Pedal Steel Instruction-Steel Guitar-Scales Scales 10

We've worked on the scales going up the fretboard and now we are going to play the major scale vertically across the strings. We stay at the same fret for the whole lick and let the pedals bring us the notes we need. The pattern is a major scale, played in groups of four. First scale tone then three more, and then do that to each of the scale tones.

The thing to see here is how we can look at the charts and see the notes that need to come to the bar. We can bring notes to the bar by pressing a pedal or knee lever. On the chart to the left the notes we will be working with are shaded.

We see on string 6 that frets 1 & 2 are shaded. These are scale tones of the F major scale and we know we have a pedal that bends the sixth string a half step or one block to an adjacent block. The same applies on string 5 where we have a pedal that will go up two blocks and bring that note to us.



	Looking at the scale tones, we can see that the fifth string gives us the 5th and 6th tones of the scale. We have to decide whether or not to hear our note bending up or to pick the note, block it, press the pedal, and then pick our string again. The exercise below has the pedal sound written into the tablature. If you wanted to do this same exercise in C what fret would you have to go to? Fret 8. The same fret is used for the entire exercise. The secret is to learn each move and then put them together. We stay at the first fret so I only write it at the beginning of each move. The key is movement. It takes movement to get any kind of music out of a pedal steel. The more time spent at your guitar, the better you will get. When your learning scales it can be a tedious time trying to learn patterns. Do a little at a time and then go back and review. I concentrated on the major scale and the modes and then branched off into the crazier ones. Its up to you.