French Fries don't come from France, Brussels Sprouts don't come from Brussels, Irish Coffee doesn't come from Ireland, English Muffins don't come from England, in fact English Muffins are sold in England as American Muffins.

The lute family, which includes all instruments which have a body with a bridge, and a separate neck with a fingerboard, includes Guitars, Banjos, Mandolines, etc.

All these instruments are known by the sound that they produce and their shape. The problem came when someone put a pickup on them. Before the pickup, the sound produced was a product of their construction. Once you put a pickup on them the sound produced becomes an electrical function of their amplification.

Why are there no electric banjos ? Because they sound like electric guitars.

So, here is the problem. Historically the guitar was a member of the lute family, and, other than the number of strings, they didn't change much over the years. During the dance band era they needed a guitar that punched through the orchestras, so the archtop guitar was invented by taking the fretted viol and reducing it to guitar proportions. Now we have two totally different instruments referred to as the "Guitar", the standard round-hole instrument, and the Cello Guitar.

This is where the problem expands. Jazz and band guitarists took to the Cello Guitar and put a pick up on it. Obviously an archtop guitar with a pickup was still a guitar, but the distinction as to what made a guitar or a banjo or a mandoline was lost. The sound now came from the amplification.

Now comes the solid guitar. When Leo Fender produced the solid electric guitar he produced an instrument using technology which previously did not exist. He took the guitar tuning, but everything else that made a guitar a guitar and not a cittern or a banjo disappeared.

What makes the electric guitar a guitar? Only the tuning. In all other respects it is a completely new instrument.

If you question this just ask yourself what is an electric banjo ? All sounds of a banjo have dissappeared, and the only difference between that and an electic guitar are the tuning. In fact, if you downtune the first string of an electric guitar from E to D you have an electric banjo. Likewise, if you downtune your Stratocaster's first string from E to D and your second string from B to A# you have an electric lute.

So, what rights does the solid guitar have to call itself a guitar ? None !

On that basis, it's not surprising that the steel guitar has a naming problem.

Let's look at the lute family. It has a neck and is fingered from below. That's not the steel guitar.

Going back into history, what is fingered from above ? The Board Zither, has a body with a fingerboard on top. The Board Zither consists of the North-Germanic Hummel, the French Espinette des Vosges, the Germanic Scheitholdt, the English Lapharp, the Austrian Salzburg Zither, the Appalachian Dulcimore (itself a misnomer, because the Dulcimer is a hammered psaltery from Persia).

The defining fact about the Board Zither is that it is played from above (rather than below, as is the lute, guitar, etc.), and it can be played with the fingers, a steel, or a bow. Put a pickup on it and you have a lap steel.

For the last 30 years I've been building Board Zithers of various different shapes and sizes. When you put a pickup on them they become a lap steel.

That was a brilliant synopsis. I'd say you know a bit of what you speak.

I never, ever thought about this.

Intriguing.

Thanks - keep it coming.

calvin

[This message was edited by Calvin Walley on 06 August 2006 at 06:50 PM.]

One glaring "misnomer" though:

The Electric Banjo.

Just before 1980 I tried mounting a pickup on one. Of course the head distance is just a wee bit too far from the strings under the head.

I put a block of wood underneath it to push it up.

Sounded just like an electric guitar.

For some reason I tried a piece of leather belt. Rolled up to the proper thickness, so as to push the DiMarzio and the head up far enough to make a good pickup, and..

Voila! Sounded just like a banjo. (for better or worse..)

The other problem of feedback was solved by filling the banjo cavity with an old T-Shirt. Play it right in front of a 200 watt amp full blast. No feedback.

The jack and volume knob fit into the filligree of my Washburn. No mods at all to the banjo.

Then I read in GP mag that it was similar to the way the banjo player in the NGDB did it.

Cost, a couple joints for the DiMarzio, and I think I got the potentiometer and jack from my junk drawer. I swiped the Tshirt. No 500$ condenser or Lace Sensor setup.

Good article though.

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What makes the electric guitar a guitar? Only the tuning. In all other respects it is a completely new instrument.

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IMHO, not really, it's still a guitar. Look at it this way, if you take an acoustic guitar and add a pickup, it's still a guitar, isn't it? Now, tune that (formerly acoustic) electric guitar to a slack-key (old steel guitar) tuning, and lo and behold...it's still a guitar!

Additionally, a violin and a mandolin share the same tuning, but they're different instruments!?

