The Steel Guitar Forum

Improvisations, innovations, tunings, mystery "licks", speed picking, etc., create timidities, whereupon a beginner may appear balky in the presence of such a player. Overcoming the shyness is the first step in progressing and advancing to a desirable level of playing the steel guitar. Many players heard a famous steel player say, "I always wanted to play like B.C., and now I can." Just plug it in, and let 'er rip.

A friend of mine gave me this one time while shooting pool, and (over)thinking a shot:
"Sometimes, you just gotta shoot!" JP

If you want to play steel guitar or any instrument, you have to be agressive enough to get off your dime and get up on the stage.

Shy........is okay.

BUT REMEMBER! Some of the 'more experienced' players that you'll chance to see are truly "SHOW-OFFS" and they just can't wait to take their turn and yours too. Let 'em go for it and play all of their memorized licks right up front. Also remember, many of these guys only have a hand-full of stuff to lay on their listeners. After they've blown their hot stuff........they're all fluff. Some can only play two or three songs "well". They play them over and over, year after year, gig after gig, faster and faster, louder and louder.

Be versatile in your playing. I never made it. I was always too shy to get up front and lacked the raw talent to do so anyway. BUT.....if you choose carefully, material within your grasp that all the other guys are NOT PLAYING........you'll be carving out a little niche that will be all of your own.

Then give it all you can. Don't worry about sounding like somebody else. Be yourself! Play yourself! You'll find any number of admirers in the crowd.

I spent the first 3 years of my PSG playing being very careful not to "do" more than I had studied. I really was intimidated by the complex nature of the instument. I sold a Emmons steel for a guy In my home town for the price of 2 free lessons. He was not all that interested but did it anyway. I learned only one thing. PLAY WITH AUTHORITY. Warren Pearson could play the heck out of a Sho~bud. I was so intimidated and awed that I could only see his mastery. Don't be worried about what you play as much as if you master the voice you are using.

Everybody Dies. Musically and Otherwise.

Not everybody Lives. Musically or Otherwise.

*

Lukewarmth is not a virtue.

Better to be either Hot or Cold.

*

I'm reminded in playing tele as a serious study and on stage in the last year and a half that you make the biggest mistake by trying not to make any.

The people that make the least mistakes very often do the least.

Still yet, there are some whose musical lives are spent more in criticism of others' making of it.

How big can their reward be?

Getting "Fans"? A whole other discipline, and one much less fulfilling IMHO. Buying drinks makes as many as any other thing.

Good topic Bill.



EJL

I remember a tip from "E" years back... we were doing a session together, I was playing rhythm guitar... he was looking at me (this was while the red light was "on") as I was hunkered over my acoustic. I looked up at him, and he bent forward and threw his shoulders back. I looked at him with a puzzled look, and he pointed at me, bent over, and threw his shoulders back again. I shifted and sat up straight, and he grinned at me. When the track was finished, he said to me, "Half the magic is looking like you know what you're doing. If you're all bent over like that, you don't look in control." I watched him after that. When I started playing steel, I sat up straight. I may not have played any better, but I felt (and looked) like the king of my domain.

If I may add - Plug it in, Let 'er rip, Damn the torpedoes, Full steam ahead. Yeah, relaxing and enjoying the ride is a big part of this. Many studies on learning suggest that this kind of excitement and enjoyment are the things that helps us learn better and faster.

My, Bill - you've been pithy lately. Good topic.

I usually try to stay pretty close to the other players I'm playing with. That way, they enjoy playing and don't mind it when I show up at a jam session or a gig. I'd rather keep it simple and pretty rather than blowing the doors off of the place or speed pickin' to the point the drummer can't keep up. To me, it's all about taste, quality and getting the very best tone I can out of the guitar I happen to be playing at the time. Also, I like to share the playing with everybody and listen to how other players approach the same thing I do but from a different direction. My thing is to appreciate each player and not intimidate anyone at anytime. I also get to hug all of the girls from 18 to 80 and always meet new pickers everywhere I go.

Starting a new day is exhilarating, after reading the writings of prominent forum members, who are masters of the ripple effect. Woe to the verbal combatant who chances a conquest of their "territory" by means of thought provoking "surprises". Confidence is the big issue in this thread, as the topic title stresses. It's amazing to see confidence win over mediocre ability in a pressure situation. Making light of any situation, including the foremost topic issue, may pass as a form of professionalism, in the eyes of the most critical observers. Shyness will allow the obsessed to satirize, and to fragment an otherwise satisfiable performance. Confidence could be the most fragile attribute of all others combined, and if lost, its restoration is in the first line of priorities.

