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.
Back to excerpt index.
|