Any College Programs for Pedal Steel Guitar?

[Anthony Parish]

There are many great college programs for music performance with concentrations in various instruments (guitar, bass, piano, voice, etc). Do any programs offer performance training in pedal steel guitar? Haven't seen any.

Tony Parish

[Bill McCloskey]

I think most people graduated from hardknox.edu.

Berklee had some things going on with lap steel when Bill Leavitt was Chairman of the Guitar Department there. But I haven't heard of anything recent.

[Donny Hinson]

Been a long time since my college days, but I'd venture that not too many institutions would support a class that would comprise of five or less students. I couldn't imagine getting more than that, even at Julliard, Vanderbilt, or Berkley.

I'll make a guess and say that guitar, bass, piano, violin and voice are all about 1,000 times more popular than pedal steel.

[Howard Parker]

Does Mike Ihde still teach at Berklee (not Berkley).

I think there's also an offering at East TN State Univ but not positive.

There are a number of higher ed. programs for bluegrass instrumentation. In addition to the 2 above I'm also aware of courses in steel guitar offered at South Plains College in TX.

I believe there are others as well.

h

[Ian Worley]

...I think there's also an offering at East TN State Univ but not positive...

Yes, pedal steeler Tony Dingus used to teach in their program, not sure if he's still there, but he's here on the forum if OP wanted to ask him about it.

[Bobby D. Jones]

Donna Hammit, Bill Anderson's steel player attended some college where she studied steel guitar as her choice of instrument.
She talked backstage about the class at a show about 2002, When she appeared with Bill Anderson at the Sagebrush Roundup.

It may have been East Tenn. University,

[Jon Voth]

Also Henry Johns of Navy Band "Country Current" went there and studied with Mr. Dingus, he's been hired & out of school maybe 5-6 years I'm guessing.

I have all my PSG degrees from Youtube University.

[Christopher Woitach]

For a couple years I taught a kid steel guitar at the college where I teach, as a music major. He had a disability with his left side, and could only play on his lap with bottleneck slide on his finger, so he could hold it. He did pretty good for a while (he was able to play a few jazz tunes) but ended up moving. He was the only that ever asked, but as long as the student could meet music requirements they could probably study steel there (Western Oregon University)

[Jerry Overstreet]

Belmont College in Nashville maybe.

[Bob Hoffnar]

It is common for a music program in college to be called jazz studies or studio composition. Your choice of instrument. Pedal steel is quite welcome. There are no big classes with a bunch of oboe players sitting together. College is not structured like that. Classes for Performance degrees are often ensemble based. If you can play jazz or want to learn how to play jazz you can play in the jazz ensembles. Both small daily workshops and the larger performance based ensembles.
Instrumental studies are with a private teacher that is chosen by the student. You could study with a steel player or piano player or who ever would help you reach your goals.

There is a Western swing class in a college in San Antonio run by a steel player/professor. There is also an experimental music dept run by a steel player at Princeton. I’m sure there is more.

I’m also aware of several doctorates given to musicologists bases on the ethnographic studies of the pedalsteel.

I’m actually looking into a structured college program to get my jazz playing to be a little bit better than pathetic. I always get started and then end up chasing gigs around and get distracted.

College is great. I totally enjoyed it. It has opened doors ( and keeps on opening doors )

I think if you want a degree in pedalsteel you would do it through a jazz studies program. Or an instrumental based commercial music program .

[Donny Hinson]

I think the OP's question was more along the lines of college training in pedal steel; that is, learning the instrument on an advanced level. Of course there are a gazillion college music courses out there, but they don't teach pedal steel. I see the training that Paul Franklin (and others) do in the "Modern Masters" series as what an on-line, college level pedal steel course would and should be.

[Herb Steiner]

South Plains College in Levelland TX, just west of Lubbock, has (or had) a western swing band called the "South Plains Playboys," though I don't know if participation in it applies to an Associates Degree there. SPC is a 2-year community college offering associates degrees in art, business management, nursing, and transfer programs to 4-year colleges and universities.

SPC at one time offered a program in Bluegrass, taught by Allen Munde and the late Joe Carr, but that was probably decades ago. No mention of that course of study is mentioned in the SPC literature I've seen.

