The guitar player can come up with the latest Brent Mason lick, and you know it's out of tune. OR a complicated lead line that has NOTHING to do with the melody. You have two choices. Only the battlefield situation dictates which is right. You can either play a simple melody, doubled with ocatves is my favorite, and act dignified, OR you can cobble together a similar line of crap to play back to him(/her/it). (Then look at him and pick your nose.) I pick either response on any given night unless they're "taping". Even then, I try to figure out who the potential "audience" is and make my choice.

( Seldom am I asked to "listen to what I did" on these evidentiary 'tapes'.)

Also playing double octave lines that stick to the melody against a vocalist that to save their life, wouldn't sing a single note of the melody to ANY song. Sometimes it gives them a "clue".

It's always good to go back to say, Pete Drake, Lloyd Green, ET's stuff with *either* Buddy or Lynn that you've learned, and feel good about playing the best, cleanest, well phrased thing you can.

What happens when you go about it *that way* is that when by some stroke of luck you ARE able to play without having to fight every single bloody measure, you'll HAVE the basics firmly in your head, and CAN embellish.

"You gotta hava the Spaghet' before you adda the sauce." -Unknown Italian-

It's nice to remember some lick you got off the "rebel site" to try against a live band at least once a night.

The more stuff you can play under "adverse" situations, the more stuff you can add to it on better gigs.

Here's to "Better gigs".

EJL

"There are three ways to play the steel guitar. Melody, melody and melody!".

If one ponders that, it ties right into your quote about elegance and simplicity. IE, melody sounds sooooo simple. But melody can be very difficult to maintain across a player's repetoire'.

It is one thing to stay within the chord structure or play notes (ad-libbing) that are complimentary. It is quite another thing to play strictly the melody. Or worse, follow the written page when playing in an orchestra where one must play ONLY that which the arranger/composer wrote.

And yet the end result can sound soooo simple that it is often quite elegant indeed. But it is rarely simple to do. If one doubts this, try to duplicate what Lloyd does or Jerry Bryd does. You will find it ain't simple.

Ant that is the elegant part of it. IMO.

God bless Lloyd Green , Jerry Byrd, and all of you,

Ooops, thank you.

[This message was edited by Don McClellan on 08 April 2003 at 01:26 AM.]

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3. Allegheny
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5. inelegant
6. elegancy
7. elegances
8. Alleghenian
9. allegation
10. allegretto

[This message was edited by ebb on 07 April 2003 at 04:39 PM.]

In Hawaiian music, with sooooooo many great chord changes, one can often hit a note or chord and let it ring while the rhythm section makes 2,3 or 4 chord changes that tend to enhance the note(s) you just played on the steel guitar.