The Steel Guitar Forum

Is your right hand automatic? With all the disciplines involved - bar technique, pedals, levers, volume pedal… it’s a challenge to put it all together with equal focus on all elements. Do you just intuitively reach down and grab the correct string groups or is there a dedicated focus on that technique as you play?

Yes, mostly, after years of practice and playing in bands.

You're right. In the beginning, you're thinking about everything. But with time and practice, it becomes pretty much automatic. In most every discipline, the experienced pro makes the difficult look easy. The actions are no longer thought about in detai;, everything comes together and they begin to perform almost by reflex.

But it requires many years to attain that apparent ease. As the old saying goes, nothing good comes easy. Stick with it, and it'll happen for you too!

After 50 years of playing, it's automatic. I always considered strings 5,6 and 8 on E9th/B6th U-12 as home base, much like a typewriter has home keys. Actually, volume pedal, knees and floors become automatic also. The only part of playing that is not automatic, after getting settled in on your copedent, is spontaneous creativity, which includes the bar hand. The "automatic" is the part that you don't have to put much thought into after a while. This is also subject to being finished with knee lever copedent and placement.
Proper pick and palm blocking will soon become a technique challenge. Repetition gets you there. Beginners usually struggle with proper use of the volume pedal. Concentrate on sustain and not using it to swell or fluctuate the volume. Eventually, the volume pedal will become automatic.
A lot to think about at first. You'll soon recognize which area to concentrate on before the automatic sets in.

I wouldn't put myself in the experienced steelers category yet by a long shot. BUT I do know that spending a few bucks on Joe Wright's "The Wright Hand" video lesson has made a huge difference in what I'm capable of as far as quickly finding grips and independently picking/blocking strings.

To me it's like driving, it just becomes instinctive.

Some valuable advice I got early on from Ron Stafford was, don’t look at your picking hand. Helped a ton.

Haha that's funny.
I, on the other hand am very experienced but not yet very good LOL

it doesn't start out automatic, after years, it becomes automatic, just like our eyes, feet, knees and left hand.

Then we learn rather quickly that nothing is automatic ! This is one dang instrument where we should never take anything for granted. LOL

Have fun!

tp

Since I play the eharp tuning, my issues are the opposite of other steelers. In my tuning, the right hand does most of the work. The left hand does almost nothing. My practice time is often just practicing the four note grips and arpeggios.

I very seldom watch my right hand because it knows where it is most of the time. The Bar hand has to be watched as it will stray if I don't.

Pretty much automatic but it does not happen overnight. It is awkward and overwhelming for quite a while. Overcoming that depends on how much you really love it.

The high tech name for it is Neuro Memory Storage.
When you do a move with your body repeatedly and exactly the same every time, After hundreds of reputations of the same move, When your brain identifies the EXCITER (By Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch), Your body will do the moves required without your brain having to think, Before it commands your muscles to do the move. This is where perfect practice is so important doing a lick or fill exact. Upon identifying the EXCITER by Seeing (Tab or charts) or hearing music notes the body just does its moves exact.

When I attended a Police Firearms Instructors class about 1990, There was about a 4 hour section of the class on Neuro Memory and the Human Brain. The object of the session was to train us as instructors to teach officers to handle firearms with effect when required without their brain processing the moves. It takes 100's to 1000's of repetitions of the same move for some people to retain the move in their Neuro Memory.
Old firearms instructors motto, "NO SECOND PLACE WINNER IN A GUN FIGHT"

Jim Pollard wrote:I wouldn't put myself in the experienced steelers category yet by a long shot. BUT I do know that spending a few bucks on Joe Wright's "The Wright Hand" video lesson has made a huge difference in what I'm capable of as far as quickly finding grips and independently picking/blocking strings.

I’ll second the props to Joe Wright’s instructional material. He has done enough in videos and books just on right hand development to keep you busy for a lifetime. In addition to getting standard grips and patterns ingrained in the muscle memory, there is an abundance of information on how to go beyond those norms and not sound quite so musically automatic.

To me, after a few years practice,
It just comes easy. I don't know if you could call it natural, or just habit.

David Dorwart wrote:Is your right hand automatic? With all the disciplines involved - bar technique, pedals, levers, volume pedal… it’s a challenge to put it all together with equal focus on all elements. Do you just intuitively reach down and grab the correct string groups or is there a dedicated focus on that technique as you play?

When you are playing, like in a live band situation, no. You can’t just suddenly start focusing on your right hand, or your bar technique, or whatever, because the rest of your playing mechanism will go to crap. It all has to work together.

When you are practicing, you can take a focused approach at each of the individual aspects of your technique, isolating right hand, or left foot, or volume pedal, whatever. As long as you are doing your repetitions correctly during practice time, the dividends should pay off when you put all the parts together and play some music.

About the first thing I have new players practice is just sitting and thinking " I want to hit strings 3 and 5 or 5 and 8 etc' until the muscle memory takes over.

David Dorwart wrote:Is your right hand automatic? With all the disciplines involved - bar technique, pedals, levers, volume pedal… it’s a challenge to put it all together with equal focus on all elements. Do you just intuitively reach down and grab the correct string groups or is there a dedicated focus on that technique as you play?

YES!... eventually it ALL should become "automatic", and the right hand, I'm afraid, will have to be the first one to automatize.
One should from the get-go start to NOT look at the picking hand. You instead strive to learn to see which strings you pick by observing them "move" at the bar.

The key to automizing your right hand is to have a steady grip-discipline. Meaning that you don't reach for higher string groups by extending your fingers, but move your HAND over the string groups like the head of a sewing machine! Thus, I would be one to stress against resting the picking hand's wrist on the back neck or a pad - it's poor technique and will hamper your ability to play with constant feel, tone and dexterity!

A good exercise is to learn all grips and do them by squeezing the string groups one be one and moving back and fort across the strings from string group to string group while watching for the subtle movement at the bar ONLY... without playing,.. just squeezing one group after the other up and down while the bar remains steady on the same fret... give your brain TIME to LEARN. Automatization is about subconsciousness... just like riding a bicycle without helper-wheelies.
it's a silent exercise and I still do it as a warm up every day.

So, learn your string groups! Assuming you are on E9th, strings
10, 8 & 6
8, 6 & 5
6, 5 & 4
5, 4 & 3
2 & 1 back to 4 & 3

back & forth.
and "Play It Again, Sam"

Just squeeze, HOLD squeezed and release (NO picking sound), lift off and do it again, repeat and move on to the next grip, on and on...
NEVER look at your picking hand, or you will get hooked on looking at it and your intonation and bar movements will FOR EVER be insecure and sloppy. And you can check on youtube and see guys playing for a long time struggling with the bad habit.

This exercise will also help you along with pick-blocking, because you'll inadvertently learn to rest your picks on the strings.


... J-D.