So you see, your "theory" that an instrument is defined by the tuning doesn't really hold water.

Nice try, though!

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The lute family, which includes all instruments which have a body with a bridge, and a separate neck with a fingerboard, includes Guitars, Banjos, Mandolines, etc.

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This taxonomy differs from that of Robert Donington in "The Instruments of Music."

Under "Plucked Strings" he names four families: Lutes, Guitars, Citerns, and Harps.

Lutes being "sliced-pear" instruments include mandolins.

Guitars have a flat back. In this group he, in 1949, included the Hawaiian guitar. He said, "The Hawaiian guitar has metal strings and great resonance. It is played unfretted, flat on the knee, with finger-pieces call 'thimbles."

The citterns have rounded sides. Included here are banjos.

And harps have no frets. Dulcimers and zithers fall in this family.

So, the pedal steel guitar can legitimately be called a guitar.

Joe

(Sounds like fun)

peddle- To try to sell goods by going from house to house or place to place.

steal- (slang) A bargain

peddle steal- A low priced good from the peddler??

...it's all semantics to me!

[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 08 August 2006 at 07:57 AM.]

The pedal steel guitar is a guitar.

This thread is starting to drift into comedy and inanity.

I think Alan makes some valid propositions.

You guys may not be thinking hard on this.

I've been studying and building mediaeval and folk instruments for over 40 years. Here in Northern California we have an organization known as the Northern California Association of Luthiers, of which I'm the Treasurer. We meet every two months in a workshop of one of the members, and we rotate whose workshop. We swap hints, demonstrate techniques, exchange materials, sell spares, and bring "show and tell".

If you read the books of the Galpin Society, which is the accepted authority on musical instruments, the Lute family consists of all instruments where the string passes over the body, with a separate neck. So this includes guitars, banjos, etc. The Zither family consists of all instruments where the strings pass over the body, and resonate via a bridge, such as the Autoharp, Psaltery, etc. The Harp family consists of instruments where the body surrounds the strings, which pass over a cavity, and have no bridge. This separates out the Crwth and the Lyre, since they both have bridges.

The Appalachian (or Mountain) Dulcimer, which comes directly from the Swedish Hummel, is thus a zither. Now I've built a lot of Dulcimers, and came to the idea of having removable fingerboards, so that you could play in any key but still have diatonic frets. Sometimes I put a pickup on a dulcimer. Now, if you have a Dulcimer and you play it with a steel you have a lap steel. It could be argued that a dulcimer is a lap steel with frets, or that a lap steel is a dulcimer without frets. Other than the tuning the instruments can be identical. I've seen solid electric dulcimers. Here you have an instrument which could legitimately be called both !

[This message was edited by Alan F. Brookes on 06 August 2006 at 10:57 PM.]

I've had to give the "steel guitar--what's that?" speech many times, though, so I can relate. (Does "it's called steel guitar because you play with a steel bar--it's not necessarily made of steel" sound familiar?)

I don't mind going through life educating people one by one, though. And I kind of enjoy that what I do is somewhat unusual--I don't really want people to feel like they know everything about it; I want it to have a kind of mystique...

-Travis

[This message was edited by Travis Bernhardt on 07 August 2006 at 01:26 AM.]

Alan FB nailed it :

it will always be known as a "pedal steel guitar" because it's under that name that it has earned its living for 60 years,

Hans

[This message was edited by Hans Holzherr on 07 August 2006 at 03:25 AM.]

If you play with a Zirconia bar, is it a pedal zirconia guitar?

I'm in the horizontal harp camp myself.
Ed Packard's take on terminology is at http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/004752-2.html

[This message was edited by Charlie McDonald on 07 August 2006 at 04:19 AM.]

Alan,

Who cares? Not everyone is into steels as much as we are. The average person doesn't know what our instrument is because they simply they aren't as jazzed about it as we are.

Why should we re-name our steels just because the "average person" isn't motivated enough to become more informed as to the evolution of our instrument.

The steel is one of only two instruments invented in the United States, (the other is our beloved Banjo) there should be mention of that in our history books!

I love listening to good piano,(in my opinion they are nothing but a big ass guitar), but I couldn't care less about how it evolved, what category it falls into, where it was invented, etc., where the hell was it invented anyway?

Its kinda like my motorcycle, it says Triumph right across the tank on both sides, made in England in bold letters on the frame, and people will still come up and ask if it is a Harley.

