The Steel Guitar Forum

My band wants me to play some surf tunes instrumentals,Does any body have some tab they could send me..any six string tuning would be cool.

Check out this link for Ventures tabs for standard guitar. I'm sure you can easily transpose to Emajor, E7th, E13th, etc.
http://www.spies.com/~reverb/central.html

What a good idea!As you may know,there is a common melodic thread running through 1940s Hawaiian,1950s Exotica,and 1960s Surf music.The stacatto double flatpicking associated with some surf guitar styles is gonna be problematic on steel w/fingerpicks-I have tried it and it can be done,though.I'll bet that songs like "Walk,Don't Run","Apache","Ghost Riders In The Sky" and other guitar instrumentals by The Ventures,The Shadows,The Bel-Airs,The Challengers,etc. would lay nice on C6.As far as tab goes,I'm afraid you're on your own.But isn't digging it out yourself more gratifying? I would start by picking up the Rhino Records "Anthology of Surf Guitar" box set and take it from there.Just pick out the melodies first and let your band back you up-then fatten up your arrangements as you go.Don't forget to turn your reverb WAY up. Good luck...... -MJ-

Surf tunes can be played on the lap steel. I backed up Greg Sardinha at the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association's 1998 convention and he played a beautiful medley of 'Diamond Head', 'Walk Don't Run' and 'Pipeline'. I am sure he was in C6. He played the medley on a six string Oahu lap steel. Sounded very cool.

Of course you can flatpick on a steel to get the Dick Dale sound.

I'm a big fan of surf and have been meaning to work out some surf tunes on steel. Thanks for the motivation, Gerald, that sounds like a great medly!

By the way, if you don't want to shell out the approximately $50 for the surf box, here are two alternatives:

Rock Instrumental Classics, Volume 5: Surf
(Rhino Records) has all the classics like:
Pipeline, Mr. Moto, Miserlou, Diamond Head, Baja, Penetration, Soul Surfer, etc.

The Blue Hawaiians Live at the Lava Lounge
(Pascal Records) features great covers of:
Pipeline, Apache, Baja, Latina, Soul Surfer, Jack the Ripper and Santo & Johnny's "Slave Girl".

Ya'll have givin me a few ideas, i guess any way I go the genrall idea is practice practice practive..I did get to that ventures site, and I down loaded some pretty cool sounds..Ive been messin with "Walk dont run " and "Pipeline", a really simplified version,but then again this is TN what do they really need surf tunes for anyway

Here's a great link - a Surf Guitar Tutorial ripe for adapting to lap steel (couldn't bring myself to say "ripe for steeling").
Cowabunga!!
http://www.guitarplayer.com/archive/lessons/surf.shtml

I've had a slight obsession this week with working out some Surf tunes after this topic got started last week. Check out what I came up with over in the share-a-lick forum. I'd welcome any comments. Thanks.