It can be heard on the soundtrack to "Help" by
the Beatles.

quote:

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The vichitra veena is played with the help of a small
egg-shaped glass, called batta, which looks like
a paper weight (although it is bigger than a paper
weight), held in the left hand and made to slide upon
the strings. In the right hand, the artist wears
sitar-like plectrums on the index and middle fingers.

---

description and drawing

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 01 June 2005 at 07:52 AM.]

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Bob
intonation help

According to that website, the instrument is fairly
modern, from the mid-nineteenth century.

As for calling it "Hawaiian guitar"? Would YOU drop into a
shop that said:

"Vichitra Veena Taught Here!"

Sounds like an obscure Indian martial art.

:-/

Well, I have to get back to my droneless electric
pedal vichitra veena.

:-\

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Wooden Steels Rock!

[This message was edited by Bruce Burhans on 01 June 2005 at 09:25 AM.]

quote:

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As we know guitars while some guitars may have made their way to Hawaii in the early 1800's along with the many European sailors who visited Hawaii, the origin of Hawaiian guitar music is generally credited to the Mexican and Spanish cowboys who were hired by King Kamehameha III around 1832. It was from the Hawaiian cowboys, or paniolos, that the tradition of Hawaiian slack key guitar music finds its roots.

This Spanish guitar was a gut string guitar. The actual origins of the Hawaiian steel guitar may never be known for sure.

"Steel guitars were originally invented and popularized in Hawaii. Legend has it that in the mid 1890's Joseph Kekuku, a Hawaiian schoolboy, discovered the sound while walking along a railroad track strumming his Portuguese guitar.
He picked up a bolt lying by the track and slid the metal along the strings of his guitar. Intrigued by the sound, he taught himself to play using the back of a knife blade."
J.D. Bisignani in his Hawaii Handbook from Moon Publications adds to the story of Joseph Kekuku:

"Driven by the faint rhythm of an inner sound, he went to the machine shop at the Kamehameha School and turned out a steel bar for sliding over the strings. To complete the sound, he changed the cat-gut strings to steel and raised them so they wouldn't hit the frets. Voilà! Hawaiian Music as the world knows it today."

"Although the popularity of steel guitar became firmly established in Hawai`i by the early 1900s, and soon after in the country music field, it had few teachers. Those early legendary steel players were so much in demand to perform and record that they had no time to teach others, had they wanted to. Thus, in the '60s the art and technique of playing Hawaiian steel was almost lost."

The art form itself has seen numerous offshoots and developments in its relatively short lifetime. As Randy Lewis explains in his The Steel Guitar - A Short History: "With the introduction of amplification in the 30's, the steel guitar (like the Spanish guitar) gained pickups and became the electric steel guitar. Since an acoustic body was no longer necessary and actually caused feedback problems, the steel guitar quickly acquired a solid body and became the first true lap steel."

"There is no one standard tuning for the steel guitar and the solid body electric steel allowed for instruments to be made with two, three and even four necks, each tuned differently. Multiple necks made holding the instrument on the lap almost impossible, and legs were added, making the first 'console' instruments, although a few single neck consoles were already being played by 'steelers' who preferred to stand. At the same time, the steel picked up two more strings (there were a few seven string steels) and by the end of WWII the double neck eight string console was fairly standard, although even today there are still many players who prefer a single neck six or eight, especially in Hawaiian and Western Swing music."

"In the early 50's several players began experimenting with adding pedals which raised the pitch of a string, and in 1953, Bud Isaacs was the first player to use a pedal steel guitar on a hit recording: "Slowly" by Webb Pierce. The sound quickly caught on and many steel players converted to playing the 'pedal sound'"

Over the years the sound of the Hawaiian steel guitar has found its way into many forms of American and world music including blues, "hillbilly", country and western music, rock and pop and also the music of Africa and India.

---

Ron

[This message was edited by Ronald Steenwijk on 01 June 2005 at 10:40 AM.]

You moved this here because the instrument being
discussed has no pedals, you say.

I could buy that if you had done the same thing with
the previous discussion, which spanned two pages:

"Telling the Story of the Guitar"

http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/010327.html

Which refers to an instrument that isn't even a steel guitar
and turned into a discussion of the origins of the pedal steel.

Most of the instruments discussed there had no pedals.

This one, which is another in the same 'series'
actually has "pedal steel" in the subject and is
properly identified as another look into this amazing
instrument's history and predecessors.

Some of those predecessors have pedals.

So I guess I'll have to wonder if you are going to
move it back to the pedals section in the middle of
the discussion if one of those instruments comes up?

This is not acceptable. Neither is your inconsistency.

I will not be responding here further.

Bruce in Bellingham

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Sho-Bud S-10 Pro-I 3+5 -- http://tinyurl.com/65rcv

Good and interesting info though; Thank You.

Aloha,
DT~

[This message was edited by Denny Turner on 01 June 2005 at 05:04 PM.]

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Bob
intonation help

quote:

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This is not acceptable. Neither is your inconsistency.