[Tommy Mc]

Been a long time since my college days, but I'd venture that not too many institutions would support a class that would comprise of five or less students. I couldn't imagine getting more than that, even at Julliard, Vanderbilt, or Berkley.

I'll make a guess and say that guitar, bass, piano, violin and voice are all about 1,000 times more popular than pedal steel.

One of my daughters learned to play sitar in high school and found a small sitar class in college. (Oberlin) I think it just takes a bit on the "demand" side and a winning instructor.

[Howard Parker]

There is also this (in part) from The The IBMA Foundation.

"The Mike Auldridge Memorial Scholarship, created by Howard Parker, will benefit individuals studying the resophonic guitar, steel guitar, or acoustic guitar on the college level with a bluegrass or roots music focus. The deadline to apply for Mike Auldridge Memorial Scholarship (along with all IBMA Foundation-hosted college scholarships) is June 1, 2025. Forms will be online at Bluegrassfoundation.org by March 1, 2025"

[Jay Coover]

You might try calling Belmont -

School of Music: 615.460.6408

[Lee Rider]

I take lessons on Patreon from Rich Hinman who teaches at Berklee in Boston. Looks like they have some courses for steel guitar but I don't actually see a major for it:

https://college.berklee.edu/faculty/rich-hinman

[Brett Day]

Belmont College in Nashville maybe.

I'm sure Belmont would have a course in steel guitar. The man who invented the guit-steel, Junior Brown taught guitar at Rogers State College, and at one time, they had courses where you could study country music-Leon McAuliffe, steel guitarist with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys taught a few workshops there and Eldon Shamblin also taught some workshops there

[Dan Beller-McKenna]

Places like Berklee, MTSU and maybe Belmont are the most likely to embrace the idea. I can tell you, having taught in a "standard" college music department for over thirty years, that there are a lot of obstacles for having non-band -orchestral instruments in the curriculum at more traditional music programs. My colleagues "say" they would like to open the curriculum up to other types of music, but a) there is less than zero money for hiring new instructors and b) the band, orchestra, and choir director are fighting to keep their ensembles populated and are nervous about diverting resources to instruments that they can't have in their groups. My department is particularly old fashioned, despite a desire to modernize, so it might be less likely than others to find a way to include new instruments.

That said, I did get to give pedal steel lessons to an interested (and excellent) student last spring in lieu of his piano lessons (but he is in our most flexible degree track, otherwise it might not have flown). This fall he decided he'd rather transcribe classical music for banjo, so we've been playing Bach inventions on banjo and dobro this semester, which has been a blast, rekindling long dormant synapses from my years of studying classical guitar.

[Jay Coover]

I'm sure Belmont would have a course in steel guitar.

Maybe not quite like that specifically, but they might be able to put something together for you. Music-performance-wise. There are plenty of steel instructors in the area, and the faculty would kind of be able to guide your curriculum. I have no idea. Contact them though and ask.

[Kevin Hatton]

I’ve got a PHD from Neon University. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

[Richard Sinkler]

I’ve got a PHD from Neon University. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

Me too. That degree allowed me to join the BAR association as well as other CLUBS.

I did attend a few Jeff Newman seminars when he came to Northern California.

[Peter Ellman]

I think most people graduated from hardknox.edu.

.

[Matt Perpick]

As Lee mentioned, Rich Hinman teaches guitar at Berklee and has a couple of steel students. I believe Kevin Barry, the great lap steel player, also teaches there. It would be amazing if those program could grow.

[Dave Magram]

There's also Jordan Stern (“Professor Honky Tonk”) who wrote in March, 2023: "I am a music education professor…I have just started a country music program at Texas State." viewtopic.php?p=3140357&sid=2c4e040dd5d ... e1f7575941

Jordan does an amazing job of analyzing and re-creating several honky-tonk classics at: https://professorhonkytonk.com/

- Dave

[Kevin Hatton]

Okay class, let us start with the basic Steel Guitar Theory of Relativity:
M/T=P squared. Where M= Music. T=Time. And P= Poverty.
This man was formerly with The Dept. Of Energy as a Nuclear Physicist. He chose to play steel guitar for a living instead.