The Steel Guitar Forum

I hope this is in the right Forum, if not sorry!There's a lot of great E9 tab out there and although I mostly work off written music it would be great to convert some of them to nonpedal. I'm assuming(??) that the pedal/kneelever might be consistent in most cases. Would something like TablEdit be useful. Or would a chart like Patricia Warnock offers be more useful. Thanks, Eldon

This would be interesting, any help out there?

For those that might be wondering, Roy Thompson was kind enough to send me an email stating that the software is not out there yet. He also included a sample of a song played on lap and pedal steels. According to my local steel mentor Roy knows what he's talking about. Hearing the sound clips I'm not surprised. Eldon

Much of what people do on E9th pedal steel is simply impossible on a non-pedal guitar. It can't be automated. A human has to decide which notes are most important, and transcribe only those notes.

When Bud Isaacs recorded that simple intro on "Slowly", it drove people crazy trying to do it without pedals.

Some of us started out that way

I appretiate the comments b0b and being nwe to the steel world I have plenty of questions. I've transcribed a part of "Slowly". It's a real interesting learning process. I have a good knowledge of chords and music structure. What I do is get the E9 tab I want, I set up Microsoft Excel to the E9 tuning I tab the notes instead of the fret numbers in E9. Then I have another tab set up with my C6 tuning and I enter the notes from the E9 portion accordingly. I'ts a bit of a process but I find it helps me visualize my fretboard a bit better. If anyone want I can post a sample. Gotta start somewhere. Regards EC

Just remember that the notes on your E9th chart are wrong if a pedal is in play. For example on the 5th string fret 8 is a G note but fret 8A (from the tab) is an A note.