The Steel Guitar Forum

Hey there. One thing that’s proving to be a hurdle for me in my steel playing is integrating both a melodic mindset and a harmonic one. My background is as a sock rhythm guitar player/vocalist and I’ve led bands that play pre-war swing music for decades. Though I can improvise just fine, I’ve never been the primary melodic (or a chord melody) player, so when I pick up my steel guitar my brain instantly goes to chords and chord progressions. I’m trying to focus on learning melodies and relating them to the underlying harmony, but there’s still something’s still getting lost in the translation. I’m lucky enough to play quite a bit with Rusty Blake and Jeremy Wakefield, who provide the template for the sounds I’m hearing in my head that I’d like to try to explore - a mix of hot single line ideas and lush harmony behind the vocals/other soloists. Has anyone else had problems making the jump from swing rhythm player to steel, and did you find an approach that made sense? Thanks for any ideas/help/encouragement! PK

you already have skills. all you need to do is work on melody.

take just one song you like to play and have the opportunity to play when you gig out. go to youtube and record the audio of at least 10 players playing that song. learn the melody inside out...to the point that you dont even have to think when you play it. learn the song in the standard key that everybody plays it in.

when you have the melody down, then learn a block chord solo using the melody of the song with the chords under the melody. inside out till you dont have to even think about it.

then you are ready to improvise on it. listen to the players play the song that you recorded from youtube. they do NOT have to be steel players. listen to the lines and ideas they use. absorb some of them.

after you do all that, then learn your own version of the song in whatever key YOU like to play it in.

it all takes some work. if you put the time in, you will see results..

again, start with just ONE tune and own it. then start on another one. you learn one tune a week, thats 52 tunes a year!

That’s really good advice, Bill!

A lot of my improvisational ideas begin with singing some small ideas/motifs and finding them on the instrument and developing them by moving around to emphasize certain chord tones/extensions. Start small and repeat the motifs, adjusting as necessary for the harmony.

I work on a tune for a week, sometimes more, before I am ready to really let loose on it. In that time, I develop a lot of different ideas, but mainly I can get closer to how I want to approach playing on the tune, whether I’d like to be more melodic, more dissonant etc. Sometimes I will try to compose parts to help me along the path to playing what I really hear internally. But really it involves a lot of deep listening to my own thoughts, a practice I wish I would have started 40 years ago.

Great advice, Bill. Thank you! I’ve been working on ‘Blue Lei’ in C6, basing my melody on Mikiya Matsuda’s version(s) on YouTube. Where I get stuck is trying to figure out how to play a block chord melody for the song.. (I’m having trouble building chords underneath a melody, basically). I tend to be pretty systematic about things and keep trying to find a pattern or a rule or a way to translate how to do this that makes sense. Do you harmonize only certain notes in the melody, leaving out passing tones? Do you try to harmonize everything? Do you only stack chord tones underneath the melody riding on top, or do scale tones work as well? Am I REALLY overthinking this? I realize that all this is subjective, but any guidelines would be really helpful!

This is something that I have struggled with and struggle with as well.
I actually recently picked up clarinet (which I have always wanted to learn) in part because I want to focus more on melody.
I sometimes feel that I compulsively try to harmonize and make a chord melody out of everything I play on steel and guitar and find it hard to focus on melodic, single note playing!
The best players of course seamlessly weave between single notes, dyads/triads, and full block chords! Maybe someday, right?

Although I have dug DEEP into jazz theory and arranging on guitar, on lap steel I have a pretty simple approach.

I sing the improvisation (maybe even record me singing it), then figure out how to play what I sang on the lap steel. I find this usually gives me better, more natural phrasing and is a bit more tasty than me just noodling around on the instrument.

If it's something I want to harmonize, I will play each note of the improvised line on every possible string (e.g. on a C6 tuning I'd play an E on the open 1st string, then on the 4th fret of the 2nd string, then on the 7th fret of the 3rd string, etc. Then, I would try harmonizing it with any of the lower strings - trying slants/reverse slants, etc. to see if I can find a harmonization that I like.

So I kind of throw all that theory I know out the window and just experiment until I find something that I like the sound of.

My experience with harmony started with vocal harmonizers. I tend to thinks in terms of thirds and fifths. On my PSGs I tend to look for strings with those intervals. The melody notes are in the scale used and the harmony notes are in the chord. Not all melody notes will be in the chord. Not all melody notes need to be harmonized.

Since I just started learning PSG, I admit it's easier to say than to do.

Peter Krebs wrote: I’ve been working on ‘Blue Lei’ in C6, basing my melody on Mikiya Matsuda’s version(s) on YouTube.

I have precious little to contribute of value to this thread (though I find it interesting)...but just wanted to concur, Mikiya's playing on that tune, that's good stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTICRnH4byE

If I learned a tune a week, at the end of the year, I would only remember the numbers from December. This getting-old sucks.

