The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello all,

Now, I have seen enough of this forum to know that the title would have dissuaded most from reading this, but I hope that this topic may be useful to others such as myself, in their efforts to squeeze a sound out of a steel as noted in the subject above.

I am a guitarist, have been for a long time, an opportunity presented itself for some pedal steel with a bunch of guys I play with, up until recently I had been filling in the gaps with a lap steel.

So, I bought myself a "student" pedal steel.. 6 strings and tuned to E (not E9..), it seemed like a reasonable thing for a guitarist to do, some chord positions being in similar locations to a guitar.

This pedal steel has two pedals and one knee lever. These being set up as shown in the picture below.


Right then, while guitarists have been desiring of pedal steel licks in their playing for a longtime now, I am struggling to find the guitar in this pedal steel…

I have been looking for chords however and discovered the following options, given my set up:
I will note that for simplicity I am designating the pedals as A & B (from the left as you sit down) and as I only have one knee lever and I'm Australian, I'm going to call it "Bruce"… On second thoughts, i'll just call it K…

Open = E
A = Esu4
B = E6, C#m
K = Emaj7, G#m, B6
K + A = B7
K + B = G#sus4
A + B = A

You can see, I have multiple chord names to some of those scenarios, you may not have all of the notes but enough to use the chord…

So far, this all bodes well for a I-IV-V progression, for example: strum open for the I (E), depress pedals A + B for and IV (A) chord and depress K + A for the V (B7) chord…

All very much a work in progress… If you're exploring a similar instrument, I'd love to hear what you've discovered...

Hi All,
I don't mean to sound smart or imply anything negative, but I've seen this topic come up before and I wonder why don't more people suggest the basic changes that occur on the 10 string E9th, used on a six string? Just eliminate strings 1 & 2 and 7 & 9, and use all or at least the A, B, C pedals, and the E raise and lowers, B to Bb, and even the G# to G changes. Just wondering. I know I have mentioned that to other steel players to maybe use it to introduce pedal steel to some of our younger beginning players, and had it rejected out right. Just wondering. Am I missing something?
LaVern

Oooo.. that's dangerous talk LaVern, your friends may stop inviting you to their xmas parties…

Me.. I can be fearless in this, because my peers are guitarists…

So.. if you drop out the strings you suggest, on a conventional 10 string, you're left with:

6 5 4 3 2 1
B E G# B E G#

Is that it…?

Looks good to me.. it's still E and you have four, three note E chord grips…

Would this then align with any lessons from conventional pedal steel texts, do you think…?

Looking further at what chords are available under the bar and once again, this is for the setup noted above. Referring to the image below, working roughly in the middle of the fingerboard, because it feels good.

With the bar at the 7th fret and deploying pedals A+B, we have an E chord, moving to the 8th fret and deploying the knee lever only, we have an Em chord. To get the E7 we slide down to the 5th fret and deploy A+K...

Stuart I think you have it. I can't figure out how to post the copedent. I think of the changes in the open position.

Ped A, B to C# = C#m or a 6m.
Pedals A+B G# to A= A or the 4th.
Ped A+E to F lever= C#.
Pedals B & C=F#m.
Ped B+ E lower lever= B7th.
E to Eb lever=Am.
G# to G lever=Em.

These are all at the open position. Please anybody with more understanding of the changes can jump in any time now. Corrections or clarifications appreciated. Again why do most E9th players frown upon a 6 string with these changes, at least for a beginning youngster?

Stuart I can email you a copy of the copedent in Open Office format through the Forum if you want me to.

LaVern

You could look this over if you want, just for further ideas.

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopi ... t=#2295027

I use a variation of E9 on my Fessenden 6 shooter (it only has 2 pedals and each raises 2 strings).

High to Low: E B G# F# D B

One pedal raises both the high B's to C# - the other raises the G# to A and the D to E.

The thing I love about this is that I can play a few E9 style licks but with both pedals down I have the A6 I use as my main lap steel tuning - E C# A F# E C#

LaVern Skarzenski wrote: Stuart I can email you a copy of the copedent in Open Office format through the Forum if you want me to.

Thanks LaVern I would appreciate that..

Jeff Mead wrote: The thing I love about this is that I can play a few E9 style licks but with both pedals down I have the A6 I use as my main lap steel tuning - E C# A F# E C#

Thanks Jeff, that is an approach I hadn't considered: finding a position to play your lap steel licks..

My lap steel tuning is C6, I'll have to find some time to examine this method..

