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Twisted Sister's rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful over on Leno. Um...ah...no comment...I guess.

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When I was in St Louis and heard RANDY BEAVERS PLAY I was overcome with the feeling that steel guitar is alive and well.

The other thing is Nashville has not only thwarted steel guitar. They have, for the most part thwarted music in general. The big labels don't know the difference between good music and bad. All they know is what makes money. I am old enough to say I have seen this 4 different decades. In the 60's there was crap coming from the major labels and good stuff underground. This is not a new issue. Money is the name of the game. So who really cares about exposure anyway. There will always be good and bad. Bad coming from the big labels and good coming from the people. I haven't turned on a commercial radio station since i got my XMradio. This includes all kinds of music. Jazz, Country, Funk and everything else. Whenever the big money hounds are in control it is usually crap. I remember the Grateful Dead when everybody else was listening to commercial radio. You think they cared about the big labels. Not a chance. None of this is new.

The other very important thing to realize is steel guitar is a difficult instrument to master and will never become mainstream like standup guitar.

I learned standup guitar when i was a kid. I was already playing in popular bands after a short time on guitar. Guitar was an easy instrument to learn for me. Steel has been another thing altogether. The nature of the instrument will always make it a rare thing. Just the learning curve for most of us makes it an oddity. That my friends will never change. So all the exposure in the world won't ever change that. It takes dedication and love for the instrument to become adept.

[This message was edited by Ron Sodos on 15 December 2006 at 01:54 PM.]

Steinar

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"Play to express, not to impress"
www.gregertsen.com
Southern Moon Northern Lights

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quote:Twisted Sister's rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful over on Leno. Um...ah...no comment...I guess.

They get the 2006 Blue Ribbon For Dumbing Down The Chords.

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True - but the more exposure and the less criticism of it, the more people will be drawn to the instrument. What's really lacking are resources - a kid hears RR and wants to learn pedal steel, he's left with Chuck Campbell's videos and not a lot else - the bulk of lesson materials are geared toward "mainstream" playing, as are the teachers. There's a huge educational hole for anyone who wants to play the instrument, but not in the style most players do. I've talked to many younger guitarists who think steel would be cool in metal, punk, whatever, and see a Carter Starter and realize they could get going for a reasonable investment....but have no way to learn in THEIR style. So they don't ever start.

As far as "saving" steel... I think that goes a little far, but steel is "aging" rapidly. There aren't a lot of younger players, and not an overly welcoming attitude towards them if they aren't in the mainstream.

So RR's influence sure doesn't hurt - with the exposure hopefully learning opportunities will follow.

But the great subtleties of the instrument have been aborted.

In other words, why bother playing that style of music on a very HARMONIC instrument,
when most of the time you're just wailing away on single note runs and glisses?

I don't agree, having BEEN a rock/blues 6-string guitar player (I don't understand the term "wild" in that context). It's a totally different sound and totally different approach.

"Bastardizing the instrument"?? What does it matter to what capacity he uses the "parts" of the instrument? He plays a firmly established, fairly popular (and rising) style that uses pedal steel. It doesn't use the instrument the way some players do, but that doesn't invalidate it or somehow lower its musical value. he uses its capacity the way he intends to. That's "style".

Heck, he might even do the Michael Jackson thing and change his skin color.

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Warning: I have a telecaster and I'm not afraid to use it.
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My web site

[This message was edited by Mike Perlowin on 16 December 2006 at 09:27 AM.]

That was a Hall o' Fame post.

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“Back then, everything was different, and you only saw it once; now everything’s the same and you see it over and over again"
-Peter Case

RR must have something going on...........he's had more threads about him on this forum than any other professional steel player.

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I’m sure that if all of you who think he’s doing it wrong were to write to him and offer him a tab to "A Way To Survive" he will see the error of his ways and start playing the "right" way, give up his gazllion dollar career and start playing in VFW halls.

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Good one Mike!!

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My Site - Instruction

[This message was edited by Doug Beaumier on 16 December 2006 at 04:26 PM.]

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why bother playing that style of music on a very HARMONIC instrument,
when most of the time you're just wailing away on single note runs and glisses?

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Man, you're on a slippery slope there! Most 6-string guitarists and pianists, including great ones, don't get anywhere near the harmonic capability of their instruments. For the matter, most steel players do not get close to the full harmonic capability of their instrument. In fact, to my ears, the majority of C6 players, including the greatest ones, are far more into single string playing then realizing the full harmonic capability of that tuning. So, I wouldn't agree with that standard as far as determining a player's worth.

Sure he does do jumps, but it has a wide range of notes at any key center,
and depending on the song, uses them in different ways,
much as we do, but in different ways.

Many of the greatest jazz guitarists rarely play more than 4 voices,
Ah, but how fast they can move them,
and alter their harmonic relationships, that's the thing.

