pedal steel

Information about pedal steel

Enlarge picture
Pedal steel guitar with two 10-string necks


The 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 fingerpicks. The instrument's pedals are used to change the pitch of its strings while being played; the action of the pedals may either be fixed, or may be configurable by the player to select which strings are affected by the pedals. The pedal steel, with its smooth portamenti, bending chords and complex riffs, is one of the most recognizable and characteristic instruments of American country music.

While there are some fairly standard pedal assignments, many advanced players devise their own setups, called copedents. The range of copedents that can be set up varies considerably from model to model. Aftermarket modifications to make additional copedents possible are common.

The pedal steel was developed from the console steel guitar and lap steel guitar. Like the console steel, a pedal steel may have multiple necks, but the pedals make even a single-neck pedal steel a far more versatile instrument than any multiple-neck console steel.

Many musicians specialize in performing on both pedal steel and some form of lap steel. A particularly popular second instrument for pedal steel players is the resonator guitar (also known as a "Dobro") played in steel guitar fashion (i.e., played face up on the player's lap).

History

The pedal steel guitar is the latest development in a story that started with the invention of a technique of playing used in Hawaii in the late 1800s, wherein the strings were not fretted in the normal manner by the left hand, but rather by sliding an object such as a comb or the back edge of a knife blade along the strings at the neck of the guitar. Several persons have been credited with the innovation.

The Hawaiian style of playing was very popular in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. To increase the volume of the guitar, a resonator cone was added by the Doypeyra Brothers to create the resophonic guitar.

By the 30's, the hollow guitar body was abandoned for a flat slab of wood and the addition of an electric pickup; this became the lap steel. It was the first electric guitar to achieve commercial success. Several pioneers of the electric guitar were first famous for their work on the then more popular electric steel guitar, among them Adolph Rickenbacher, Paul Bigsby and Leo Fender.

The limitations of chord shapes imposed by the use of the steel slide (or "tone bar") led to the addition of multiple necks, resulting in the console steel guitar.

In around 1955, a console steel player named Bud Isaacs attached a pedal to one of the necks of his guitar. The function of the pedal was to change the pitch of two of the strings, whereby Isaacs would have two of the most common steel guitar tunings available on one neck. When he used this pedal to change his tuning while sustaining a chord during the recording of Webb Pierce's hit "Slowly," he touched off a revolution among steel guitarists.

The steel guitar seems to have an unusually high number of mechanically inclined players, and a period of extensive tinkering followed Isaac's initial idea. One of these tinkering musicians was Buddy Emmons, and his playing and mechanical innovations alike have done more for the development of the pedal steel guitar than any other contributor.

Emmons split the function of Isaac's pedal into two separate pedals and added two strings to fill in the gaps in the E9 tuning, bringing the number of strings to ten. At around the same time, Emmons joined forces with another steel-playing machinist named Harold "Shot" Jackson and formed the Sho-Bud company, the first pedal steel guitar manufacturer.

Both lap and pedal steel guitars were closely associated with the development of country music and western swing. However the pedal steel's liquid, yearning sound has begun in recent years to be coveted by many modern musicians, beginning in jazz and blues. In particular the rising popularity of alternative country has brought the instrument's beautiful sound to a much wider audience, and it has been used in many different musical genres. Jùjú music, a form from Nigeria, uses pedal steel extensively.

A Concerto for Pedal Steel Guitar and Orchestra has been written by Los Angeles composer Michael A. Levine. It was premiered on April 16 2005, in a performance by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, with Gary Morse (of Dierks Bentley's and Dwight Yoakam's bands) as soloist, and Paul Gambill conducting. The piece is believed to be the first concerto ever written for the solo steel guitar.

Description

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Underside of a 12+12 string showing the knee levers and mechanism


A pedal steel guitar is typically rectangular in shape, and has no resonant chamber or conventional guitar body but only one or more guitar necks. These are mounted on a stand and equipped with foot pedals and usually knee levers. Many models feature two necks, the nearest to the player most often using a C6 tuning and the farther away using an E9 tuning. The most common configuration is one or two necks of ten strings each, but eight-string and twelve-string necks are also popular, and even 14 strings on one neck can be found. Three-neck instruments are less common than those with one or two, but are not uncommon.

The pedals and/or knee levers (engaged by moving the knees left, right or vertically) on the underside allow the performer to tighten or relax one or more strings in combination, changing the instrument's tuning during performance.

Playing

Enlarge picture
A 13-string single-neck pedal steel set up for playing.


