lap steel

Information about lap steel

Enlarge picture
Chandler electric lap steel guitar, a modern solid body with the classic Weissenborn profile.


The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, from which other types developed.

There are three main types of lap steel guitar:
  • Lap slide guitars, the first developed, which use a similar sound box to a Spanish guitar.
  • Resonator guitars, particularly those with square necks.
  • Electric lap steel guitars, which include the first commercially successful solid body instruments.
Lap slide and resonator guitars may also be fitted with pickups, but do not depend on electrical amplification to produce their sound.

Description

The distinguishing feature of a lap steel guitar is that the strings are raised at both the nut and bridge ends of the fingerboard, typically to about half an inch. This makes the frets unusable, and they may be replaced by markers on some guitars. Other lap steel guitars are designed to be adapted between lap and conventional playing, or are modified versions of conventional guitars, and the only difference may be the action height. Round-necked resonator guitars set up for steel playing fall into this category.

Guitars designed exclusively for lap playing typically have modified necks that make conventional playing impossible. The hollow neck acoustic lap steel, developed by Chris Knutsen and popularized by Hermann C. Weissenborn, extends the body cavity behind the neck all the way to the head. The square-necked resonator guitar has a strengthened square profile neck, allowing heavier string gauges and/or higher tunings impossible (or certainly ill-advised) on a conventional guitar. The electric lap steel guitar typically incorporates the entire neck into the solid body of the guitar, again providing extra strength to allow a greater variety of string gauges and tunings.

Steel guitars with more than six strings and/or with multiple necks are rarely played in lap steel fashion, but are also referred to as lap steel guitars by many makers and authorities. See table steel guitar.

Playing

The lap steel guitar is typically placed on the player's lap, or on a stool in front of the player, who is seated.

The strings are not pressed to a fret when sounding a note, rather, the player holds a metal slide called a steel in the left hand, which is moved along the strings to change the instrument's pitch while the right hand plucks or picks the strings.

This method of playing greatly restricts the number of chords available, so lap steel music often features a restricted set of harmonies (such as in blues). Alternatively, the lap steel guitar player can play the melody or another single part.

The steel guitar, when played in Hawaiian, Country, Bluegrass, or Western Swing styles, is almost always plucked using a plastic thumbpick affixed to the right hand's thumb, and metal or plastic "fingerpicks" fitted to the first 2, 3, or even all 4 fingers of the right hand. This allows the player greater control when picking sets of notes on non-adjacent strings. Some Blues players, especially those who use a round-neck resonator guitar played upright, conventional-guitar-style, with a bottleneck or hollow metal slide on one left-hand finger, forego the fingerpicks and thumbpicks, and use their bare fingers and thumb instead. On the other hand, a minority of Blues players, and many Rock players, use a conventional flatpick. Tut Taylor is one of the extremely few Dobro players that uses a flatpick.

History

The lap steel probably began in La'ie, Hawai'i in the late 1800s. Various people have been credited with the innovation. [1]. The instrument was hugely popular - a major fad - in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.

The lap steel, dobro and pedal steel guitar are associated most closely with Hawaiian music, country music and bluegrass, though some players have used them in rock music, jazz, blues, and other musical genres. The round neck, metal-bodied resonator guitar, on the other hand, is used almost exclusively by Blues, Rock, or Blues-Rock musicians.

Free and historic video of one the "Notable Lap Steel Players" listed below -- Freddie Roulette -- appears at the band's official site: www.myspace.com/daphneblueband.

Notable lap steel/table steel/hawaiian steel guitar players

Tunings

The Lap steel guitar is not tuned in standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E, low to high). Rather, it is usually tuned to an open chord, often an extended chord like a 6th, 7th, or 9th.

There are nearly as many tunings for the Lap steel guitar as there are players, but a few are more common [all tunings are shown low-to-high; that is, thickest string to thinnest, or 6th string to 1st string].

Blues and Rock players tend to favor one of two tuning families: open G/open A, or open D/open E.

Open G is tuned D-G-D-G-B-D; open A raises each of those notes a whole-step (2 frets) to E-A-E-A-C#-E. David Lindley is one player who uses these tunings.

Open D is tuned D-A-D-F#-A-D, and open E is a whole-step higher: E-B-E-G#-B-E. Joe Perry of Aerosmith uses Open E on his electric lap steel.

Bluegrass and Country Dobro players using a square-neck instrument tend to favor an altered G tuning, often called "High-G", where the 6th string is tuned up to "G" instead of down to "D", and the 5th string is also tuned up, to B: G-B-D-G-B-D. They also sometimes raise it up to "High-A": A-C#-E-A-C#-E. These are examples of tunings possible on a lap steel that would cause serious damage if attempted on a round-neck resonator or standard guitar.

Dobro players also generally use a set of strings with different gauges than those used on standard electric or acoustic guitars to help them to project more sound and to achieve their higher tunings.

Many Western Swing steel players, and some Old-Time Country steel players, use a C6 tuning. There is no "standard" C6 tuning; one popular one is C-E-G-E-C-A. This tuning is a good one for copping Don Helms' steel licks off old Hank Williams records, although Helms actually used a steel with legs (a "table steel"), with two necks having 8 strings each; the two necks were tuned to 6 tunings, probably C6 and A6. C6 is also used by Western Swing pedal steel guitarists on their 10-string pedal steels. Helms also reportedly used an E13 tuning, which adds the Dominant 7th (D) and the 13th (C#) to the standard E tuning. This tuning is difficult to achieve on the 6-string steel. A6 is a commonly-used alternate for C6.