This discussion might be important to a few steel players, but to the average person this thread would be considered a serious waste of bandwidth.

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John Drury
NTSGA #3

[This message was edited by John Drury on 07 August 2006 at 04:11 AM.]

Why won't anybody believe me.

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Its kinda like my motorcycle, it says Triumph right across the tank on both sides, made in England in bold letters on the frame, and people will still come up and ask if it is a Harley.

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John, I had a similar problem. When I owned a Goldwing people used to come up to me and ask if it was a motorcycle?

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www.genejones.com

Development of a logical system of nomenclature can be useful. But take a lesson from biology, which has been doing this scientifically for a long time. Insects and bats have wings, but they are not descended from birds, and are not considered part of the bird family. Steel guitars descended from guitars and are clearly a part of the guitar family, in spite of incidental convergent technical similarities to zithers and dulcimers. Also, calling it “steel” because it is mostly played with a steel bar is practical nomenclature, even if the bar is sometimes made of brass or glass. Likewise, “slide guitar” works because slides were originally made of glass, bone, and other materials, rather than steel. The user community has settled on these two terms to differentiate between playing horizontal with a bar, and playing vertical with a tube on the finger. You could call this fretless playing, but that would get confused with the violin family, which is fretless (no markers even), but is fretted with the fingers. Steel and slide guitars have the same frets as guitars. They have just been converted to visual markers.

In setting up a nomenclature system, there is lumping and splitting. Lumping gives us families, and splitting gives us the different members of families (species in biology). It is entirely appropriate for the lumping to consider history and evolution. You don’t take a new species out of its family just because it evolves something similar to members of another family. Birds and bats did not become insects when they evolved wings. Steel guitars did not become zithers when the neck joint was eliminated. That was just a coincidence, and shouldn’t automatically change the family. If you want to insist on a detailed technical nomenclature, do it right. It has to evolve with the evolution of the instruments. It can't be a static thing carried over whole-clothe from the distant past.

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Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 07 August 2006 at 01:04 PM.]

But what is it? A guitar?

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Peter den Hartogh
1978 Emmons S10 P/P; 1977 Sho-Bud D10 ProIII Custom;Guya Stringmaster
1975 Fender Artist S10; Fender 1000; Remington U12; 1947 Gibson BR4

[This message was edited by Peter on 07 August 2006 at 10:01 AM.]

Myself, I'm gonna call it a guitar. The guitar is the world's most popular instrument. Stages over the world are filled with guitars. Chicks like 'em. In fact, most everybody out there in radioland likes 'em. Why fight it?

Also, to save all you Americans coming to the UK and being embarassed, we don't call muffins "American muffins", just muffins. We only call McDonalds style fries "fries" - the British version are "chips" and much thicker. What you call "chips" we call "crisps", except for "tortilla chips" which we call... "tortilla chips". "Zucchini" are "courgettes" and "cilantro" is "coriander". And "zits" are "bollocks" (but you have to be a Jasper Carrot fan to get that one).

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I think technically you have to call it a "electric vichitra veena"...

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Electric PEDAL Vichitra Veena

[This message was edited by Mike Perlowin on 08 August 2006 at 05:13 AM.]

My mother used to get on me about "speaking the King's English", so I would give her this line in BRIT to translate:

"Did you hear about the snippy little twit, who at the end of the day had her nickers in a twist because someone gave her cold bangers for breakfast?" OK Yanks, try translating.

Then there is the "one off" (no, not a PSG player), and "sod that for a lark" (you don't want to know), and neither did the users know when I asked them (I did).

Of course what we Yanks, Canadians, Ausies, Newfy's,etc. have done to the language is pretty funny also.

For instance, the front of the BEAST bears the label "Electric Concert Harp".

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The highest quality veenas have the entire body carved from a single block of wood, while the ordinary veenas have a body which is carved in three sections (resonator, neck and head).

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Metallic frets are disposed on that tube on a slightly angled axis. They are always movable (fixed by wax or strings) and so can be adapted for every raga (the notes of the raga are not fixed by equal temperament).

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The strings are stopped by a glass egg, a technique originating most probably from the playing of the tempura: this instrument (which is now only used to accompany singers), was used a long time ago by some musicians of the Gwalior gharana to play a melody, stopping the note with a wooden stick...
…Because of the absence of frets, one can play perfect meends (glissandos) on a octave and a half, something difficult to perform on a been, and so get closer to the abilities of the human voice.

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