The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi team , as a relative new kid to e9 psg I’m struggling to understand where strings 1 and 2 with the levers fit into the scheme of things, any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers, Bucko

Also a newbie here! My understanding is that these were added as a melody strings, giving you the additional notes in the scale depending on what pedals/levers you've got engaged. The place I've found to use the top one at least is in a V7 chord with B+F(I think, levers are named sometimes confusingly) and I can play the chord, release the lever, then string 1 is the next note in the scale going to the I chord.

That may not make any sense but that's my basic understanding.

Yes, they were added (according to legend by Buddy Emmons) to give extra scale notes, either singly or in thirds.

When levers came along, the D# could be lowered to D so that it was a scale note with pedals down.

Thanks everyone for your valuable guidance, I now have a new set of eyes to help tame the beast that is E9 psg, cheers, Bucko

Dear Paul - Here is one way to think about the tuning. The bottom 8 strings are in fact the "E9th tuning", and they can be played all by themselves without using strings 1 and 2. You could take them off your guitar (Don't!) and you would be surprised that you could mostly play the same music you are playing now. That's how the tuning evolved was that 8 string guitars became 10 string guitars by the addition of two extra strings on top adding new possibilities of harmonies and single note runs. The structural base of the tuning is formed by the bottom 8 strings. For example your highest open string note and your lowest open string note are already included in those 8 strings. The two extra strings operate within that range, not outside of it. That's why it's still possible to play the instrument without using the first two strings. Can't play everything of course, but you could play a lot. So in summary its the bottom 8 strings that form the underlying structure of the tuning, and the top two strings are "extras" added to make the old 8 string tuning more versatile.

One exercise that may be valuable is to try substituting string 1 in licks that you'd normally play with the C pedal.

Some great info here and links to videos.

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=306795

Richard Alderson wrote:Dear Paul - Here is one way to think about the tuning. The bottom 8 strings are in fact the "E9th tuning", and they can be played all by themselves without using strings 1 and 2. You could take them off your guitar (Don't!) and you would be surprised that you could mostly play the same music you are playing now. That's how the tuning evolved was that 8 string guitars became 10 string guitars by the addition of two extra strings on top adding new possibilities of harmonies and single note runs. The structural base of the tuning is formed by the bottom 8 strings. For example your highest open string note and your lowest open string note are already included in those 8 strings. The two extra strings operate within that range, not outside of it. That's why it's still possible to play the instrument without using the first two strings. Can't play everything of course, but you could play a lot. So in summary its the bottom 8 strings that form the underlying structure of the tuning, and the top two strings are "extras" added to make the old 8 string tuning more versatile.

Thanks Richard