarizes the responses in this thread.

He said, "Regardless of who I admired or who I tried to emulate, I always just sounded like me".

For years, I have told people that I know two Buddy Emmons licks......I can't play either one but I know them.

I've heard LG playing two versions of the same song and at times he even had trouble sounding like LG.

I never play the same thing twice. The most difficult comparison is of oneself.