RR seems to have full control of his instrument.
He plays clean with a dirty sound,
and I find that harder.
And he is having fun and being succesful doing it.
So he doesn't do things like Speedy West, Sol Ho'o'oi'i, or Lloyd Green.
So what.

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If we don't support him whole-heartedly, we only shoot ourselves in the AB pedal foot.

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Q: Would you be such a big RR fan, if he was playing the exact same music, only NOT on a pedal steel? Buy his albums, go to his concerts (like you do now), tube him up on the internets? Has there ever, indeed, been ANY bad music ever played on a pedal steel, or does it automatically confer a state of grace upon every little noise that comes squeaking out of it? I sure hope so, cause then I've got it made...

P.S.(Dee Snider is really proud of the fact that the words to "Come All Ye Faithful" fit so exactly into "We're Not Gonna Take It" - it's nice to know you rank with the great composers, I guess.)

[This message was edited by David Mason on 17 December 2006 at 03:35 AM.]

Continued success to RR. He's made it pretty big in a very difficult business. I'll buy his tickets and CD's!

Never happened, nobody ever even asked.
How about y'all.

Yep. It's not about a second chord, or the AABAB song structure that's all too common. It IS about love, celebration, feelings. It's emotion and spirituality channeled into music.

It's a groove. It's a "feel".

It's clapping on 2 and 4 instead of 2 and 3. If you don't understand what I mean by that, I guarantee your natural tendancy is to clap on 1 and 3. ;-)

Nobody has come up and asked me to play a RR tune at a gig. I have mostly played pedal steel in bands that lean to Americana, folk-rock, and country-rock in the late-60s, early-70s sense. But I've also played blues on guitar and slide guitar since the 60s, and we almost always do some blues tunes. Patrons and other musicians often ask me about RR's influence on pedal steel, and the general sentiment is very positive. I think it opens up the more country-based styles to a different audience. When they hear the same exact instrument pushing out a blues and a country tune in sequence, I think it makes an impression.

He is known world wide.
If you remember I am on the exact opposite side.

That's a tremendous comparison. I would also throw B.B. King into the mix, who rarely, if ever, even plays a chord on stage. Until you see him live, you don't realize that he doesn't - and actually says he can't - play rhythm guitar at all.

Saying RR needs to expore the whole harmonic content of the instrument, or that it's a waste playing steel in that style, just shows a singular viewpoint of how steel should be played.

But there are a lot of styles of music - and steel is simply an instrument. How the player uses it is a personal thing, not a set of "requirements".

I'll add another player who wasted the "harmonic content" of his instrument, by basically playing just a few notes sprinkled around, rarely even using both hands at the same time.

Now here’s what I am finding out. I like the universal best. It gives you the low root for power chords in both major and minor keys (the minor root with the A pedal is missing on extended E9). The B6 mode gives you jazz chords. We have a diverse group of players and go into funk and jazz. And all the E9 stuff is there for the occasional excursion away from pentatonic stuff. Of course this is to some extent my personal preference, and you can get what you need with a D10 or ext. E9, or a Sacred Steel E7 tuning.

My main point is that with pedal steel you have way more versatility for chords than on 6-string slide guitar. Also, you can play about equally well in any key, and with any modulation within a song. That is a problem with slide 6-string. I can play the horn keys as easily as the guitar keys. I would need to retune or have several instruments on stage to play slide guitar in all those keys. I am just barely learning to use all this stuff now, and at my age, as an amateur, I don’t know how far I will be able to go. And I also agree that RR has only scratched the surface of what pedal steel can do harmonically. He does mostly play slide guitar licks and single string stuff. But my point is that RR or me or anyone else who goes down this road on pedal steel has a ton of stuff to push the envelop with. Outside of country music, the pedal steel is really unexplored. We have RR, Chuck Campbell and other Sacred Steelers to thank for helping push pedal steel into a whole big realm of music outside of country, also David Easley, and all the other steelers on the Forum (or not) pushing into non-country areas. And I think you can carp about the limited range of this pentatonic stuff now, with a lot of single string and guitar licks, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. And I think if some more young players go in this direction it wont always be as limited – there is tons of room to get as harmonic as you want. To me it is clear that, once we go beyond imitating slide guitar licks and start pushing into new sounds, there is the potential for something unique to come from pedal steel in jazz and blues and pop that no other instrument can do. It is just a matter of time and reaching the right critical mass of young gifted players pushing the envelop. Of course it may all be a passing fad, and could all die on the vine. But I’m hoping we are at the start of a wild ride.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 17 December 2006 at 12:18 PM.]

Among my older son and his friends, I see and talk to a whole bunch of young guns whop see the possibility...for RR type stuff and beyond, into metal, punk, hardcore, etc.

The things they lack are 1) easy accessibility to instruments (you'd be hard-pressed to even find a Carter Starter in an L.A. music store) and tab/teaching books that aren't pretty much country-based. There are the Chuck and Derek Campbell DVDs, but that's singlular-style again...plus they're hard to find here.