The Steel Guitar Forum

Do you roll the bar, slide the bar or a little of both, when you play?
(I tried to make this a poll, but don't know how. (I tried the "Make a poll" but wasn't successful)

I do both. I normally roll on the slower stuff, and slide (the "Drake shivver") on the faster stuff.

Both

Both. Mostly "wiggle" the bar front end. When I think of it, on my extended E9 I roll on the wide grips getting down into the lowest strings.

I'm a "wiggler". I guess it's because my first instrument is trombone where there's no equivalent of a roll. Also mostly moving the tip varies the top note the most - in a trombone section the lead player does most of the vibrato.

Both. Depending on the effect I'm trying to get.

Both, but its maybe 60% roll, 40% wiggle...
I tend to roll more on slower and mid speed stuff..

I really don't think about this as I play. I focus on intonation and trying to limit the amount of vibrato. In my opinion most people, including me, use too much vibrato.

If I really think about my playing, I probably slide the bar more than roll it.

I'm a slider but sometimes i'll let the good times roll...

I started as a Dobro player. Most everything was fast so I developed a fast bar "quiver". As I got in to pedal steel I watched people like Paul Franklin and Lloyd Green and Tommy White and soon came to realize I needed to slow down a bit on my vibrato. For lack of better terms you want to pull tone out of your bar on a steel. When I video myself playing I still find that sometimes I have too fast of a vibrato that makes me sound to me like a lap steel or Reso player. So Listen to the song and Slow Down and think about moving from your elbow rather than your fingers or wrist.

Since the OP Chris said he wanted a poll with this, I added one.

Coming from guitar, and especially slide guitar, of course I started out strictly sliding the bar, and I still do that sometimes. It's a specific sound. Actually, sometimes I really like the sound of the slide or bar sliding back and forth across the strings.

But when I joined the forum, I noted that many players talked about rolling the bar. So I tried it and sometimes that seems to fit better to me, so I've worked on doing that more. I guess I also tend to do that more on slow stuff where sliding might sound too exaggerated.

I also occasionally successively push down and then let up on the bar, analogous to what I sometimes do with my fingers for a different type of vibrato on guitar. I think that's more of a violin technique.

Depending on the desired effect, I do both at different times.

Vibrato is something I have been thinking about lately. Very seldom , if ever do I hear of specific exercises that address the technique. It usually seems to be an afterthought . There are lots of right hand exercises, and bar hand exercises that deal with moving the bar accurately, but can't recall hearing about how people work on their vibrato . Well maybe once .

I do both, and it also depends on the song-I like vibrato in slow songs, but there are times I'll use vibrato on fast songs.

I do both as well.

Bofa

Paul Franklin talks about rolling the bar in his Method series. He calls sliding it “the wave” and says it is a bad habit to get into.

Personally, I like the sound of the roll better, but I have to force myself to roll, not wave. It’s not a natural motion, yet. Still workin on it!

Thanks Charlie. I’m gonna have to revisit that part in the Franklin Method (which is one of the great things about it- you can review whenever). I think Paul refers to “the wave” as changing the angle of the wrist so the bar changes angle & doesn’t remain parallel to the fret markers, causing intonation funkiness. Thanks for the heads up- I gotta go back!

I have tried the roll after sliding for years and as far as my playing I can see no difference in the sound. If you really want to know try playing a song and have another steeler in the next room
and play the same song with each method and see if he or she can hear any difference. That would be a way of telling
a difference if any instead of asking opinions.

"rolling" seemed to me to be the logical thing to do years ago, until I observed that Byrd, Emmons and many of the Tone-"Monsters" tended to rather slide the bar for vibrato.
I must say it only got me to experiment and I find that I can drive, push, or milk the tone better by "sliding" back and forth for vibrato. I still think that logic would suggest friction from sliding instead of rolling, but then, that MAY rather excite the string.

... J-D.

I heard the late, great Jerry Byrd explain vibrato this way on an instruction video I think and it helped me.

Jerry Byrd,

"vibrato should be natural, (imagine) this bar was a pencil and you were erasing a spot off of that string".

...easy to visually and manually identify with.

I roll the bar on slow passages and chords. I slide the bar when playing single nore runs, especially on runs that make minimal use of pedals/knees. Not sure why... just seemns to work for me.

I do both and try to match vibrato to the tempo somewhat.vibrato and amp tremolo, although different can be overdone and like overdone food, become less appealing.