Why Not Slide Further and More Often?

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 25 Apr 2003 1:54 pm

I just got my copy of Pedal Steel.us magazine. In it, Bobbe Seymour points out that steel guitar is being heard less and less on records and points out that players are often content to learn and rehash the “classic” licks of others. He exhorts players to expand to playing different types of music and use effects to try to broaden the range and appeal of the instrument. Strangely enough, this is the exact same thing that Tom Bradshaw, Gary Morse, and Paul Franklin Jr. were saying in a decades-old copy of Steel Guitar Magazine, May 1981. While effects and ethnic rhythms might all have their place, when I listen to many modern steel players it seems to me that they’re not taking full advantage of the one naturally distinctive effect of the steel guitar, the glissandos or slides between notes. Good technique on steel these days almost seems to be defined by how little a player can move the bar and still get the notes and chords (with the exception of the aforementioned Gary Morse w/ Dwight Yoakam). When steel players want to go up a fifth, they almost always change strings rather than moving seven frets – as though that’s bad or dirty or something. One of my favorite steel albums is “Jazz by Jernigan”, but on it Doug Jernigan seem determined to play mostly close, scalar sax-like licks. He has a solo transcribed in the new magazine that is done entirely within four frets.

Meanwhile, Nashville producers are hiring slide guitarists to play solos and fills on records simply because they DO slide up and down, and steel guitarists are reduced to half-and-whole note pedal mashing on sessions for the radio. Personally, I have yet to meet a Duane Allman or Ry Cooder lick that doesn’t work respectably well in a C6th tuning. In a concurrent thread entitled “S-10 or D-10 for beginner”, Larry Bell says “I've always maintained that the pedal steel is the greatest slide guitar / blues / rock instrument ever invented.” At a little over a year into this thing, my chops are wimpy, but I can already sense a wicked blues monster lurking within my humble Carter C6th S10. Why NOT play three or more notes per string? Junior Brown does it all the time. There is a young slide guitarist named Derek Trucks, the nephew of Allman Brother drummer Butch Trucks, who has worked with the Allman Brothers but does some stunning work in his own band – “Kicking Back” from the album “Out of the Madness”, for example. This link is to a Guitar Player Magazine soundclip of Jeff Beck, playing and discussing some wicked sounding slide guitar – click on “Dissecting ‘Nadia’” to download. http://archive.guitarplayer.com/soundpage/jeffbeck.shtml

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 25 Apr 2003 2:16 pm

All month I have been sliding in and out of ethnic rhthms with the Sho-Bud. Island music with an odd cross between Joe Pass and Lowel George. Go figure. Jazz chords that slide and morph with blues.
So far my proof of concept has been working out better than expected. Now if I can just get solid techinique.
A drummer did 10 tracks for me today and said he really liked the steel(s) in the mix.

Dennis Olearchik · Post by **Dennis Olearchik** » 25 Apr 2003 3:11 pm

David,

Derek Trucks slide intro on "Joyfull Noise" is just killer!

Dennis

Jeff Lampert · Post by **Jeff Lampert** » 25 Apr 2003 6:18 pm

“Jazz by Jernigan”, but on it Doug Jernigan seem determined to play mostly close, scalar sax-like licks.

DJ is obviously into playing Bebop style and that generally calls for scalar, punctuated stuff, and he would therefore be inclined to stay at the same couple of frets and play different strings (vertical playing) rather than the same string over many frets (horizontal playing). I do agree that the sliding ability of the steel is something that can be accentuated to good effect, but I don't beleive that DJ's type of stuff is where to do it.

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Jeff's Jazz

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 28 Apr 2003 5:46 am

Check out Robert Randolph and the other Sacred Steelers blues and Gospel stuff. They play whole melodies on one string. I think alot of steelers play slide guitar kinds of stuff when they play rock and modern uptempo country (which now is really as much rock as country). More traditional country sometimes uses long glisses with pedals on slow numbers, but not much on fast stuff. For many types of jazz, slide guitar licks have never been used. They sound too unsophisticated and primitive for some jazz ears and you can't get the zillions of notes per second that many like in jazz these days. Modern pop is very punchy, rhythmic and synth oriented these days. It's hard to imagine the liquid sound of steel working with it. These are just some thoughts about why you don't here more single string stuff and glisses with certain types of music. But the only thing stopping more of that is lack of innovation and lack of listener appeal. It's a challenge.

John Cox · Post by **John Cox** » 28 Apr 2003 7:41 am

So what your telling us is to forget pedals
and play non-pedal?

