Is it harder to write music on a steel?

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 29 Jul 2006 10:24 am

Is there a lower percentage of steelers writing their own music than there is among six-string guitarists, pianists etc? The steel seems to appeal to musicians playing ambient or semi-ambient sorts of music, like Susan Alcorn, Daniel Lanois, and Bruce Kaphan. However, you can count the steelers currently writing peppier music ON their steel on the fingers of one hand: Dave Easley, Paul Lacques, Brandin, Robert Randolph, Johan Jansen, bits and pieces from a few others. You have to go back to Buddy Emmons, then way back to Speedy West, "Sleepwalk", "Steel Guitar Rag" and others from the 50's and back to find substantial melodic writing on the steel.

I find it easier to find melodies and lay out structure on a six-string just because of experience, but I'm also thinking that perhaps it's more difficult to play a steel as percussively as a guitar or piano, and that the very smoothness we all like can sort of gum up or obscure the rhythmic details and patterns that are needed to make music more memorable and interesting.

basilh · Post by **basilh** » 29 Jul 2006 10:30 am

Country Startime 1990 [This message was edited by basilh on 29 July 2006 at 11:31 AM.]

Mike Shefrin · Post by **Mike Shefrin** » 29 Jul 2006 11:38 am

Sweet little clip, Basil.Been playing along with it for the last half hour.Lots of fun. Figured out everything but of course wasn't able to play both parts simultaneously of the small bit that you double tracked.
Enjoyed your website also.[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 01 August 2006 at 12:11 PM.]

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 29 Jul 2006 12:32 pm

That's fun! Nice Baz!

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 29 Jul 2006 2:08 pm

I've never found it harder. But then, I can't play any other instrument very well. When all you have is a hammer, everthing looks like a nail.

Mike Shefrin · Post by **Mike Shefrin** » 30 Jul 2006 6:10 am

David M,
I'm not sure if there's a lower "percentage" of writing for the steel or even if it's "harder to write music on the steel", but we all know there are definitely more guitarists,pianists,etc than there are steel players out there so on the surface it appears there's gonna be more compositions from them than the steelers.Personally,I often prefer to write stuff on the steel as opposed to the guitar or piano since there are voicings or sounds on the steel that arent possible on the six string guitar or piano.I also enjoy the challenge of transcribing music for the steel whether it be jazz standards or classical pieces.I do understand what you are saying though, and to some extent agree with you.regards,Mike

[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 30 July 2006 at 10:29 PM.]

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 30 Jul 2006 7:56 pm

If there is a real lack of music composed on steel, I think it is an artifact of the way it has traditionally been used. In country music, which must contain 99% of all steel music, steel is played by a nonvocalist sideman. All that is played is fills, leads and harmony, to back up a vocalist, who usually plays a guitar. There is a lot of music played with just vocal and guitar, or vocal and piano. Vocalist songwriters overwhelmingly play those instruments as they compose songs.

Outside of jazz, there is no longer any instrumental commercial music. The songs written on and for steel in the past were in an era when instrumetals were common. But now there are no commercial instrumentals on steel or any other instrument. So the fact that there are no steel instrumentals being written is not surprising. There are no instrumentals being written for any instrument in commercial music outside of jazz.

There has never been a tradition of solo steel and vocal, like there is for guitar and piano. It is very difficult to play steel and sing at the same time, because you have to listen to the pitch of both the instrument and voice and make them be in tune. With piano and guitar, you just slap the notes or chords down, and they play in tune, and your ears can concentrate on singing in tune. It is just too hard for most people to play steel and sing. Anyone who is going to write a song and sing it, even a steeler, is going to grab a guitar, or sit down at a piano.

Jazz and classical music are the only genres where instrumentalists write instrumental songs for their instrument. In classical music composers even write instrumental music for instruments they cannot themselves play. But steel has never been a big part of those genres.

But if you want to compose songs for steel, there seems to be nothing easier than to sit down at a steel and compose music. I can make up music on steel endlessly. A pedal steel is like a music machine. I have to stop myself, because I never write them down and they go nowhere, and it keeps me from learning to play existing melodies from songs I need to learn, which is much harder. Making up music on steel is so easy, I think we consider it no challenge - sort of cheating. It's what we do all the time as sidemen playing leads and fills. The real challenge for most of us is to learn to play melodies, harmony and variations of existing songs. I think any decent steeler can sit down and start making up music. Then someone will come along and say, "What's that?" And we'll say, "Oh, that's nothing. I'm just making it up as I go." When you think about it, that's kind of funny.

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

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 31 Jul 2006 2:00 am

It's the rhythmic aspect of it that interests me - it's really hard for me to imagine a steel guitarist writing "Johnny B. Goode", "Beethoven's 5th", "Straight No Chaser", "Iron Man", the "William Tell Overture", "Purple Haze", or any other pounding, throbby music because those kinds of beats don't seem to be "natural" to the steel.