FWIW, here's how I would tune it:
[tab] P1 P2 K
D
A ++B
F# +G
D
B
G ---E
[/tab]
Pedals down gives you an open G.

b0b wrote:FWIW, here's how I would tune it:
[tab] P1 P2 K
D
A ++B
F# +G
D
B
G ---E
[/tab]
Pedals down gives you an open G.

wow..! didn't see that coming...

It's pretty powerful. I look at what the dobro guys can do with G major, and then what blues guys do with the top 4 strings of E major. This tuning has D major in the same intervals as E major for blues licks, and also the power of that low E when you need it. The B minor (with P1) is also very useful.

I don't know what your goals are. If you're playing traditional country exclusively and want that high sound, I would agree with LaVern Skarzenski's approach above. It would probably look something like this: [tab]
P1 P2 Knee (or Knee)
G# +A
E -D# +F
B ++C#
G# +A
E -D# +F
B ++C# [/tab]
It's not particularly versatile, but it would put you in the E9th mindset for eventual "graduation" to a standard 10-string pedal steel.

b0b wrote:FWIW, here's how I would tune it:
[tab] P1 P2 K
D
A ++B
F# +G
D
B
G ---E
[/tab]
Pedals down gives you an open G.

good call bob.
that, up a whole step, is my lap steel tuning.
slants abound!

which gets to my answer to the OP, maybe you could look at it as a lap
steel, and utilize the moves for more chords on that axe - open strings, slants, behind eh bar pulls - and add the pedals to that basic format.

maybe a purely mental distinction, who knows.
simple 6 sting pedal steel vs lap w/ a couple changes?
ya know?

ok,
j

b0b wrote:It's pretty powerful. I look at what the dobro guys can do with G major, and then what blues guys do with the top 4 strings of E major. This tuning has D major in the same intervals as E major for blues licks, and also the power of that low E when you need it. The B minor (with P1) is also very useful.

I do like what the dobro guys do…!

Had a very quick look at this and didn't immediately find as much as I already have to work with..

Looking for three chords grips (to get started) and referring to the sketch below,


Both pedals down is a G, but you already had one of those in open position.
Pedal one down is a Bm, but you already had one of those in open position as well.
The low E didn't seem to want to talk to any of the other notes, harmonically (and I did wonder what string gauge you would use as a compromise between two widely spaced notes…).

Jamie Mitchell wrote: which gets to my answer to the OP, maybe you could look at it as a lap
steel, and utilize the moves for more chords on that axe - open strings, slants, behind eh bar pulls - and add the pedals to that basic format.

Thanks Jamie…
I suppose I could look at it as a lap steel with benefits…
I started in this after watching Steve Fishell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrbSL92Kz1Y
discuss using this tuning in his work and he did seem to achieve more of a pedal steel flavour than lap steel..

The only other thing I have found out there was Zane King bouncing around on a 6 string tuned to E: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLG_SSA--wo
and bouncing around I think is pretty accurate and aligns with a paradigm I have adopted when approaching diminished and augmented scales on guitar: In a song, you have to arrive at certain changes, on time, like a bus going through it's route. As long as you do this, on time, pretty much anything goes in between, while it is rhythmically sympathetic to the song generally.

This is largely what you see Zane doing in that clip and is where I come from musically, I would use other guitars to do this though, still, it's great for me to see it demonstrated on the pedal steel..

Steve Fishell is more where I'm headed with this at the moment, I just haven't found anyone talking about pedal in this way yet...

I've found b0b has great ideas on getting the most out of tunings.

I have a Cougar 6 with 4 pedals and 4KL's that I'm playing around with.

I kind of stole Bill Hatcher's EADGBE idea and have one pedal that pulls 3 strings into an open G. One of the pedals takes that to the 4 chord same as your AB E9 pedals do, but in the middle register. Another does what the 4&8 E to F raise does.

With a universal 3/3 or 3/2 modern changer, there are many ways to set up the 6 string to suit your purposes.

Take a moment to read Bill Hatcher's posts here and listen to his Freddie King stuff from an earlier thread here. Good Luck!

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=217208

Stuart, it's a subset of my S-8 Desert Rose copedent, which you can access from my signature below. The string gauges are there as well.

