The Steel Guitar Forum

Question for Nashville studio guys:

When a song is recorded in F#, I know many guitar players will tune down a half step and play out of G position.

Do steel players do that, or play it in standard tuning (2nd fret) with all the sharps?

I just move my chair an inch to the left.

In rare cases a steel player might tune a certain string as in “ Set Em Up Joe” to get the low or high string for effect but to my knowledge nobody tunes the entire guitar up or down. If the song was in F# you would place the bar on the second fret to be in the one chord which would be similar to a guitar player putting a capo on the second fret and playing an E chord, technically you’re both starting in F#

Earnest Bovine wrote:I just move my chair an inch to the left.

How far?

Sam

Don't mean to hi jack the thread what do you tune the 10th string to on set'em joe? open or pedals down?

Danny Smith wrote:Question for Nashville studio guys:

When a song is recorded in F#, I know at least 95% of guitar players will tune down a half step and play out of G position.

Do steel players do that, or play it in standard tuning (2nd fret) with all the sharps?

I’m not a Nashville studio player but I can tell you that I don’t know any players in Texas that retune there steels for a song. The whole number system was developed to make switching keys simple. Plus F# has a bunch of open strings that are useful and fun.

Steel guitar is what I call "key-agnostic". It doesn't really make any difference what key the tune is in, we can simply adjust our starting position as needed.

Although I am a little jealous of Russ Pahl's Eb9 custom guitar which gives a barred E chord at fret 1...

No studio musician here either, but I tend to think of the bar as a floating capo considering that the tuning, for the most part, is a full open triad.

With some obvious exceptions, most of the patterns we play are the same in any position. So if you're thinking patterns and intervals, they're the same no matter the position of the bar [capo]. No need to re-tune for a particular song/key.

Set 'em up Joe retunes low B to F#, pulls up to A. Pretty close on most guitars. Tweak the tuning for pedaled low A as necessary. [song is played in key of d though]

As Jeff Newman told our class “there is only one key, it just starts in different places”.

Set Em Up Joe is one really good example, I ‘ve see Doug Jernigan tune his first string on the C6 neck which is an open D note to the high G note that we all used to use years ago in able to play some of his beautiful classical pieces. I figured that string would break but it never did!

I play live with a band occasionally that tunes to Eb.
Their guitar player uses one of these and works okay for him.
I am wondering if anyone has tried a DropTune Pitch Drop Pedal on steel.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... drop-pedal

PSG player. “Ok ready to go
Engineer “ singer want to change keys

Seriously I have done some studio playing and can’t imagine retuning. All the pedals would need tweaking as well. And what do you do on the next song.?

I heard Jerry Douglas (dobro) removes his strings at the end of a session so for a redo after it sounds the same. 1
Over 1000 sessions I believe.

If a tune is in F#, I just play in the key of F#.

You should learn to play in all keys. I'm with you Chris, If a tune is in the key of F# I play in F# position. After all, it's there for a reason

Isn't that one of the few easy parts of playing our instrument??

All relative positions remain the same as does the function of pedals and knees. Think about what a pianist deals with!

I'm by no means a 'studio player' (although I did thousands of sessions back in Britain until the late '90s) and I'm far from being a sight-reader in the true sense. The only qualification I'd make is that, if I'm required to read an actual top-line or a particular figure exactly as needed, I'd like it to be written with a relatively simple key-signature (C, D, G, F, etc.).

But retuning the steel? I can't imagine the chaos of tweaking the raises-and-lowers.

I don't know the details, but nobody has yet mentioned that Buck Owens and his band drop-tuned a half-step for recording (I think I'm right about that), but I don't know the reason. Did Tom B retune as well?

Hmm...

From a guitar perspective, I can say that players drop tune to get important licks and open string phrases to come out right. I also feel that guitar and bass tone is better tuned down.

And for anyone thinking that drop tuning implies lack of skill, it's all over the radio, because the greatest musicians on the planet do it every day in Nashville. (But maybe not steel players, hence the original question).

Guitars, basses, banjos and even drums and piano occasionally tune to keys for recording. Do steel players? And if so, why? Is it for tone, phrasing, simplicity, efficiency?

Wait a minute... I thought Berklee School of Music ELIMINATED the key of F#!?!

Oh, wait, sorry... it was the key of Bd that they eliminated... here is their announcement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX9WgM5Kr4c

"Instead of "Get your Kicks on Route 66," it's "No more Licks in 466!""

Call me naive I guess. I had no idea that drop tuning was a political issue.

So, we don't just judge music based on skill, quality and tone, but also how it's done. I didn't realize that.

Danny Smith wrote:
When a song is recorded in F#, I know at least 95% of guitar players will tune down a half step and play out of G position.

No disrespect intended, but I simply cannot believe that. Maybe I'm the exception, but in 60 years's
of playing, I've never played in a band where the lead player used a capo, or tuned down. But on rare occasions, I have seen that with rhythm players, and more regularly, guitar players in Bluegrass and folk bands.

