The Steel Guitar Forum

Everything I read tells me to have the pedal set somewhere to what I would say is its lowest volume and not to go below that while playing. To use the pedal to sustain notes by rocking it forward. But here's what I don't get...swells as I hear them sound like they are coming up from no volume at all. Is this an aural illusion? What am I not getting here?

Those are two different techniques. Playing with the volume pedal halfway up and increasing it as the volume of the sustained chord decreases vs. using the volume to swell from nothing to audible. The former is probably less noticeable, because the idea is to be less noticeable. Often, you can hear a tonal change that comes when the sustained chord nears the end and you are pushing the volume.

As obvious as the tv in front of my face. Thank you.