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Topic: Steel Thimbles |
Alan Brookes
From:
Brummy living in Southern California
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Posted 10 Feb 2008 9:30 pm |
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| Anyone ever tried playing with smooth steel thimbles on the left hand ? You could get most of the regular effects and be able to play more chords. |
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C. Christofferson
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Posted 10 Feb 2008 10:43 pm
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| A,?Maybe regular metal picks on the left fingers would accomplish the same function? I ask because I don't have any to try. Something tells me that trying to get accurate pitches from 3 or 4 sources at once would be a real bear, but the expanded chording possibilities seems, at least, interesting. |
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Stephen Gambrell
From:
Over there
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Posted 11 Feb 2008 12:27 am
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| Will Ray plays 6-string, with little slides on BOTH hands. It's musical, too, doesn't sound like a gimmick or anything. |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 11 Feb 2008 3:35 am
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There are little brass pipe caps that can fit on your fingertips that have a good deal more weight than thimbles. I bought a few and fooled around, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere very quickly.... I have a lot of ideas for a 12-year-old kid to start doing and in 10 years he'll take over the world, but I don't wanna do any of them myself.  |
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Eddie Cunningham
From:
Massachusetts, USA
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Posted 11 Feb 2008 4:07 pm Barless bar ??
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| Once I thought about making a "bar" out of three 1 in. round steel balls loosely connected somehow. You could get some great 4 string split-string slant chords on a non-pedal steel!! Maybe I'll try it someday !! I don't think you could strum across too well ?? Would be fun trying to control those loose balls sliding in the strings !! Eddie "C" ( the old non-pedal geezer ) |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 12 Feb 2008 4:38 am
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It's hard enough to attain proper intonation with one bar! I can only imagine what it would sound like with someone trying to synchronize three or four of them. The dexterity involved would be almost superhuman, and then there's the problem of switching back and forth between those finger-tip dingies and the regular bar. (While they might make "slants" easier, they'd really complicate a simple "straight" chord.)
Nice mental exercise, but highly impractical, IMHO. |
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Rick Schmidt
From:
Prescott AZ, USA
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Posted 12 Feb 2008 12:37 pm
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| That's one of the legendary rumors I remember hearing when I was first starting on steel. Didn't Al Petty do some fooling around with thimbles? |
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Jim Bob Sedgwick
From:
Clinton, Missouri USA
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Posted 12 Feb 2008 9:23 pm
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Rick, how you been Buddy? Back on topic, Al used to play with a regular bar and a smaller one on his index finger (secured with two rings). He held the regular bar between the second and third finger and would reach for the note he wanted to add with his index finger. This was years before knee levers became popular, which made this technique unnecessary. I never tried it but it looks like it would be a bear to learn.
How are your bar slants coming? |
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