Another consideration is that the song has been sped up or slowed down after it’s been recorded, maybe for a 3 minute radio time slot or other reasons. Could be recorded in G dropped to F# then recorded the vocals. If there’s a ton of open string bluegrass style licks ala tony rice it probably wasent cut in F#. The guitar riff/hook is a good listen to decide if it was dropped or not after it was recorded.

I know and understand everybody's rejection of the premise of drop tuning. It's impractical in a typical live situation where each player has just one instrument. But in the studio, where a producer wants to get just the right key for a singer, and in larger live situations (where players can have multiple instruments), I believe it's actually quite common. But maybe not for steel. I don't know, but would like to.

2 (or more) steels onstage?

I'm sure some guitarists alter their tunings in the studio sometimes, but we've pretty much established that there's no need to do that with a steel.

As a pianist, as well as a steeler, I totally agree with Roger. The physical makeup of a keyboard - the layout of the black keys & the white keys - affects how you can play certain things in different keys more than reading a chart loaded with accidentals does.

Having said that, and just as an aside...for about 10 years of touring with Dwight, everything was tuned down 1/2 step, basically to save wear and tear on his voice night after night. Everything went down a half step...guitars, bass, fiddle and Gary Morse dropped his steel, as well. Just for the ease of simplicity, really.
Myself, I had a keyboard inside a baby grand shell, and I also shifted it a half step.
But... on the Hammond & the accordion I couldn't do that, so it was a lot of Eb, B, Ab, F#.

Sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do...

I have been a guitar player since the 60s. Yes, sometimes guitar players drop tuning to an Eb-based standard-tuning-intervals tunin for a number of reasons. For example, singer(s) is(are) suited better in Eb, F#, Ab, C#, or some other key that gives open strings that certain open chords, melodic patterns, or licks depend on. Sometimes guitar players tune up to an F-based standard tuning if they tend to usually play in keys up a half-step from those standard keys with open strings. Of course, a capo can accomplish this, but sometimes guitar players prefer the tonality of the tuned-up guitar. I do it sometimes - the tone of a flat top guitar tuned F-to-F can be glorious at times if you want it to really sparkle. Or a Telecaster sometimes. There are lots of examples of all of this.

A lot of jazz guitar players actually prefer to play in positions that don't rely on open strings. First, a lot of jazz tunes are based in horn keys like Bb, Ab, and other flat keys. Second, they often play a lot of 3-4 note block chords and don't tend to use open strings a lot because moving from closed-position notes/chords to notes and chords relying on a lot of open strings changes the tonality a lot.

Guitar players in country, bluegrass, rock, blues, and so on tend to use open strings a lot more because many patterns and licks depend on those open strings in melodic single-string patterns, open chords, and the fact that they want that ringing sound from the open strings.

I think many pedal steel players, including me, tend to eschew the open strings more often than not because the general approach is more to leave the bar on the strings most of the time. I think we approach this more like a jazz guitar player. There are, of course, exceptions, for example, in rapid hammer-on/pull-off patterns on the open strings like on, for example Remington Ride.

And of course, re-tuning a pedal steel up or down can play absolute havoc with the pulling train leverages required to achieve the desired pulls. I dare ya' to do this between songs, especially on something like an old push-pull guitar. If you wanna change the tuning for the entire night, fine - but do it before the show and be prepared to live with that tuning. IMHO.

On the other hand, with a guitar, retuning takes seconds with a modern electronic tuner inline between the guitar and amp. An experienced guitar player can re-tune easily. There are even bridge systems that allow instant retuning of the guitar by flipping a few levers. Various open tunings are ubiquitous among guitar players.

There is no "one size fits all". For me, the various rationales behind tunings are totally pragmatic.

Oh --- I'm not a Nashville studio player either. But I have done a fair amount of recording and live performance on both guitar and steel. Probably not with anybody you've ever heard of.

In my experience, it's quite common for a country artist these days to have some songs on their record in standard E tuning, and others down a half step. More often than not it's impossible to play the parts from the record in standard guitar tuning for the ones that are down a half step. Especially with rock riff type electric guitar parts. I know a lot of people that use drop tuning fx pedals to get around this. Also, those double guitar gig bags come in handy when doing fly dates. I'm out with a band right now where I play steel and guitar. There are about 4 different guitar tunings that I use, as well as different capo positions... You're a lot more likely to run into tuning issues if you're not well acquainted with those alternate tunings, and the guitars you're using. It's the little things that'll get ya!

Steel? No. I do hear plenty of open strings in parts played by the great players though. Buddy sure did it.

Here's a track from a singer I play with sometimes. Lloyd Green is on the record. If you listen carefully you'll hear a high open D note (song is in D) ringing against some of the fills he's playing, which means he's lowering string 2 a half step with the feel stop, and it's all in tune. I bet he even looked cool while doing it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkQUaoR ... siV0DPFDN0