A lot of my improvisational ideas begin with singing some small ideas/motifs and finding them on the instrument

I sing the improvisation (maybe even record me singing it), then figure out how to play what I sang on the lap steel. I find this usually gives me better, more natural phrasing

What Mike and David are saying works for me too. As jazz guitarist Herb Ellis said, "the voice is the first instrument. We're all just trying to imitate that" I'm paraphrasing of course but you get the idea. Its not about performance quality vocalizing, just getting the musicality and ideas happening in a natural way. I'd think this will be pretty comfortable for you if you are already an experienced singer and have an ear for what you're going for. The ultimate I suppose is singing what you play while you play it, so the expressivity is spontaneous and genuine and you're not just playing patterns. But there's nothing wrong with working out some go-to phrases to incorporate into your playing.
Good luck with it.

If you are using a 6th tuning (C6, G6, E6, whatever), then in any key, your major chords I-IV-V and minor vi-ii-iii’s are right where you would expect them to be on your neck, at fret 0, 5, and 7 (or 1-6-8, 2-7-9, etc). Try to find the melody somewhere in those chord grips.

If a melody note lies outside those chord positions, just leave it as a single note at first. Once you learn the neck a little better, you can usually find harmony notes outside the regular 0-5-7 fret chord positions. Also keep in mind that harmonies for the I chord can be found in the IV or V chord positions, and vice versa.

This Eddie Rivers video explains the concept little better than my words. Even if you don’t play western swing, this hits the spot for harmonizing with combinations of 3rds, 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, and 11ths.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rARCcW3I0K4

I love this thread and I'm learning a lot from it. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

I'm not a pro player, but I have a workmanlike process to build block chord melodies that I'm happy to share:

I start from a lead sheet that shows chords over the melody, most often the Hal Leonard Real Book series*, including the Real Country Book. I copy the melody onto the "Guitar Tab and Staff Paper" available here:
https://nolaschoolofmusic.com/printables

If I'm at a computer, I use John Ely's incredible chord finder, which even has a place to input a melody note: https://www.hawaiiansteel.com/chordlocator/generic.php

Otherwise, I use a chart I made years ago of all the chords I can reach on c6th. It may or may not be intelligible to other people:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9w1ur0pi7pbv4 ... .docx?dl=0

I start by looking for places where the melody note can be played as the highest note of the right chord. I like to look for whole tone intervals that I can play on the G and A strings. If I can't find anything nice, I look at some common substitutions. Then it's a matter of editing it down to something that's comfortable to play. Two note harmonies and single note passages are almost always part of the picture.

For improvisation, I like to practice harmonized scales like these:
https://www.planetgaa.com/C6/C6Harm.html

*Keepin' It Real is totally awesome, Mike!

Ricky Newman wrote: Otherwise, I use a chart I made years ago of all the chords I can reach on c6th. It may or may not be intelligible to other people:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9w1ur0pi7pbv4 ... .docx?dl=0

This chart is great! A great reference for everyone. Thanks for sharing.
Do you write out your arrangements? Not to impose, but I am sure I am not the only one who would love to see some if you are willing to share!

Thanks so much, Joe! I'd planned to assign a greek letter to each chord shape so I could cross reference them with a list of chord types, but I never got around to it.

These are a few of my (smudged up and coffee stained) favourites. I wish I had time to correct them and copy them out neatly.







You'll see Burke Carroll's name on some of the staff paper. These are my arrangements, but he taught me everything I know.

You'll see Burke Carroll's name on some of the staff paper. These are my arrangements, but he taught me everything I know.[/quote]

I was looking at the tab thinking that’s the same way my teacher showed me. Then I saw Burke’s name - lol - we have the same teacher!

He's the best!

All the suggestions are useful. I’ve only been playing lap steel for 18 months, so I’m not an authority. My principles of arranging:

1) Reharmonize using extended jazz chords below the melody note, as if playing melody in the same register as on the B and E strings on guitar.

2) Harmonize only quarter notes or greater. Aim for movement of internal voices when melody stays at same note. Harmonize eighth note approaches when easy or appropriate. But, if the entire melody is harmonized, it reduces contrast.

3) Voice lead using upper partials of the extended chords. For instance, Henry K. Allen uses an altered sus 4 on Blue Hawaii.

4) Do not limit yourself to root and fifth movement in the bass, as on swing rhythm guitar. Mike’s Rhythm Changes comping uses a C for his lowest string, which allows roots at the bottom. (See his blog.) My lowest string is G (different C13 tuning), which results in more thirds in the bass.

4) Maintain a single direction of flow in a phrase to minimize wasted movement.

I just spent a week on Ask Me Now because I heard Mike do it on Steelonious. I started with an online piano transcription from Solo Monk, which came about a decade after the original group recording. I used the chord symbols, but also referred to Monk’s left hand voicings. I write it out in standard notation and tab.