The Steel Guitar Forum

fwiw Mike i did this with a 60 piece orchestra and 40 piece choir and they were my orchestrations. it kicked my butt all around but, it is doable. get a pendulum style metronome (the conductor) and play by watching it instead of the steel or moreso alternating. all your issues can be dealt with by exercising directed practice.

a conductor is a collaborative member for this type of large instrumentation music. this could be applied to a big bad just as much as a large vocal group. you need a central unifying time, dynamic and energy source.

try to have a 120 musicians (some film score orchestras) work with out a conductor you get chaos.

Mike Perlowin wrote: ...the more I think that the answer is to take my cues from listening to the other musicians as they follow the conductor.

I can't imagine any professional orchestra member getting to keep their jobs if they chose this as their modus operandus. ("Let the other guy follow the conductor; I'll be right behind you and no one will notice I'm always a little late.")

People (me included!) keep talking about seeing the music stand as well as the conductor while playing steel. Are we discussing playing steel as a member of the orchestra or as a soloist with an orchestra?

Think of a piano or violin soloist--they never have written music in front of them. Playing from memory is the norm for classical soloists. (Rather arbitrarily--how is what the soloist is doing so different from what the members of a string quartet are doing? Yet they often have the music in front of them.)

As out-of-the-ordinary as a pedal steel soloist playing with a classical orchestra would be, I think the concept of a steel player as a member of the orchestra itself is so far out of the ordinary as to reach the vanishing point!

I think the soloist just needs the music stand for rehearsals, so when the conductor has to stop the orchestra and says, "Let's take it again from "Letter B", or "from Bar 43", the soloist knows what he's referring to. For the performance itself, where there is no stopping, the soloist should have memorized the piece entirely and needs no music stand.

Agreed, Jim--as I said in my previous reply!

Brint Hannay wrote:My comment above (about the music stand) would only apply to audition and rehearsal contexts, where verbal references to "bar 68" or whatever might occur.

Yes, I realize that, Brint. I was addressing your first point as to why a soloist would need a music stand; the reason is for rehearsals (only). I think we agree on this.

I agree, most of them are not sight reading on the spot, it is learned music but the sheet music generally becomes a 'Crutch'. If you have ever learned a 4 page Peice, it almost becomes impossible to remember each bar in order unless you throw the newspaper away. When i took 'classical lessons' years ago we had to do both.

Jim Cohen wrote:I think the soloist just needs the music stand for rehearsals, so when the conductor has to stop the orchestra and says, "Let's take it again from "Letter B", or "from Bar 43", the soloist knows what he's referring to. For the performance itself, where there is no stopping, the soloist should have memorized the piece entirely and needs no music stand.

That is precisely why I need the music and stand for the rehearsals. (I have one of Tom Bradshaw's tab racks" that clip on the front legs.) I always have all my parts memorized.

I don't know how I'm going to deal with this issue of not being able to look up at the conductor. But I have somebody who is interested in working with me, and we are going to figure it out together. It's a problem that has to be solved by experimenting, and trial and error. That's not going to happen for a couple of months at the earliest.

Right now, the next thing I have to do is learn the exact instrumentation of this group, and re-write my arrangements to suit them. (This is to a great extent, a matter of copying and pasting.)

First things first. The arrangements have to be complete before anything else can be discussed.

I think John Billing's idea was a good one. Consider getting a flat mirror and one of those trucker bubble mirrors. Try clip mounting them on the front of the guitar near the fretboard and see what works best (maybe both?!). If you explain to the conductor what you are trying to achieve, I think that might even be taken as a compliment.

With a mirror, you might then be able to put the music down low, allowing you to see the music, fretboard and conductor with little eye movement. And you wouldn't need to be on a riser.

You do not need to see the conductor perfectly, only well enough to perceive what he or she wants.

I think that is a very good idea John!

Also, if you need help transcribing or transposing for different keys (Bb pretty often) let us know.

