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Bob
intonation help

[This message was edited by Bob Hoffnar on 08 June 2005 at 02:28 PM.]

Pete "Oswald" Kirby also added a lot of Hawaiian sounds to Roy Acuff's music another very popular country musician of the 30s.

Cliff Carlisle played the dobro as Dr. Hoffner stated, but Dunn actually played an electric steel guitar I believe. That would be 10-15 years before Hank Snow I suspect.

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"Gimme a steel guitar, 2 or 3 fiddles and a Texas rhythm section that can swing"..R. Pennington

I've been playing dobro now for a couple years (always goofed w/it a little b4) and do an occasional slide thing on tele but to me they're two distinct instruments. Not just mechanically but fundamentally.

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Violinists and guitarists can't necessarily play each others instruments. ...keyboard...instruments are played fundamentally the same way... The same is true for the steel guitar family.

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as far as technique goes, you put some picks on your right hand and pluck the strings and you hold a steel bar in your left and slide it along the strings. on some instruments you use your feet and on some you don't. they are closely related, tho not exactly the same, and the people who made the technological changes were aquainted with the previous acoustic and electric non-pedal instruments.

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I'm not sure what Marty is trying to say.

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The conversion included labels for each fret with the name of every note at every fret factory-printed on it. When I inherited it it had a pair of 1/2" brass cylinder bars, a Stevens bar, and a couple of thin, flat, chromed steel bars of different types still in the case.

Now if that ain't country I don't know what is.

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Dave Grafe - email: dg@pdxaudio.com
Production
Pickin', etc.

1978 ShoBud Pro I E9, Randall Steel Man 500, 1963 Precision Bass, 1954 Gibson LGO, 1897 Washburn Hawaiian Steel Conversion

[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 09 June 2005 at 11:38 PM.]

Case in point.... If you do a search on Jerry Douglas, I believe you will find a note by him where he explained that he gave up on pedal steel because the right hand technique is very different from dobro. He said that learning steel technique was hurting his dobro chops.

Another example.... Just because someone is an excellent guitarist doesn't mean he can play a mandolin proficiently. (Assuming there is such a thing as good mandolin playing )

Just my $.02 worth.

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"Gimme a steel guitar, 2 or 3 fiddles and a Texas rhythm section that can swing"..R. Pennington

On a historical note, Steel Guitarist Magazine Issues 2 - 5 (1979-80, still available from this forum, I believe) has a series of excellent articles on the history of western swing and the lap steel guitar.

According to this source, the Hawaiian guitar originally came into popular use at King Kalakua's Jubilee Celebration in November of 1886. James Hoa, Gabriel Davion and Joseph Kekuku were all playing slide guitar before that time, although who was the first to do so is a matter of debate.

It was widely featured in American vaudeville shows as early as 1898, when the US took possession of Hawaii and all things Hawaiian became the rage.

The first "country" recording of the "Hawaiian" guitar is credited to Frank Hutchinson in April of 1927, by which time it was in widespread use in rural areas throughout the US.

For more information, buy the magazine set from b0b, you can help support his great work and learn cool stuff at the same time.

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Dave Grafe - email: dg@pdxaudio.com
Production
Pickin', etc.

1978 ShoBud Pro I E9, Randall Steel Man 500, 1963 Precision Bass, 1954 Gibson LGO, 1897 Washburn Hawaiian Steel Conversion

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Jerry Douglas...gave up on pedal steel because the right hand technique...

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I'm talking about the PLAYING TECHNIQUE!
I think it's night and day, David.
Just because I use fingerpicks on b@nj0 doesn't make it a dobro; just because I use a slide on dobro doesn't make it a pedal steel.

Now, I'm not trying to be obtuse here; I'm just saying that while the evolution is obvious, today's PSG and the way it's played, is NOTHING like 'slide' instruments.
It's a different process/mindset/skillset.

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I always thought Cliff Carlisle playing dobro in Jimmie Rodger's band might have had something to do with it.

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could you play pedal steel without a slide bar? no? then i'd have to say there is a relationship.

"I'm just saying that while the evolution is obvious..."

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made the jump into country music?

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And that makes my case EXACTLY!

Ummm... B also, now that I think about it.

[This message was edited by Marty Pollard on 11 June 2005 at 10:10 PM.]

While he is undeniably the first such artist to genrate the attention (and the ensuing revenue stream) of a nationwide audience, I think you'll find that the "country" music label pre-dates Jimmie Rodgers by a considerable number of years.

For many years "country" and "western" music were considered to be two mutually exclusive genres, with different labels, artists, geographical sources, distribution systems and audiences.

Let's not forget that as late as the 1940's the musicians union wouldn't let Bob Wills and his group join because it featured hawaiian guitar, fiddles AND horns at the same time and everybody knew that whatever it was that they were playing wasn't really MUSIC.

[This message was edited by Dave Grafe on 11 June 2005 at 11:06 PM.]

"As someone who plays Dobro,Weissenborn, and is learning Lap Steel and Pedal Steel for me, for the most part, each instrument is unique and I've found little that I learned on Dobro that I could apply to the Lap and Pedal Steel."

What tunings did you go to with each new instrument?

Was there a logical progression in the choices of tunings, or did you go to widely different tunings with each new instrument, which did not build upon the knowledge gained in the prior instrument?

This is a question from one who is trying to evolve gently from one tuning to the next in this evolution of instruments, which I believe are all closely related.

When I moved to lap steel I experimented a lot and played mostly with c6 tuning, which was similar to Dobro G but different as well.

On Pedal I'm on a Universal 12 string E9/b6. So to answer your question: yes I played with a number of new tunings and that has added to the learning curve. I've also experimented with Sacred Steel E tuning, a6 (which is basically c6) and Leavite tuning.

And gentlemen please, it's spelled Hawaii/Hawaiian with a capital H, just like your particular Province/State's name starts with a capital letter. Anything else is slighting the people and the 50th State of the Union.
Unintentional I'm sure, but I see it too often.

[This message was edited by Ron Whitfield on 12 June 2005 at 07:41 PM.]

Until 1912, most Hawaiian songs were written in the Hawaiian language. That year, a stage play opened on Broadway, Bird of Paradise, which featured five Hawaiian musicians. Songs included in the show were "Mauna Kea," "Old Plantation (Kuu Home)" and "Waialae." The play was a success, and The New York Times called the music "weirdly sensuous." The play toured extensively and has been filmed twice.
Then in 1915 a troupe of Hawaiian entertainers went to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and, in the Territory of Hawaii pavilion, the main attraction proved to be a show of Hawaiian music and hula performed by The Royal Hawaiian Quartette, led by George E. K. Awai.
Suddenly, every Tin Pan Alley tunesmith decided to write Hawaiian songs--with English words, a few words in Hawaiian, and often, pseudo-Pidgen gibberish. By 1916, there were hundreds of Hapa Haole (half "foreign") tunes written. That same year, more Hawaiian records were sold on the mainland than any other type of music. And they came in all the popular styles of the day: in ragtime, blues, jazz, foxtrot and waltz tempos, as "shimmy" dances and--even--in traditional hula tempos, but jazzed up a bit.

Over the years, most of these songs with English lyrics reflected the music of their times. There were silly, wacky songs in the 20s, swing in the 30s, rock 'n' roll in the 50s, surf-style in the 60s and so on. Many New York and Hawaiian composers provided the introductory verse common to published pop songs, but that part was rarely performed. The rest--usually put to hula rhythms--became the songs everyone heard.

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have used old spice bottle to play with , when no steel was available ,,

Oh one note ,this guitar has been called steel guitar ,because you use steel to play it with