Huh

Michael Douchette's story is a good. If you look like you know what you are doing, and look *happy* - i.e. not grimacing or frowning over notes, or looking at the bass player every time some clam gets played (grin) it projects a positive air to the audience. That can make an average player or band into a good entertainer. I've heard mediocere bands whose presentation was so good you just had to like 'em, regardless...

And as banjo buddy Patrick Cloud says - "just grab the handle and mash 'em down".

Bill I think everyone starting out took there steel with them into there restroom and sat at the toilet, to help promote practice efficiency, one would hear wierd moans and groans and honks, not knowing it came from the steel, A few years latter you can let 'er rip!

I'm feeling exhilarated this morning after reading this, and more confident already!

Just play the melody as best you can and remember, a mistake can allways be clssified as your arrangement.

Art P.,

I haven't driven down route 8 for quite some time. I'll always miss "Geno" and "The Homesteaders". I still wonder how "Cappy" is doing in Cape Cod. Those were good times that are gone forever. Your approach to the steel guitar is excellent. When you think about it, virtually all music that is played features varying degrees of "arrangements". A good point, to say the very least. Good luck with your upsurge of getting more involved with steel guitar activities.

So..........Trounce the timidities and triumph! Let 'er rip indeed!!!!

I've been making a run at steel for a good number of years. I'm always picking up another guitar, thinking that this is the one that I'll sound great on. Only work and practice will ever lead to anything remotely close to sounding good... I think the late great Jeff Newmen said it best in the article he posted on on his website that talks about the work and disipline required to be proficient on this instrument. Nothing worthwhile comes easily. Therefore, playing pedal steel must be one of the most worthwhile activities we could be caught up in.

Remembering an article Tom Bradshaw wrote many years ago about the mindset of a paranoid beginner. He
described going to play a gig and imagining that the
room was full of experienced players, who were critiquing his every note. I run into many players
with just this condition.

What I say is, you are probably the supreme authority
on steel guitar in that room. 95% of them don't know
what it is or what it is supposed to sound like. I
got my first gig because they couldn't tell whether I
was playing it correctly or not, and half a century later I am still working for the same reason.

Just go out there and play what you know, and if there are players in the audience, most likely, you'll score points for your perserverance.

Truthfully, I have never played a gig where another steel player came up to me to talk. I agree that we players are usually alone in whether we play well or not. Most folks are just amazed to see a real live PSG. I love playing for people because they love steel. I don't even factor in, they just love the sound. Like I said earlier, play like you mean it. Just claw at the strings while practicing, mash the A and B pedals like they're your enemy. The sounds will come out eventually!!!

Michael H.,

The late Jeff Newman offered teaching services at least 40 years ago. That would have been in the 60's for accuracy checks. What does that suggest? The most obvious thoughts would center around his professing, of getting started, by plugging in all necessary AC and DC outlets needed to play. His characteristic derivations of methodologies, by means of astute wisdom and perception, rivaled the best of the lot, in terms of steel guitar savvy. This is further proof that size doesn't make the man. It's more of the metal within, and resisting the flight from fright. The steel guitar can be an intimidating instrument, as witnessed by some individuals, who refuse to approach its elements, by maintaining peripheral proximities. As for plugging in, consider an interviewer who reminds an interviewee that 20 million people are watching the program. Then compare that number to a couple hundred patrons who frequent danceable gigs. In reality, the average nightclub participant is not there to scrutinize the band's affiliation with a steel guitar. Gossiping ranks light years ahead of admiring an advanced steel guitarist. Opinions carry with them the driving force of just one individual. The same goes for viewing patrons, who's occasional glances to interpret those unusual sounds, produced by the steel guitar, represent a bare minimum of encouragement. Most bandleaders are reluctant to share the limelight with steel guitarists who are more than capable of carrying on a pattern of entertainment. Of course the bandleader's main objective is to secure a following by catering to popular consensuses. The only thing lacking, is his/her ignorance of the workings of the steel guitar, and its full potential. It's enjoyable to spend an evening listening to a band, whose leader concentrates on bandmembers' abilities, by focusing on their best efforts to entertain.

Terry Farmer,

Timidities are not bound to such simplistic and plausible activities such as plugging it in. I've noticed a rash of skepticism stemming from a number of bandleader's tendencies to hire and fire, often without good reason. These practices are much too common, particularly if you play anything other than drums or bass guitar. By any count, those positions in a band, hardly ever undergo changes. The bandleader will signal either of the two to hammer and bang louder with every attempt made by the steel guitarist to project an identifiable sequence of melodies. It's the old eagles and turkeys routine that defies a solution. A bandleader/steel guitarist front person, is a workable and marketable system, truly worth working up to.