The Steel Guitar Forum

15+mins long. dont blame me...blame mr Bach. its his birthday this week.

no i did not play it all the way through at once. that would take a lifetime, so i just learned it a section at a time and hit record and kept on going.

there are some things different from the score and from the segovia recording, so i just stuck to the score. there are probably a few things not just right.... if i had a program to do editing, i could have fixed a few things, but i dont, so what i got is what i got.

some of the sections i had to play a little less tempo than all those flashy classical players do who play this, but i can do that...because i am not a flashy classical guitar player....

i hope you guys here enjoy it. next time someone says our non pedal instrument is limited. play this for them.

tuning is from low to high..

E A C# E G A B C D E F G G# A

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/bbusiak ... +steel.mp3

the score...pdf file

http://classicalguitar.homeip.net/files/chaconne.pdf

amen....

WOW! is all i can say....that had to be some serious effort.

on a side note - the mediafire files sound a lot better than soundcloud - something about soundcloud & steel with their compression makes it sound squirrelly. that sounded great.

Mindboggling!

Wow, great job, Bill. That is impressive!

Amazing. Sounds like a harpsichord at times.

Your right hand is astonishing.

likewise, wow!! That's impressive indeed and it does get a little harpsichord-y sounding at times. How do you keep track of 14 strings?

Incredible. This is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Bravo!!!

Bill....you sure can find some notes.....wow.....

Bill's building me a 12-string and told me he was going to "tinker" with this piece. (I had told him I was learning part of it on organ and wanted to try a section on steel). That was 8 days ago! (It took me probably 8 years to learn it when I used to play it on classical guitar.)

Thanks for playing that for us Bill! Steel guitar brings out all the beauty of it more than any other instrument and you played it masterfully.

Unbelievable! Beautiful playing and wonderful tone.

Fantastic!!

Amazingly beautiful Bill. Excellent as usual.

Fantastic. It's amazing to hear the places people take this instrument, thanks.

Impressive! Are you playing note for note as JS composed it?


Never-mind this question. I opened the PDF and it was answered. So I will rephrase the question. Are you playing it as Segovia transcribed it note for note?

This is worthy of a professional recording!

Bill, I love hearing your recordings, this one especially.

John D. Carter wrote:Are you playing it as Segovia transcribed it note for note?

There are some tiny changes and insignificant goofs, but the only real change I noticed is that Bill did not tune his low string down to D as Segovia did. I'm kinda surprised that Bill left his low string at E, and played the low Ds an octave higher. After all the whole piece is in D. He must have decided that an E string was more important (Hey Bill: they make pedals for steel guitars nowadays so you could have D and E on the same string.) I am really amazed that it is possible to play what he did with no pedals.

BTW for those of you not familiar with the piece: it was written for 4 string violin in standard tuning. The low string on the fiddle is G. Any notes below G in this arrangement were added by Segovia. There are many other arrangements and transcriptions. Busoni went nuts with a piano version. Brahms did one for piano left hand only. etc etc
It consists of 64 variations on a 4 bar motif which is D C Bb A. Four notes plus the genius of Bach...

i tried the low string to d. it was just too floppy and i didnt have a larger gauge so i just forged on. when i saw the key of the piece and the C# in my tuning and the E on the bottom, i knew i was in trouble, but i decided to stick with what i had. the low A helped me out a lot in a few sections.

i was ok with just getting it recorded. the segovia recording is slightly different in a few spots. i just tried to follow the score.

i thought about just taking a drill and drilling one more home in the keyless and making a new string holder and putting a D string on! still might do that.

Historians think Bach wrote this after he came home from a long trip and found that his wife had died. It's full of emotion, the whole range. The shock and grieving is obvious in the beginning. Most players, piano and guitar, go overboard with that, I think. It's hard to hear the happiness in it in the violin performances, because of the nature of the instrument, especially compared to steel and the sound that Bill uses. He could play it hundreds of times and bring out different feelings every time, whether intending to or not.

Beautiful! Amazing work and really inspiring to see the "limits" of the steel pushed yet again.

Wow Bill, another tour de force! The music translates very well to the steel guitar, without sounding forced. Great job dude.

Awesome! Wow, I love Bach's arrangements like "Bouree" and this "Chaconne" because of their wild minors and ageless sounds. Your playing is beautiful. Where did you find the chordal tabs for this or was it learned by ear?

i had a strat hanging on me and the steel in my lap and the music in front of me. i can read the score on underarm guitar and then find the stuff on lap. i dont have another lifetime to learn to read music on different steel guitar tunings! lol some kid coming down the pike will do all that.

i appreciate so much all the nice comments from everyone.

I'm late to the party, Bill, but let me add: this is absolutely stunning! Proof once again that steel guitar is a musical instrument and not a bucket of idiomatic genres.

Amazing. Thanks so much for this.

This is fantastic. Lovely music. Must have taken an immense amount of practice to get to this level. Most impressive. I will be watching (listening) out for more in future. Thank you Bill, for sharing this with us.