The Steel Guitar Forum

Wow. I just had a really great practice session where I spent about an hour working through the hymn "Sleepers, Wake" (harmonized by JS Bach). I just did the top three voices (soprano alto and tenor). The style of these simple melodies, beautifully harmonized with the moving inner voices and smooth voice leading works so well for pedal steel! And it's an invaluable practice tool in terms of working on grips, inversions, sight reading, and listening too because there's all that great counterpoint, multiple melodies going on simultaneous... tons of things, and plus it sounds so good! I highly recommend this as an exercise! It's like taking your vitamins!

-Tim

PS. any recommendations on good pedal steel hymn CDs?

If you like playing hymns...one that I really like to play and I'm sure you would like the beautiful chords is, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. In the hymnals, it is in the key of C, and there are a lot of beautiful minor chords, and some nice progressions. I have played it in church once or twice, with NO other back up instruments. Use quite a bit of delay and reverb, and play it slow with full chords. Try it and see what you think.
Leon Eneboe

Don't guess you would call it a Hymn, but try Erv's arrangment of "There's Something About That Name". very purty.
Terry

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Zum D10 /8x5 / session 500rd
steelin for my Lord

The Lutheran Hymnal is all 4 part harmonies. It's great practice for reading music, even if you can only get two of the 4 voices.

There's a great selection of CDs that fit that bill in the catalog on this w4ebsite.