Tony LaCroix · Post by **Tony LaCroix** » 28 Apr 2003 1:34 pm

For what its worth, I've decided to learn pedal steel presicely because of the limits of slide guitar. There are a handfull of slide guitar "masters" out there, but frankly, I've heard so many gawd-awfull hacks playing Johnny Winter tunes in smokey bars with their amps turned to 11, I could go the rest of my life and never play or hear that stuff again. I heard a George Thorogood special on the radio last night. After hearing about 10 agonizing seconds of his one-dimentional singing and heavy loads of pointless slide, I had to throw in BB King's Live at the Regal, and remember why I ever played the blues to start with. Nothing against slide players, I just think the pedals and levers must have been invented for a reason.

Tony

Mike Perlowin · Post by **Mike Perlowin** » 29 Apr 2003 4:05 pm

Personally, I have yet to meet a Duane Allman or Ry Cooder lick that doesn’t work respectably well in a C6th tuning.

Personally, I have yet to meet a Duane Allman or Ry Cooder lick that doesn’t work respectably well on the E9.

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 29 Apr 2003 4:42 pm

I disagree. I've never heard a pedal steel that sounded remotely like Duane Allman or Ry Cooder's slide guitar. Sure, you can play the notes, but you can't get that sound out of a normal pedal steel. You would need wider string spacing and a longer scale length, not to mention the different guitar body resonance, pickups, amplification, etc.

Conversely, a pedal steel can do things that Duane Allman never imagined. It's the ultimate rock slide instrument, in my opinion.

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<img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b.gif" width="64" height="64">Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs
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Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 29 Apr 2003 7:40 pm

Good post......I'm still thinking about it.
Not sure what I want to say, yet.

So this is a longer-than-necessary BUMP.

Thanks, all, and y'all.

Chippy

Ricky Littleton · Post by **Ricky Littleton** » 30 Apr 2003 2:18 am

Amen, b0b! My gig with a small local group here on Ascension is almost totally rock (95% original material) and they invited me into the group to get a classic slide sound, but not quite getting the same tone, I "funked-it-up" a little with my own stuff and when we're in the groove it's good stuff. (If I do say so myself!) And I'm all over the E9th neck with it.

Ricky

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Session 400 Ltd
Dan-Echo, E-Bow, Ibanez Distortion, Boss Comp./Sustain, Ibanez Auto-Wah

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 1 May 2003 4:08 pm

...Ry Cooder's slide guitar. Sure, you can play the notes, but you can't get that sound out of a normal pedal steel.

Actually, you can come pretty close to Ry's sound by tuning the guitar down substantially, and then using a lightweight bar, such as the pinky slide, or an old Hawaiian-style bar!

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 2 May 2003 7:25 am

I think a lot of the timbre problem trying to convince a pedal steel to sing like a Paul played bottleneck through a Champ on 11 is the bar and the sustain characteristics of the instrument itself.

I have a hollow glass bar that comes real close to my ears -- AND -- also often play with my MatchBro bar with either amp/tube or stompbox distortion. The BJS bar is not the direction you want to go in for most instances. The glass bar gets something much closer to a Coricidin bottle and the MatchBro bar sounds somewhat like a lapsteel. Whatever works. It's just a tool.

Same for the 'further/more often' argument -- This is an instrument with almost limitless possibilities that we've pidgeonholed into a very narrow corridor of musical expression. If we can remove the blinders we'll see a much more interesting and potentially lucrative future. Sliding further or more often is not an objective -- only a nuance. The actual music produced is the only important product.

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2003 Fessenden S/D-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro, Standel and Peavey Amps

David L. Donald · Post by **David L. Donald** » 3 May 2003 1:56 pm

I agree most bar-room slide guitar is sub-par.. or par is very high and they just don't get there. For every great live band like Little Feat with two good slide guitarists, there are hundreds that negatively bend minds nightly.
For a Duane A. lick humbuckers and the same amp would go a long way to that tone.
I imagine he still thought much farther than his instrument would alow him to go. He might have been a PSG player eventually had he lived.

Slide is the last bastion of fluid micro tonalism and it is some what surprising that so many players go to such effort to not be micro tonal in any way.
Which is NOT playing off key, but sliding between the notes of a key in a way that resolves the pattern to the key in the end.

The question is how and how fast do you resolve the "blue notes" in and around the pattern key. Sax, horn, synth players and some guitarists do this. But most of the steel I hear is more "in" than "out".
Not a critique, just an observation.[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 03 May 2003 at 02:59 PM.]