The E7 tuning is used by many players, especially those who cut their teeth on the Mel Bay Steel Guitar Method instructional books. The E7 tuning in those books is spelled either B-D-E-G#-B-E or with the 6th string lowered to the tonic E: E-D-E-G#-B-E. Note the similarity of this second tuning to the open E tuning above: the only difference is the 5th string, which is lowered from the tonic E to the Dominant 7th note in the key of E, which is D.

There are many other tunings used by players. Pedal Steel guitarists switching over to lap steel often bring over a modified version of the 10-string E9 tuning that is the standard for Country pedal steel; pedal steels, and a few non-pedal "table steels" actually have multiple necks, each in a different tuning, and very often on a pedal steel the 2 main necks will be in E9 and C6 tunings. As noted under the C6 tuning, an A6 tuning is also used.

See the Links below for a list of additional tunings.

Manufacturers

This list is incomplete. Please add to it.

See also

External links

Steel guitar is:
  • A method of playing slide guitar using a steel. Resonator guitars, including round necked varieties, are particularly suitable for this style, but other types are also used, usually with modified high actions, as well as instruments produced

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A lap slide guitar is a conventional (non-resonator) acoustic guitar that is played in lap steel guitar fashion. As with steel guitar, the term can be applied to either the style of playing or to the instruments designed or adapted for this style of playing.
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resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones (resonators) instead of the wooden soundboard (guitar top/face).
..... Click the link for more information.
A solid body electric instrument is a string instrument such as a guitar, bass or violin built without its normal sound box and relying on its electric pickup system to directly receive the vibrations of the strings.
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pickup device acts as a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations (usually from suitably equipped stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, electric bass guitar or electric violin) and converts them to an electrical signal which can be amplified and recorded.
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resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones (resonators) instead of the wooden soundboard (guitar top/face).
..... Click the link for more information.
Weissenborn or H. Weissenborn is a brand of lap slide guitar manufactured by Hermann Weissenborn in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s.

These instruments are now highly sought after, and form the base for most non-resonator acoustic lap steel guitars currently
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The table steel guitar is a type of electric steel guitar intermediate between the lap steel guitar and the pedal steel guitar. Table steel guitars typically have multiple necks and/or more than six strings per neck, and are too large to be easily played in lap steel
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fret is a raised portion on the neck of a stringed instrument, that extends generally across the full width of the neck. On most modern western instruments, frets are metal strips inserted into the fingerboard.
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Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide is in reference to the sliding motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck
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chord (from Greek χορδή: gut, string) is three or more different notes that sound simultaneously. Most often, in European-influenced music, chords are tertian sonorities that can be constructed as stacks of thirds relative to some underlying scale.
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Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants,
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melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord (see harmony). However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly Gestalt) to be called a
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part is the music played by an individual instrument or voice (or group of identical instruments or voices) within a larger work, such as a melody. It also refers to the printed copy of the music for each instrument, as distinct from the score, which holds the music for all
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In biochemistry, flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) is the precursor molecule to FADH2. Upon bonding to two hydrogen atoms, FAD is then changed to FADH2 and is turned into an energy-carrying molecule.
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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Dobro is a trade name now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar. The name has a long and involved history, interwoven with that of the resonator guitar.
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pedal steel guitar is a type of electric guitar that uses a metal slide to stop the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. The pedal steel is placed horizontally on a stand, with the strings facing up towards the player, and is typically plucked with
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The music of Hawaiʻi includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop.
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Country music, the first half of Billboard's country and western music category, is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States. It has roots in traditional folk music, Celtic music, blues, gospel music, hokum, and old-time music and
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Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music which has its own roots in Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the British Isles (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants of Appalachian), as well as that of rural
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Rock music is a form of popular music with a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and bass. Many styles of rock music also use keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or synthesizers.
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Jazz is an original American musical art form that originated around the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in and around New Orleans.

Overview

Jazz has been called "America's only original art form.
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Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes and a repetitive pattern that most often follows a twelve-bar structure. It emerged in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants,
..... Click the link for more information.
A music genre is a term that describes the process of dividing popular music into categories. Some treat the terms genre and style as the same, and state that genre should be defined as pieces of music that share a certain style or "basic musical language.
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Al Perkins (Born January 18, 1944) is a Texas-born American guitarist. The Gibson guitar company called Perkins "the world's most influential dobro player", and even began producing an "Al Perkins Signature" dobro in 2001 - designed and autographed by Perkins.
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Sonny Rhodes (born Clarence Smith, November 3, 1940 in Smithville, Texas), is an American blues singer and lap steel guitar player. Throughout the last 37 years, Rhodes has recorded over two hundred songs.
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Benjamin Chase "Ben" Harper (born October 28, 1969) is an American musician.

Biography

Harper was born in Claremont, California, U.S. (in California's Pomona Valley). He began playing guitar as a child in Claremont.
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Bob Brozman (born 1954) is an American guitarist and ethnomusicologist.

He has performed in a number of styles such as blues, Gypsy jazz, calypso, ragtime, Hawaiian and Caribbean music.
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Cindy Cashdollar is a master steel guitar and Dobro artist. She grew up in Woodstock, New York where she perfected her skills by playing with bluegrass musician John Herald, blues musician Paul Butterfield, and Levon Helm and Rick Danko of The Band.
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