Playing Hawaiian music on psg E9 without pedals

[Don Manson]

Does anyone know of a source for tab for Hawaiian music played on a pedal steel E9 tuning, without pedals?

[Ray Montee (RIP)]

If you look for some olde Oahu Sheet Music........or,
simply pick out some of your Hawaiian favorites and try playing them in E7th (no pedals); A6th (A-B pedals down); C#min.........(A pedal only, down).

I'm unaware of much of that kind of music floating around.

LOL

[b0b]

It's easier if you press the first 2 pedals to change it to an A6th tuning.

[Papa Joe Pollick]

I play a lot of stuff in A6 with A&B peds down..I do use the knees too.I like that swing feeling that I get...I've considered changing the E9 to a 6th tunning..I play zero Nashville stuff..

[Billy Tonnesen]

C# Minor seemed to be the choice of early Hawaiian electric steel players. Like Ray said, just hit your A pedal. You will not necessarily be playing Pedal Steel, just changing the tuning. Same with holding down the A & B pedals to get the A6th Tuning.

[David Ellison]

Do any of you use the E to Eb lever to make it a B6 tuning? This is what I find to be the closest to a C6 or A6 tuning on an 8-string lap steel. Other than the D string, all the strings are lined up just as they would be on a lap steel, which just works better (IMO) than using the A and B pedals to get an A6 chord, which seems very limited to me.

[Dana Blodgett]

Don, contact Erv Neihaus, he is on the forum here and has a lot of good classics tabbed out that only require the E to Eb lower lever or the A, F lever to play them. Good stuff and quick delivery also!

[b0b]

Do any of you use the E to Eb lever to make it a B6 tuning? This is what I find to be the closest to a C6 or A6 tuning on an 8-string lap steel. Other than the D string, all the strings are lined up just as they would be on a lap steel, which just works better (IMO) than using the A and B pedals to get an A6 chord, which seems very limited to me.

My good friend Johnny Robbins tunes his lap steel to B6th, to avoid confusion when he switches from pedal to lap. He uses a coathanger loop gadget that he made to hold his E lever in position when he's playing Hawaiian style on the pedal steel.

His pedal steel is a U-12, so he doesn't even have to worry about that pesky D string.

[Roy Thomson]

Don,

Getting back to your original question.

You may be able to find Steel Music for
6 string E7th tuning? If you can, you could
easily apply it to fit E9th.
Notes: E--B--G#--E--D--B High to Low Lap Steel

The above notes correspond to strings
4,5,6,8,9,10 on the 10 string E9th tuning.

You could play any of that music and add
embellishments with the extra strings.

No pedals req'd.

I hope I understood your question?

Good Luck

Roy

[Edward Meisse]

Why without pedals? I think forum member Basil Henriques can do better for you than just E9 without pedals. He plays mostly Hawaiian music on a Fender 1000 (I think). He gets a great sound. But he does use the pedals.

[George Piburn]

edit

[Josh Cho]

Why without pedals?

...because using pedals is considered "cheating" around here

If you want to learn how to play Hawaiian licks while USING your pedals, go to that area of the Forums, but don't bother us here in Steel WithOUT Pedals paradise.

Simple as that,

Josh

[J D Sauser]

Hitting the A-pedal adds the 6th/13th note to the E-chord or the root to a C#m. Yet, it takes away the 5th of the E or b7th of the C#m and thus the dissonance and chord inversion possibilities - the second interval between the the the missing note and the new one... so typical for the "vibe" of these tunings and added inversion possibilities.

When you look at the tunings of Hawaiian-"swing" players, and their early tendency to add strings and necks, it wasn't so much to add "bottom" but to add inside notes to the base tuning chord.
Why? Because to make a tuning interesting, one needs to look beyond the ONE apparent base chord. Equally as important are the variety of intervals available and their practical layout as to bar slanting possibilities. Also, the possibility to look a the chord from different starting points... beyond just relative minors... THIS is what allows some non pedal players to strum across most of their strings at different fret position and play so many different sounding chords (partials, inversions, subtitutions, etc) so elusively.

