The Steel Guitar Forum

okay so I agreed to play some gigs with a newish country band. They sent me a list of tunes. many are in minor keys and my stock licks and background parts don't really work for them. i suppose i could listen closely to what the steel guitar is doing in the tunes, but some of them don't even have steel guitar in them. I need to play something, but am feeling a bit lost. if anyone would be willing to push me in the right direction for this stuff it would be greatly appreciated. I am not a big fan of the new country and really havent listened to much of it, but that's what the bands are looking for in my town and I gotta play so at least until some classic situations come around I am going to give it a shot…
thank you !

I'm in a newish country band. Many times I sustain chords with lots of distortion or overdrive (I have a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube). For fills I do a lot of slide guitar riffs. I spend a lot of time in 2 minor pentatonic pockets: In A minor I'm at the 8th fret, A pedal down, or 3rd fret, A and B pedals rocking. Look angry and toss your head around a lot.

Chris Buchanan wrote:. Look angry and toss your head around a lot.

Lol

Thanks for that....

Karen my best guess for you is to play the relative majors when your turn comes up. Now where is that sheet of paper with my conversions, Dang its here somewhere...I wish I knew them by heart

If this isnt right let me know:
EXAMPLE: Any major C played in all forms of open or pedal or lever combinations will cover Am , The reason being is you can use the liks you already know.

Am = C
Bm = D
C#m = E
Dm = F
Em = G
F#m = A
G#m = B

Hope this helps, its Just a quick thought
and you probably already knew this,

If there are no steel parts in the minor tunes then learn the keyboard parts.Another thing is to sing along with the tune and then play what you sang. Do not cheat and play the steel until you nail the singing phrase. This might be hard to do if you don't know your minor scales.

Sounds like it is time to learn how scales and chords lay on the neck. Once you get past the lick thing and get into a more comprehensive approach many things that seem awkward now will become obvious and easy.

I would take a skype lesson from Joe Wright asap. He can show you better than anybody how to get out of the pedalsteel lick rut fast.

Use the A pedal (C#m at the nut) and D# lever minor positions a lot (G#m at the nut).
Use the F# and D# strings (with and without the whole step lower lever) to noodle around on minor scales.
I sat in with a blues band that loved to play Al Green's minor stuff, and they loved what I played even when I spent most of my time noodling half-lost. It's weird to get complements on what you're doing while you only have half a clue what you just did. I'll try to put up what I did on "Summertime" the other day.
The basic country licks won't really work, you have to write (or steal) new ones.

A minor progression using major grips - 13th fret (e's lowered) A minor,13th fret (a pedal) d minor 15th fret (a pedal) e minor or 12 th fret (open) e major. Will give you some nice pockets to work with.

Also strings 6 to 10 with the e's raised and The a pedal in will give you a pretty cool and exotic minor pocket (d minor at fret 3).

I'd get a hold of bb king's thrill is gone and play along .

thanks you all so much for the feedback and suggestions. I will work on them tonight !

Karen

Lane Gray wrote:The basic country licks won't really work, you have to write (or steal) new ones.

Lane lets say you wanted to try the basic liks that you already knew ,
If you start the lik on a different string and only use some of the phrase and then
rewright or make up the rest to end up where you need to be (improvize)
depending on which lik you pull out of your hat,

But meanwhile staying close and passing through that relative major
lets you feel less lost and its kind of a starting point, feeling lost sucks
when you`re doing the tinyest instrumental. of course playing melody sounds
alot better using the pedals and levers with scales as Bob had mentioned.

Just my take on how lost I`ve been in the past.
If theres one thing I`ve learned about the fraction of the time that it takes
to get through it , screwing it up definitly seems to be in my favor .

Some good suggestions here. I'm sure more than a few of your "stock" licks involve working the A pedal 5th string along with the 4th string (A in open position) so I would also suggest trying some things with the A pedal against the 1st string. (F# minor in the open position or the relative minor in the key of A) I have to do a lot of minor key stuff in the project I'm doing now and often it sometimes takes a little exploratory session or two to get ideas. I very much like the advice that Bob Hoffnar gave you as well. Finding different ways to play the melody is key.

Here, Karen. I shot this Monday. Let me know if it needs further explanation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByJ6tGucw6k

Think music rather than licks. Licks or ideas from the tried & true Ray Price tunes just won't fly, no matter how you try.

Listen to Bob Hoffnar.

Use minor pentatonic or Dorian minor scales -- e.g. A+B at fret 3 starting on 7th string for Am. In that position, B+C pedal works too w/ a cool unison tonic note on 1 & 4.

Learn to comp acceptable chord voicings b4 going to single strings. Often a simple power chord -- just 1's and 5's with no third -- will work great. It's what the guitarists often play.

Learn to solo over a minor blues: think 'The Thrill is Gone'

You guys are the BEST !! I wish I was home right now instead of at work so I could try some of this stuff out but tonight this is what I will be doing !! Thanks you all

I just did a gig like this last week, I've never really done any new-country before, I went in pretty much cold. This was a combination of blues/blues-rock and lots of new-country, with exactly one classic-style country tune all night long. I treated the new-country pretty much as if I was playing guitar in an 80s hard-rock band. Lots of sweeping arpeggios and scale fragments over the framework of the chord changes and song melody, using some classic pedal moves when appropriate to connect things, and padding with power or more complex chords when that was appropriate. A lot of these songs were fairly simple and medium-tempo, it wasn't that difficult to adapt.