LaVern Skarzenski wrote:Hi All,
I don't mean to sound smart or imply anything negative, but I've seen this topic come up before and I wonder why don't more people suggest the basic changes that occur on the 10 string E9th, used on a six string? Just eliminate strings 1 & 2 and 7 & 9, and use all or at least the A, B, C pedals, and the E raise and lowers, B to Bb, and even the G# to G changes. Just wondering. I know I have mentioned that to other steel players to maybe use it to introduce pedal steel to some of our younger beginning players, and had it rejected out right. Just wondering. Am I missing something?
LaVern

That's pretty well what you have to do when you add a Dusenberg Multibender to a lap steel. They only make 6-string units, so you're stuck with using a 6-string lap steel unless you have two strings bi-passing the unit on a separate bridge.
In fact you're going back to how the E9 tuning originated. It came from the open E tuning that Blues Guitarists were using and then added some extra strings.

Jerry Overstreet wrote:I've found b0b has great ideas on getting the most out of tunings.

I have a Cougar 6 with 4 pedals and 4KL's that I'm playing around with.

I kind of stole Bill Hatcher's EADGBE idea and have one pedal that pulls 3 strings into an open G. One of the pedals takes that to the 4 chord same as your AB E9 pedals do, but in the middle register. Another does what the 4&8 E to F raise does.

With a universal 3/3 or 3/2 modern changer, there are many ways to set up the 6 string to suit your purposes.

Take a moment to read Bill Hatcher's posts here and listen to his Freddie King stuff from an earlier thread here. Good Luck!

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=217208

Thanks Jerry!
I'll go looking for Bill's posts, the youtube clip was certainly very slick…

So… on your guitar, you have one pedal pulling the E's to D and the A to G. Then another pedal (giving you an A chord) taking the G to A, B to C# and D to E.. is that it..?

b0b wrote:Stuart, it's a subset of my S-8 Desert Rose copedent, which you can access from my signature below. The string gauges are there as well.

Thanks Bob, found that..

I must say, it's easy for someone to lose their way with all this…

It's not going to happen, but I could see the use for an instrument set aside to just try different tunings and pedal configurations…..

Stuart, sorry about the confusion. The 6 stringer is a sort of work in progess and on hold for the time being, but essentially I'm setting it up so that I can use it for rock and blues stuff as well as country, but in the range of a standard guitar.

So, one pedal lowers the hi and low E's to D and the low A to G.

Pedals one and two work the same as they would on the standard E9th tuning out of the lowered or open G tuning, taking the raised tuning up a 5th or the 4 chord if you will.

Raises string 1 up a half tone and string 2 up a whole tone on separate pedals for the country stuff on the top 4 strings.

Another pedal raises the 3rd string G to G# out of the open E setup so when used along with the low D gets an E7 tuning.

I'll try to put together a chart when I have time.

Still in limbo, but experimental. I can see lots of possibilities here. The main thing I wanted to do was get the standard guitar tuning and tone v. pedal steel and still be able to play country licks.

I still have a D10 in the standard tunings for the normal pedal steel setup.

Hope I haven't confused the issue further. JO.

Jerry Overstreet wrote:Stuart, sorry about the confusion. The 6 stringer is a sort of work in progess and on hold for the time being, but essentially I'm setting it up so that I can use it for rock and blues stuff as well as country, but in the range of a standard guitar.

Thanks for that Jerry..!

I'll have a go at writing it out, so I can see it all..

I am looking to use my pedal in the same fashion.

I am dead keen to know though: given that when playing a guitar you use fingers to form chords, but with a pedal you use a bar, why did you choose standard guitar tuning for your six string pedal and not an open chord..?

Returning to useful chords and this time considering those available from what might be termed an open position…

Referring to the diagram below and once again, this is for the pedal/lever setup above (six string in E), with no lever or pedals, just the bar at the 5th fret, we have an A chord. Sliding up to the 8th fret and deploying pedal B gives us an Am chord.

No 7th chords are available to us in this region, unless an additional pedal can be added to raise S3 and S4 a tone each. Wherein pedals B + C (or B + K2….) at the 3rd fret would give an A7… Just crunching numbers…

Looking for useful notes… and thinking of double stops..

The harmonised scale is something I have used a little in playing guitar. If I just write this one out in C, because it doesn't have any sharps or flats (happy days…!)
It looks something like this:


So… finding these notes on the psg, i have them on three pairs of strings, as noted below (frets noted and pedal/lever deployed),

Stuart,

For communicating with this audience, you should probably call your 1st pedal (G# to A) the "B pedal", and your second pedal (B to C#) your "A pedal". I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but those are their established names in the "standard" E9th copedent.