When E9th PSG came up, they did exactly the contrary (except for the 9th and b7th), as they could pull the "inside" notes with the pedals and the lack of intricacies in the base tuning would open up the neck for full chord conversions with the pedals. The universal tuning, by removing the "D"-string, took that concept even a little further... A&B-pedaled A6th chord became FULLY stummable across the whole neck and so did the E-to-Eb-lowered B6th chord.
Some notes (strings) where moved out and called "chromatics"... like we wouldn't have an F# somewhere else INSIDE the tuning (7th string on standard E9th). These two strings, because of the prevalent E9th pedal playing style, have been all but reduced to some auxiliary function as "helper"-string for fast picking licks and "rolls" and or a quick reach interval for those too lazy to move the bar... The D#-to-C# lower reduced to an occasion unison trickery together with the A-pedaled 5th string (C# too). Their CHORDAL origins and IMPORTANCE seems however to have eluded most newer players.

Yes, the PSG version of E9th may seem somewhat "empty" or "basic major"-sounding, at least as a chord for non-pedal playing, and similarly the A-pedaled E13th or C#m... so the A&B pedaled A6th chords and E-to-Eb-lower levered B6th may seem an ideal starting point. Actually, of the two, I would prefer the A6th "mode" as it can easily be converted into B9th (almost B11th) by adding the E-to-Eb lower without sounding "pedalsteelish".
Yet, I would suggest exploring the open E9th by adding the second string's full lover D# to C#. NOW you'd have the full intricacies of the high E13th and C#m7th tunings! And not just that: You still have the B-to-Bb lower at hand (One of Speedy West's MAIN changes) on the B-string... also a change you can work in without revealing the presence of pedals.
And speaking of Speedy West... HIS main tunings were A6th, E9th and E13th based (the E13th was open F#9th... but disregard that... look at it as E13 with the B flattened half... like you can on your E9th guitar).
It's really all there on E9th and especially E9th universal. Jerry Byrd's C6th/A7th (as B6th/G#7th with the "boowhah"-pedal down, IF you have a Universal), MORE of what Speedy ever had (just on E9th), including many of his changes... you "just" have to look at it a little "upside down"!.

The biggest problem however I DO find is, to overcome the inherent tonal dynamics differences of most modern day PSG versus to tone of a non-pedal steel. In my opinion this has several origins, including the changer on the bridge side (bad bridge/energy drain), the upside down "U"-shaped cabinets bolt strapped to metal frames and end plates and the much higher distance of the strings off the effective cabinets (since most PSG's only have applique necks) which completely changes the string's vibrations feedback angle into the "sound board" and back... just to name a few culprits. But that's an other issue.

Actually, I was minding to ask these days about the recordings young Buddy Emmons did in duets with Shot Jackson, BE on a ShoBud D10 and SJ on his ShoBro. I had them on cassette tape... I wonder if SOMEBODY had them in a digital format by now. As I remember Buddy, playing the PSG managed to sound quite Hawaiian on some of these tracks.


... J-D.

[Don Manson]

Thanks so much for your input. It was very helpful.

[Tom Wolverton]

Thanks JD for that. Quite informative for me.

[J D Sauser]

Thanks JD for that. Quite informative for me.

Thanks for the flattering comment.

I added some more "stuff" in my effort to make a short story even longer.

I hope it does not complicate things and rather help make my view a little more understandable.

... J-D.

[b0b]

If you just retune the 2nd string down to C#, you have all of the notes of an E13th tuning ala Little Roy Wiggins or Tom Morrell. The string order is scrambled a bit, but there's a lot of music there.

