MY APPROACH

To eliminate some of the confusion I'd sometimes find myself faced with, I started working on the little things that go along with playing. Hearing things I liked and wanting to play, I had to ask a lot of questions. What is a lick? What are the things that happen when you play licks? The first thing I noticed was the fact that the best players had better hand control. They seemed to be playing their instrument rather than it playing them. They made it look so easy......

The questions that started to go through my mind????? What were they thinking about when they played? What did they practice? How did they get that technique? How could I increase mine? As interest and curiosity grew, I soon found myself knee deep in notebooks filled with things I tried out or thought about, to help my playing. The person inside of me kept looking at everything. The fact that I appreciate someone who does whatever they do, to the best of their ability, led me to want to improve. Athletics, is a great example of someone training for something specific. The stronger the legs, the faster the runner? I say the smarter the legs, the faster the runner.

I wanted to be a steel player, so that is what I worked on. I specialized. The most important discovery was that of the physical aspect of playing. I got into things that moved to make music happen on the Pedal Steel. The need for a job had a lot to do with my intense desire for improvement. Worry does wonders for energy. Its human nature to try to be the best, even if your best is only the best that you can be. I see myself as a musician who just happens to play steel guitar. Stereotyping of the steel has made me think more open mindedly. I didn't want that to be a factor in what kind of music I played. There are only two kinds of music. Good and Bad. The Pedal Steel is only a machine that is used to produce music. If we were to step back and look at it all by itself we can see what we have to learn. The biggest thing to remember is that it takes a driver to operate the thing. We are pedal steel operators. The name steel guitar, sounds like heavy equipment, but the only thing it has in common with the crane and backhoe is, they don't work by themselves.

There are a lot of things going on with the steel. There are the strings to be picked, done by the right hand. The movements of the bar, left hand. The movement of the pedals, left foot and, the right foot on the volume pedal. And then you sit down to find the knees must work in conjunction with everything else. So, if any two people were to use the same machine, the only difference would come from the individuals. One may know a lot of music theory, but not have the technique to play what he's thinking, while the other may have great technique but a limited knowledge of where to use it. I divided these into two categories, the physical and the musical.

The techniques are the actual movements it takes to play. The picking, pedals, volume pedal, and knee levers are the movements. The musical is the theory, or the why of the music. A piano player learns the theory and sees how it lays on a keyboard. He then learns physical techniques that apply the theory to the piano, to create licks. The beginner is started out with the simplest of theories applied to the easiest techniques. We steel players must learn the same music theory, but we see it on a fretboard. To set the strings in motion we pick the strings, a piano player pushes a key, that hammers a string. The object of this book is to show you ways of increasing your inventory of techniques. That's the physical part. It also shows how to apply them to the musical to create your own licks. To better understand, we will look at each aspect in sections. We will analyze the steel guitar. To analyze, we look at each individual part and then theorize how it can be applied in the overall picture. We sort everything out and then think about how to apply them. The way I feel, the player who works on all the aspects individually and then works on playing them together smoothly, is going to be better off in the long run.

There are all kinds of licks and they all take movement to make them happen. You can learn right hand finger rolls, and use them against pedal moves to create licks. You can let the pedals bring you licks. The slide of the bar can bring you another type of lick. The only thing stopping you from playing the ones you do see is the condition of your hands and feet. If you're not seeing them on the steel then you need to work on the theoretical, or the music theory. It sounds like a dirty word, but it is really fascinating. You have to learn to see it on the steel and then apply the physical to it and come up with licks. Its not easy. Hours of practice are required. In the long run, the amount of time spent on learning your guitar will show up in your playing. One way of making something, like music theory, a little more appealing, is to try and learn all you can about it. If you start to dig into what's going on, you start to understand more and then you want to know more. Did you ever meet someone and instantly you didn't like them? Something about them bothered you. Six months later, and a few hours spent together, and you find you have many things in common. As your friendship grows, so does your curiosity about this person.

Try to take music theory and apply these same principals. As you start to learn about it, you will want to know more. You'll know when you're there. You won't be able to find another book to read about it and you start reading the ones you have over and over again. As you read the books the third and fourth times, in retrospect, see if you don't find things in there that you never saw the first times. Dig in and find out all you can, and you'll start to enjoy learning a little bit more. I'll dissect each technique and try to exploit every aspect of it. Everything has a job to do when your playing steel guitar. The most important ingredient to me is the right hand. The stronger and faster your hand is, the faster and stronger you will play. Keep this in mind as you start working on these techniques. Please note that this is not easy and requires a lot of time and concentration and diligence. At times it may seem frustrating, but stick with your program. Set yourself a time limit to reach a certain plateau. You can achieve your goal, be it large or small. Work hard. We all have highs and lows in our playing, so stick with it. Improvement comes only with hard work. Learning to play a steel guitar is a process, that takes time. Nothing of value comes easy, to anyone.

You will notice throughout the book that I keep coming back to these very important points:

Total Approach

physical body plays the guitar.
musical the language we speak.
mental putting it all together.

To actually play you need to combine all of these factors. To study we need to look at the basics of each and learn to apply them to the steel guitar.

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