I hope you steelers realize how good you are.

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

I'm certainly no great stakes musician, but I can play. I do about three gigs a week on guitar and tenor banjo in swing and trad. jazz bands around town. I've done so for a long time. I have enough musical knowledge to play in all keys on the fly and come up with chord/melody arrangements quickly and substitute chords freely and improvise some and blah blah blah.

I cannot, however, come up with any pleasing sounds on steel. I understand the ins and outs of my chosen tuning (A6) very well. That's not it. It's just so hard! It's the slurs and the blocking and the intonation and the vibrato. It's getting a tone that doesn't want to make throw my lap steel in the dumpster. I worked with an excellent teacher for a year, and I got a little better, but I'm nowhere near good enough to play this thing in front of another living soul, and at this point I'm not convinced I ever will be good enough to do so.

I've heard so many fine pieces by the regulars on this forum. These recordings and videos have sent me to the moon and back. Please never forget how hard what you do is. You are (in my eyes) doing the impossible, and you're making it look effortless.

I'm going to get back to practicing, but I just wanted to express my thanks and admiration to the artists on this forum who make magic every time they put the bar to the strings. What you do is so tough. I hope some day I can do something on this instrument 1/10th as nice.

Sincerely
Tony L.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Stick with it, man. It took me a long time before I was able to do anything musical with the instrument, and I'm still wotking on it.

Sometimes the pressure of playing in front of people is the incentive for really getting it together--that's how it is for me.
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Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

Give it time and ESP sustained effort - everyone goes through this phase - its about 2 years from my perspective til you can actually play a piece anyone but yourself can tolerate. When I was "teething" - I had to make myself pick it up for 30mins a day and just plow thru it. I'm speaking of playing tunes - I know a lot of folks here are blues / rock players and that is a bit different than attempting the standard steel repertoire.
I always say this but get some arrangements in your chosen tuning (not gonna be as much in A6) and work on those. Doug Bremiers 25 tunes for lap steel really helped push me over the hump.
You have to develope a steel mentality / steel ear - I see a lot of new players trying to play "lap guitar tuned to an open chord" and that is nothing but a dead end IMO.

I'll add this as an opinion based on the type of music you play - but I would experiment with C6/A7 (you can easily retune from this to A6) - the lack of a tritone in a straight 6 tuning is a hassle when doing early swing tunes like you play that are heavy on the dominant cycle.
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'65 Sho-Bud D-10 Permanent • '54 Fender Dual-8 • Clinesmith T-8 • '38 Ric Bakelite • '92 Emmons D-10 Legrande II

Ron Whitfield · From: Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA

Sounds like you might just need to drop your guitar's tone a bit and try playing the melody as you would soulfully sing it without breaks in the flow. This usually helps get past some of the sucky stages.

Mat Rhodes · From: Lexington, KY, USA

1. Treat it like a second wife/girlfriend/partner.

2. Practice consistently every day whenever you can. You have enough background on the other instruments to where you're not necessarily "steel-bound".

3. The tuning doesn't matter. You'll make it work and, if it doesn't when you get more advanced in your studies, you'll tweak it the way you want it.

4. Follow your "voice". It sounds like you know what you want to hear. Record yourself practicing/performing at home and you'll find out quickly how different your ear is versus what's really out there.

5. (Like Mike says) Let the "pressure" of a live gig force you to learn one or two songs to play in front of someone at the beginning. Once you get past the initial terror stage, you'll gradually build up confidence to take on another song, and another, and so on...

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

Just as difficult as playing well, is being your own critic. You have to be critical, but you need a second opinion before you amputate the steel guitar.
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Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother.

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

Thanks for all the encouragement and advice. I'm going to keep working hard at coming up with something musical on this instrument. I love the sound a steel guitar in the hands of a good player, and I want to make those sounds someday. Even if I never do so, the practicing is really fun, and having fun is high on my list of priorities.

Ransom Beers · Posted 23 Apr 2013 5:43 am

If all else fails you can use the guitar for a wicket bat. Laughing

Jim Pitman · From: Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA

It doesn't sound like this is an issue, but just on the off chance - Have you tried a different guitar?
There are definitely some that don't inspire me as much as others do.

Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

i think really working on and learning 1 tune is the best motivator you can undertake to prove to yourself it can be done - however long it may take. it has to be challenging enough to inspire you, yet within your abilities (ie, not Four Wheel Drive like i tried right off the bat!)
I picked JB's version of Coconut Grove, transcribed it bit by bit, and just worked on it til i got it sounding about right. once you can do this, then it proves you can get some music out of this beast - now its just a matter of adding another tune, then another - pretty soon you have a dozen tunes and you start to adapt a steel mentality and it comes easier with each additional tune. i know coming from another instrument you can play, its frustrating - you have to look back to the early years on that - you took it slow, little by little. Getting your ear use to the different tunings is the big step - thats the pain of being in the early stages - your ear cant relate to what is going on - once you can hear, oh, thats C6 or B11, E9, C6/A7, etc that is the hurdle and it just comes with LOTS of listening.
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'65 Sho-Bud D-10 Permanent • '54 Fender Dual-8 • Clinesmith T-8 • '38 Ric Bakelite • '92 Emmons D-10 Legrande II

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

Jim, in the past, I have experienced the exact phenomenon you mentioned. I had a really nice lap steel that is considered by virtually everyone to be an elite instrument. Unfortunately, this instrument and I never formed any kind of relationship. It's tone, look, feel, and comfort level when on my lap left me completely uninspired.

The story is completely different now. My current steel sounds, looks, and feels incredibly good. It is also really comfortable on my lap. In short, this instrument totally inspires be play all the time.

Jerome, I totally get what you're saying about working on one arrangement, and I'm actually doing that right now. My former teacher's arrangement of "Harbor Lights" is beautiful, and I work on it everyday. I cannot, however, totally focus on that arrangement. That's just not me. I've been putting together chord/melody arrangements on various instruments for many years, so I spend some of my time doing so on steel. As I play more and more, those arrangements are getting better because I'm really learning the ins and outs of my chosen tuning. I have about 25 arrangements together, but none of them are anywhere near as good as "Harbor Lights" in terms of quality arranging. I work on "Harbor Lights" a lot. I have to get much much better at blocking, intonation, slurs, etc. so that "Harbor Lights" and the other songs I try to play sound somewhat musical.

Tony L.

Josh Braun · From: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Well, I hope this will be encouraging: people _want_ to hear you play lap steel.

Seriously.

Just the simple _sound_ brings grins. No flash or Jerry Douglas-like runs required.

When I first started playing out (live) I thought I was the simplest steeler ever to take up the instrument. I still don't have amazing chops or anything. But people just seem to dig the timbre of the instrument, especially when mixed in a live band setting.

P.S. - By "people" I mean non-musicians. Musicians dig it too, but I've found ordinary listeners just enjoy the timbre of the instrument in the mix. It's a novelty on top of being a good sound. In some ways it's like the current trope/trend of the "young 20'ish girl in the indie Americana band that plays uke." She doesn't have to play exceptionally well to really give the whole band a certain mood and sound, and with that element present the whole band goes to another level.

Tim Whitlock · From: Colorado, USA

You make a good point Josh. Something about the sound of the instrument is intrinsically intoxicating. I'm no Mike Neer, but I'm not a beginner either. Recently I was rewarded by an older couple who came up after a set and asked me about my guitar. They were just fascinated by the sounds they were hearing and I really got a kick out of their enjoyment and chatting with them. For a beginner I would say focus on getting a pleasing sound (no bar or pick clatter) and play simply with good intonation. The rest comes over time.

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