The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm just starting to learn C6 and was wondering what are some good exercises/techniques/grips/scales ect. Particularly for swing and country. Any info helps.
Thanks

I'd strongly recommend JERRY BYRD's Instructional Manual for the Serious student of steel guitar.

Scotty has them there in St.Louis.............

If you mean the C6 pedal steel, the Buddy Emmons beginner C6th course is good as is the Jeffran course.
The Byrd is good of course.

Failed to realize that your post was in the pedal steel section..........

Ray, given how much C6th work gets done without the pedals, I wouldn't apologize.
I'd also see if there's any teachers at Scotty's. Scotty is no slouch, but I dunno if he teaches.

in the JB course, what is the first string tuned to?

Tom, here ya go

Jerry's high string will be E.
His 8 string tuning is high to low - E C A G E C# C low A

Paul Franklin posted something here years ago that was a big help to me in understanding the C6th tuning. Of course, I can't find the original thread, but I copied and saved it at the time because it was so helpful:

These are grips to memorize ..... open position/ No pedals/ Within the basic tuning/ ...... .
C major triads are strings 2, 3, 5, .. .. 3,5,6, .... 567 .... and F major triad 789 ... .... .... .. .
A minor triads are 234 ..... 346 ... .467 ...... 678 ..... .. .... .... .
F major sevenths/ninths are strings 2479 .... .4679 ... .4579 ...... 3469 ..... 6789 ....... 2359 ..... .3569 ...... .. .
A minor sevenths ..... .. 358 .... 568 ... .2345 .... 3456 .. .4567 .... 5678 ...... 2358 .... 3568
Note: the A minor & minor seventh grips are called a C6th chord when played over a C major
chord or bass note ... .... and minor when over the A minor chord or bass note.
Once these grips are memorized the open tuning without pedals can be viewed as a One chord I a
6 minor chord I a 4 major seventh or ninth chord ..... without pedals ....... Opening up how the
tuning is viewed is a great first step of the journey.
IMO there is no need to learn the pedals function until the basic tuning is understood ...... This is
just a two week study at best..

Steve French wrote: IMO there is no need to learn the pedals function until the basic tuning is understood ...... This is
just a two week study at best..

i agree completely with the first part...but i'm going on 4 years now (non-pedal) with the second half of that statement

Steve, you kinda edited the quote when you saved it. That makes searching for it challenging.
BUT, I found it on the 3rd page of this thread: http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=183004

Just start assigning scale degress to tuning letters, and the chords available in the open tuning become apparent by "visual inspection":





Its very cool to see what an awesome and powerful tuning it is...handles a lot of chordal forms with some grace and structure...

Just jam away until something sounds right and proper to the ear.

C6 is easy to play at a basic level - don't overthink it...it very nearly plays itself....E9 is considerably more difficult, IMO.

Thanks for finding the original link, Lane.