A performer typically sits on a stool or seat at the instrument. The right foot usually is used on the amplifier's volume pedal. The left foot usually is used to press one or more of the instrument's foot pedals. The knees are positioned under the instrument's body so that by moving them left, right or even vertically, they can push levers that hang from underneath it.

The strings are positioned high above the neck of the instrument. Rather than being pressed to a fret on the neck, the player's left hand holds a polished metal bar called the steel on the strings. The steel can be slid up and down the length of the neck, while still touching (effectively fretting) the strings. This raises and lowers the pitch of the notes heard when the strings are played. If the bar is kept perpendicular to the neck (in the orientation of a fret), all strings touched have had their effective length changed equally. The right hand plucks the strings, usually with a set of thumb and finger picks.

The pedals and knee levers raise and lower the pitch of certain strings "on the fly" while the instrument is being played. The exact action of these pedals and levers—which strings are affected—can be set by the player to their preference.

Characteristic effects are obtained by changing pitch of one or more strings while other strings' pitches are static or change at differing rates. Melodic lines are composed primarily of diads (two note chords). Also, single note octave harmonics are used to provide countermelody. In the E9 tuning, many characteristic clichés involve tonic-dominant and tonic-subdominant harmonic relationships.

Mastering the pedal steel guitar can take time due to its harmonic complexity and unusual physical technique required. In country music, where the pedal steel guitar is most commonly used, talented players are highly esteemed.

For a table of one tuning of the pedal steel guitar, see copedent.

Manufacturers

Most pedal steel guitars are produced by smaller makers, and many are custom-built to player order. While there are literally dozens of manufacturers of pedal steel guitars (past and present), the list below represents the larger manufacturers and notable smaller manufacturers.

Notable players

See also

External links

An electric instrument (which, in the broadest sense, includes both electrically amplified acoustic instruments and electronic musical instruments) is one in which a loudspeaker is used as the main sound generator.
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The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten, and twelve string guitars also exist.
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A fingerpick is a type of plectrum used most commonly for playing bluegrass style banjo music. Most fingerpicks are most composed of metal or plastic. Unlike flat guitar picks, which are held between the thumb and finger and used one at a time, fingerpicks clip onto or wrap around
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Portamento is a musical term primarily denoting a vocal slide between two pitches and its emulation by instruments such as the violin, and in 16th century polyphonic writing refers to an ornamental figure.
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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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Copedent is a table used to describe the tuning and pedal arrangement on a pedal steel guitar. The term was coined by Tom Bradshaw in an early 1970's article in Guitar Player magazine. It is short for "ChOrd PEDal arrangemENT".
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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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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.

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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).
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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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Adolph Rickenbacher (1886–1976) was the founder of the Rickenbacker guitar company.

Born Adolf Rickenbacher, he settled in Los Angeles in 1928. He Anglicized his name to Adolph Rickenbacker, due partially to post World War I anti-German sentiments, but also to
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Paul Adelburt Bigsby (1899-1968)[1][2] was the designer of the Bigsby vibrato arm (also known as a tremolo arm) and proprietor of Bigsby Guitars. He built an early steel guitar for Southern California steel guitarist Earl "Joaquin" Murphy of Spade Cooley's
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Clarence Leonidas Fender (August 10, 1909 - March 21, 1991), also known as Leo Fender, was an American luthier who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, now known as Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and later founded G&L Musical Products (G&L
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Webb Pierce (born August 8, 1921 - February 24, 1991) was an American country music singer.

Born Webb Michael Pierce in West Monroe, Louisiana, he became a star performer on the Louisiana Hayride and one of country music's most popular honky tonk songsters.
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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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This article is about the musical genre. For the popular western swing steel guitar tuning, see E9 tuning.


Western swing is, first and foremost, a fusion of country music, several styles of jazz, pop music and blues aimed at dancers.
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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.

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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,
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Alternative country is a term applied to various subgenres of country music.

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"Alternative country" can refer to several ideas. Most generally, any musician who plays a type of country music different from the prevailing trend can be said to play "alternative
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For other uses, see Juju (disambiguation).


Jùjú is a style of Nigerian popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. It evolved in the 1920s in urban clubs across the countries.
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"Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress"
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Michael A. Levine is an American composer born on 20 February 1964, and currently based in Los Angeles.

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His Concerto for Pedal Steel Guitar and Orchestra is believed to be the first concerto ever written for the pedal steel guitar.
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