I used my Zum 12-string universal - I got to spend some real time down on the low strings, which really helped in several situations where we needed some power. I didn't need any distortion boxes, but ran a stacked Deluxe Reverb and '63 Vibroverb Reissue amps. The band was loud, with a very good and loud hard-rock/heavy-metal drummer and keyboard player, but the steel cut through like a knife, and they didn't bother to mic any of the guitar amps.

We did lots of the standard-fare "trucks, beer, girls" tunes. I'm not a greatly experienced steel player at all, but everybody I talked with there was very happy with what I was putting down. Take the years playing various different styles of music and use that knowledge - but I would argue that plenty of classic country steel guitar also fits well. Whatever people want to say about new-country, it is mostly very melody/hook oriented. I doubled on guitar that night, but never even thought about moving to guitar on the new-country stuff - the steel fit in perfectly, and that's what the leader wanted. I played a bit of guitar on some of the blues, but steel on the rest.

Honestly, I had lots of fun. I had never heard most of these tunes before - I just don't listen to radio anymore. Just keep an open mind and play what fits the framework of the song.

Karen,
Playing music that expands your harmonic vocabulary is a good thing - and finding how it lays on the PSG will help expand your ears and knowledge of the fretboard a lot. The work you're launching into will open new doors!

It's so easy for all of us to get stuck in 'position playing' based on licks and muscle memory instead of listening and harmonic knowledge. Thinking about minor
and minor pentatonic scales helped me with this. I still have a long way to go- but here are 2 simple concepts that I started with when learning how to play lines, solos , or licks in a minor or blues context.
This all relates to things said in above posts...
(sorry about picture quality- just jotted this out and took a phone pic..)




Example 1:
Minor scale pocket that uses 9th string as root.
9th string as root changed my view of the fretboard.
No pedal use makes this really nice with distortion
and a 'lap steel' or 'slide guitar' approach.
You can also use the A and B pedals to make the half and whole step changes on strings 6 and 5. See how this relates to the minor chord made by using the A
pedal only with your common string grips?

Example 2:
A minor pentatonic
More of a variation of what you may be used to with the A-B pedal approach. C chord at fret 3 with A-B pedals is an A minor chord if your root is string 7 and string 1. You can use variations of scales you already know- just use different 'landing notes'....

These examples are pretty bare bones- but there was a lot of musical vocabulary that I discovered by using these as a starting point. Music theory is your friend...

I also have to echo what Bob H and others are saying here- Joe Wright has very systematic teaching materials
about this- as does Mickey Adams, Doug Jernigan and many others. Paul Franklin has a CD lesson on playing
in minor keys, also... Have fun- Hope this helps.

One of the overlooked positions is to play a 7th chord a 4th above the minor. For example, A minor, try playing D7th. All the positions and licks you would play over a D7th works against the A minor.

Just another piece of the puzzle. Have fun!

Randy, To continue your great idea of the D7 position for A minor I would find the A note or root of the minor scale as a place to begin.
On the 3rd fret D7 the 7th and 1st strings are the root note of the minor scale.

And, for that matter, sometimes a IDom7 chord -- and licks you typically play over a Dom7 chord -- with the band playing a Im chord can sound cool. You are the bottom end of a 7#9 chord (the Dom 7 part) and whoever plays the Im chord provides the b3 (or #9) tone. Kinda Hendrix-y.

Judicious use of the Major third may be called for in some tunes. A Ma third in the lower register with the minor third as one of the higher (or highest) chord tones gives the right kind of dissonance -- you don't want the Ma and mi thirds 'next to each other' in the voicing.

Steal some licks from the guitar player.

Look angry and toss your head around a lot may be the funniest line I've ever heard here on the forum.

Thanks!

And if you get in a pinch.... just come back two frets from the minor chord and play a major scale against it. Example .. If the chord is Am then you can noodle around with a G major scale on the 3rd fret and get some good bluesy sounds. Also your G at the 10th fret pushing some pedals and bending some strings against the Am. (this little trick will work against any minor chord) but experience will be your guide to the sounds you create and like.

One trick I learned years ago..... If you get yourself into something totally unknown, never play more than one or two notes at any one time. I found by doing this you can quickly change from what sounds like a wrong note into a passing note to something else. In other words, don't play a full chord and never, ever, stop playing until you are on a correct note. Treat wrong notes as just a passing to the correct one. Try it, and you will be surprised at what you can play.

Trying to play the melody is also very good advice.

Robert

One trick I learned years ago..... If you get yourself into something totally unknown, never play more than one or two notes at any one time. I found by doing this you can quickly change from what sounds like a wrong note into a passing note to something else. In other words, don't play a full chord and never, ever, stop playing until you are on a correct note. Treat wrong notes as just a passing to the correct one. Try it, and you will be surprised at what you can play.

Trying to play the melody is also very good advice.

Robert

new country has a melody ???

Hi Karen,

Here is some shorthand to get you into minors:

Axiom: A (major) 6th chord is enharmonic with its relative minor.
Ex: Am = C6

So walk that up the keys: how would you play a tune in Cm?

Right: Using Eb6. C is a minor 3rd above A, and Eb is a minor third above C.

1. So, to minorize a major chord played in no-pedals position, move up 3 frets and engage the A pedal.

2. To minorize a major chord that is played AB pedals down, move up one fret and engage the E to D# lever.

3 To minorize a major chord played with A pedal + E to E# lever, simply release the E# lever. (In this position, add in the 2nd string as the missing note of the minor scale.)
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Shameless self-promotion: I'll be at Sally O's on Fri Jan 3, with "Amarillo". Come on down!

Chris