Scott Shewbridge wrote:Also, if you need help transcribing or transposing for different keys (Bb pretty often) let us know.

Thanks, but the music writing software does that.

I don't know if the mirror idea will work, but it may be worth a try.

If a percussionist can watch the conductor while he plays a xylophone, I don't see why a steel player can't watch the conductor while he plays the steel guitar. Mike, this is a skill that you must learn to play with an orchestra. It's either that or go back to playing country music in bars.

You know, I was already thinking "mirror" by the time I read John Billings' post. If it were me, I would have a hard time with split vision, with the conductor twenty feet behind a solidly opaque mirror. However, there's all different gradients of see-through mirrors, as in the car windows. It would take a great deal of experimentation because you'll (ideally) be going into different lighting situations at different venues, but as I see it perfected, you would be watching a brightly lit conductor through the mirror and a shadow of your (left) hand on the mirror's surface. It would also take a great deal of practice to use, even when you had the lighting levels worked out.

To work through the various lighting and percentage-of-reflectivity varients, it would work best if you had a mike boom attached to a front leg, and maybe three or five differently-silvered plexiglass panels that could attach with wingnuts or slip into a frame. Lot of work there, but....

Mike, I think John is onto something. Maybe a teleprompter-type arrangement where you could see the conductor's reflection, but it would be essentially invisible to everyone else.

Yeah, a video link with a monitor down low in front of your steel, so you don't have to look up.

That's silly.

Humans have a thing called peripheral vision. You can learn to use it well. You can see two things at once, and pay attention to both. Most of the orchestra members are already doing it - they're watching the sheet music and the conductor at the same time.

If you can't watch the conductor while you play, you can't play in an orchestra. It's that simple. Learn how to do it or go back to playing country music in bars. Them's your choices, Mike.

In my last pit job I had to address the need for peripheral vision. The music was complex enough (and my sight-reading was and is somewhat wanting!) that I never got the hang of looking up and away from it. I had to learn to see it all at the same time. I eventually found that I only needed to afford the conductor a tiny corner of my vision to follow his direction.

I confess that this wasn't exactly an orchestral setting, but it amounts to the same thing. The MD/conductor expected to be followed. All the other musicians in that pit were orchestral players and none of them had any problem - I, though, was almost a fish out of water, and it was on ME to come up with a solution.

b0b's right - you have to learn the skill or acknowledge that it's not for you.

PS: I wasn't very clear in that first paragraph: I meant that, if I looked away from the music, it would take me valuable seconds to locate my place on the page. Ergo, I had to keep one eye on the music constantly.

Almost every instrument in a standard wind band and orchestra (except cello and upright bass) are designed so you can look directly at the music and the conductor with a minimum site angle between them. Most are taught to have posture that enforces that together with maximum diaghram/breath or bow control.

When I play for a conductor, I move my music stand to be between the heads of the two people in the row in front of me. If they move during the performance, I move my stand and chair in response, as needed. I set the top of my stand to be in a line of sight with the top of the conductor's stand (it serves as a datum that his direction will never go below). The angle between the top of my music and the conductor's range of motion is the minimum possible.

If Mike needs to see the music, conductor and his fretboard, I think he'll be more comfortable if he can minimize the sight angles between all three.

I do acknowledge that when playing in an oblong arrangement, typical for pit orchestras, I do need to work a broader range of sight angles, with the added complexity of avoiding blind spots (not necessary when facing head on), but I still try to minimize the sight angle between my music and the conductor.

Mike, you may want to try to keep on the conductor nas others suggest, but have the mirror to help alert you of changes you might otherwise miss when looking at the fretboard.

This is cool stuff. Steel guitarist players do have a reputation for being mechanic/musicians, right?

Maybe Ed Packard can wire up a robot conductor for you, Mike. Every time you whomp on your 10th pedal, his arms fly up.... hell, you can hook one up yourself with some fishing line, a couple of pulleys and a blowup doll. Once everybody's following you, the gravy's on the biscuit.