I will not be responding here further.

---

Me too! I'm taking my vichitra veena and I'm walkin'!

anyone for some curried possum?

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Brad's Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars

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www.tyack.com

I don't really think it makes ANY difference
if it is in one forum or another.

Now it is in two and the No peddlers are likely to ALSO see it.
So no loss and a possible gain.

quote:

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how many india indians play steel guitar?

---

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Brad's Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars

Saw Debashis on a DVD, the cat is smoking.
FORUMITE Dave Mason is a big fan of his.

[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 02 June 2005 at 09:18 AM.]

And, Bruce, get the chip off your shoulder and leave b0b out of it. He does this all with donated time and equipment, and he usually has reasonable patience, although we all have our limits. You have made three very controversial suggestions (a pedal steel is a harp rather than a guitar, steel guitar came from China rather than Hawaii, it came from India rather than Hawaii). You have sparked some interesting discussion, but let's keep it civil. The civility of the Southern Gentleman is very much a part of the steel guitar community in the U.S., and usually admirably sets the tone of Forum discussions. However, the redneck impatience with someone with a bad attitude can also quickly come into play.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 02 June 2005 at 10:54 AM.]

quote:

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how many india indians play steel guitar?

---

No, no, no,.....you guys've got the joke all wrong. It's how many India Indians does it take to play steel guitar?

------------------
Bob
intonation help

quote:

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Sorry Brad..those are NOT steel guitar players on your web site..

---

Then,- what would you call Sol Hoopi'i?
I always thought the original definition of "steel guitar" was sliding a steel object along steel strings; Steel on steel to create melodies,- "steel guitar".
Listen to Bhatt or Debashish and you'll hear musicianship on a level the rest of us can only dream of,- and it's all performed on acoustic steel guitar.

Or do you mean it has to be pedal steel and country music to be called "steel guitar"?

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

quote:

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Isn't it possible for the same instrument or anything for that matter to have more than one origin?

---

yes!

- ever read about the 100 monkeys experiments? Basically new behaviors in one island population of monkeys, simultaneuosly start to be exhibited by a completely separate population on a completely different island without contact.
(or something to that effect)

- why was calculus invented by more than one person, at about the same time, and at a particular point in time??

- what is intuition and insight - what critical mass of information needs to exist before like minds see identical solutions?

I'm sure steel-guitar-like playing (sliding things on strings) simultaneously arose in many cultures - not a doubt in my mind. How many ways can you make pleasing noises with plants, wood, skin, gut, rocks and sticks? You create drums, flutes, bows, hammers, gourdes, whistles, ....and eventually guitars, volins, ukes,...?

Hip Hop artists making a turntable into an instrument (lateral thinking), is the same as some old guy taking a bow (for arrows) and sliding something on it to make noise. It's repurposing, enhancing.

My stand is, I believe tracing the origin and history for steel to Joeseph K. and Hawaii is most correct - because that to me is clearly the most influential example of repurposing an instrument for this type of playing style. Influential in the fact that it spawned widespread immitation in the early 1900's in the US, and other forms of the same instrument.

I don't hear much vichitra veena in Tin Pan Alley, or early country music - but it could have been if India musicians had been as hip as the Hawaiians

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Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"Listen Sooner" www.book-em-danno.com www.seldomfed.com

[This message was edited by seldomfed on 02 June 2005 at 12:43 PM.]

quote:

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..just because they seem to want to copy yet ANOTHER American culture..does not make them steel guitarist..

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I see,- you've never really listened to any of these guys, have you?
Nothing "American" about them, this is Indian classical music that goes back a long long time.

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www.gregertsen.com

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Brad's Page of Steel
A web site devoted to acoustic & electric lap steel guitars

[This message was edited by Brad Bechtel on 02 June 2005 at 01:29 PM.]

I might be mistaken, but I don't think Hawaiians would consider Hawaiian steel guitar to be an ANOTHER American culture. After all, it was invented before Hawaii was stolen, I mean became a US territory.

I know for a certainty that I invented the steel guitar.
I was walking by the trash behind a music store in Tulsa, and discovered a Fender Kingman in two pieces; took it home and put a nut riser on it, and a baby humbucker; got my Craftsman plug socket, just like Lowell George, and began to play.

As far as Indian steel guitar goes anyone who hasn't heard Vishwa Mohan Bhatt has no clue.

A Meeting by the River ~ Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt

very cool - I play hindustani slide albums on my radio show quite often - it's wonderful.

------------------
Chris Kennison
Ft. Collins, Colorado
"Listen Sooner"
www.book-em-danno.com
www.seldomfed.com

Now, before I say anything more disrespectful about Ry here I should perhaps add that if it was me on the recording it would all sound so bad that it would never have been released, but that's another thing.

There is a depth in Bhatt's tone that no American, or European for that matter, nobody from a first world country, possibly nobody outisde of India, will ever come close to. And if you go to Rajasthan, where Bhatt is from, you'll start to understand why.