Regarding tone, I blame the heavy 10-string pickups that are so in vogue among pedal players these days, and the active volume pedals that remove the natural tone ramp that tracks volume in a pot pedal. Also, strings that are closer together sound closer together - there is less string separation in the audio when you are playing adjacent strings.

[David Ellison]

>>using pedals is considered "cheating" around here

If you're only using the pedals to change the tuning, is it still considered cheating? ... 'cause I aint done here yet.

This thread is interesting to me because I'm getting back into playing E9 pedal steel after years of playing a D8 Stringmaster. I'm trying to learn to do the C6 Stringmaster stuff on my pedal steel by making it a B6 with the Eb lever. I used a fifth on top with my C6 (the other neck I tuned to E13), so that's missing... but thanks to this thread, I realized I can slide up two frets and use the A & B pedals to get that. It works great.

I also figured out that in the open tuning with no pedals, there are not only E9 chords, but F#9 chords as well.

>>Regarding tone, I blame the heavy 10-string pickups that are so in vogue among pedal players these days.

Why do people want that? The single coil in my BMI seems pretty hot compared to my Stringmaster, but it sounds good through my Fender amp. I couldn't see using a hotter pickup than that.

[basilh]

Why without pedals?

...because using pedals is considered "cheating" around here

Josh

Mmmm. try telling that to the legions of fans of Jules ah See, Bill hew len, Danny Stewart and other iconic real Hawaiian Stylist.
All of them COULD play non pedal but seemed to prefer the pedal for the fuller chordal sound, that Webley Edwards was so fond of in the later years of Hawaii Calls....

[Alan Brookes]

It's totally illogical to ban pedals from Hawaiian music. If you want to be traditional you have to ban the steel guitar entirely, pedals or not. Traditional Hawaiian music was not played on electric instruments.

[b0b]

I'm trying to learn to do the C6 Stringmaster stuff on my pedal steel by making it a B6 with the Eb lever. I used a fifth on top with my C6 (the other neck I tuned to E13), so that's missing...

No it's not. The high fifth of B6 is the first string (F#) of the E9th. You need to skip the 2nd and 3rd (or 3rd and 4th) strings to use it, but it's there.

[Brian Henry]

According to Josh, " using pedals is cheating around here". Does that imply that slanting the bar is NOT cheating?

[b0b]

Do any of you use the E to Eb lever to make it a B6 tuning? This is what I find to be the closest to a C6 or A6 tuning on an 8-string lap steel. Other than the D string, all the strings are lined up just as they would be on a lap steel, which just works better (IMO) than using the A and B pedals to get an A6 chord, which seems very limited to me.

My good friend Johnnie Robbins tunes his lap steel to B6th, to avoid confusion when he switches from pedal to lap. He uses a coathanger loop gadget that he made to hold his E lever in position when he's playing Hawaiian style on the pedal steel.

His pedal steel is a U-12, so he doesn't even have to worry about that pesky D string.

Johnnie's new S-10 Desert Rose has a lock lever to hold it in B6th tuning. He still doesn't have a D string - his 9th string is B and his 10th string is G#.

One nice trick is that while he's playing the B6th tuning, he can use the "B" pedal to raise the G# strings to A for 7th chords. That's the only pedal change he uses in that locked B6th mode. He doesn't do bar slants. (Yeah, I suppose it's cheating a little bit.)

[Jean-Sebastien Gauthier]

I have a Fender 1000 pedal steel that to me sound as good as a lap steel when plug in my Twin and have the same string spacing of a stringmaster and is short scale (23").

I tune my E9 neck to G# E B G# F# E B E and one thing I like to do is for exemple playing a B chord at fret 14 with pedal A-B then go to fret 12 with A-B + lowering the E with my pedal 8 and then remove pedal A-B and keeping the D# (pedal 8 for me) and boom Im in B6 so I can do all my C6 stuff one fret higher! It make me able to switch from country licks to hawaiian/swing very fast!

[Alan Brookes]

Whatever it takes, go for it.