On steel, there are some b@njo-derived rolls with a bit of drive to them (Tommy White!), Bobbe Seymour can get it going with that thumbpicking stuff, but for the most part steelers aren't very pushy, rhythmically. Joe Wright can play rock licks on steel, but he still sounds to me like he's not right on top of the beat, but a bit behind.

Obviously, if you don't spend a certain amount of your "noodle-time" working with driving beats, they're not going to come up in your writing. You can write with a drum machine, but that's external to the intrinsic nature of the instrument. I am surprised that steel hasn't assumed a more prominent role in "New Age" music and particularily movie and TV soundtracks - I would love a chance to do creepy TV serial-killer music - but it's hard to imagine a way of playing a steel that would fit into heavy metal or rap. Not that I'd want to do that, my point being that playing steel tends to generate floating rather than pounding rhythms - and this is a limitation.[This message was edited by David Mason on 31 July 2006 at 03:06 AM.]

Steve Stallings · Post by **Steve Stallings** » 31 Jul 2006 8:26 am

I write a lot of songs. I almost always write with piano or acoustic guitar. As much as I love pedal steel, I don't find it conducive to writing music.

The Ballad of Jake Masters

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Steve Stallings
The Songs

Dr. Hugh Jeffreys · Post by **Dr. Hugh Jeffreys** » 31 Jul 2006 7:55 pm

Why should it be any different from any other melodic writing???? ----j-----

Mike Winter · Post by **Mike Winter** » 31 Jul 2006 8:11 pm

Maybe it's a matter of your "roots"...what you started on. I started on 6 string years ago, so I "think" that way. For years now, when I'm learning a new song, I get the lyrics on paper first, broken down into logical singing order, then I put the 6 string chords over the word where the change is. When I started playing with the steel, I continued the same way...now I figure out the corresponding steel chords and go from there. Probably clunky, but its a system that works for me. Pete Burak gave me a good tip the other week. He suggested I write down bar and pedal postions under the chord: G 3 open, 10 AB, etc.

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Mike
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Blue Moon Highway
(Country Music...and then some.)
www.bluemoonhighway.com

ZB Custom S-10 (#0509)

Mike Shefrin · Post by **Mike Shefrin** » 31 Jul 2006 9:28 pm

-and this is a limitation

I think the limitation is in the player and not in the instrument.I've heard lots of steel that is rhythmic+ percussive.For example, the bubbly,perculating single line playing of Rusty Young or Buddy Emmons sounds bouncy, percussive, and very rhythmic to my ears.[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 01 August 2006 at 12:57 PM.]

Mike Perlowin RIP · Post by **Mike Perlowin RIP** » 31 Jul 2006 10:33 pm

it's really hard for me to imagine a steel guitarist writing "Johnny B. Goode"

Actually, a steel guitarist DID write Johnny B. Goode.

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Warning: I have a telecaster and I'm not afraid to use it.
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My web site

[This message was edited by Mike Perlowin on 31 July 2006 at 11:34 PM.]

Mike Perlowin RIP · Post by **Mike Perlowin RIP** » 31 Jul 2006 10:37 pm

Hey Basil, your song is very cool.

basilh · Post by **basilh** » 1 Aug 2006 12:51 am

Most of the time when I try to write music on the Steel Guitar, the biro goes through the page and marks the fret-board !!

So I've started to write music on my desk.
Desktop Music !!

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Steel players do it without fretting

Mike Shefrin · Post by **Mike Shefrin** » 1 Aug 2006 9:05 am

I've seen the film of Chuck Berry playing the steel, and I wasn't too impressed.He's much better at writing tunes, which he does on the guitar I'm sure. [This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 11 August 2006 at 08:00 AM.]

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 1 Aug 2006 10:26 am

I've seen the Chuck Berry movie where he plays steel and I have a copy of "Deep Feelings." When he plays steel it's pretty ambient, floaty and non-driving, not at all like his guitar playing - sort of the point I was getting at. Jerry Garcia and Steve Howe used the steel for that type of playing too.

Mike Shefrin · Post by **Mike Shefrin** » 1 Aug 2006 11:41 am

David,
If I understand correctly,what you're saying is the steel is conducive to a certain "ambient" or "floating" type of playing or writing, and the guitar is more conducive to a "driving" or "pounding"(your words)kind of playing or writing.Simply put, A steel is not a six string guitar, and vice versa.That being said, I still think there's just as much "driving" and "percussive" steel playing as there is "ambient" steel playing.
I will repeat what I said earlier...The limitations are not in the instrument but in the player.
best wishes, Mike[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 02 August 2006 at 08:29 AM.]

Petr Vitous · Post by **Petr Vitous** » 1 Aug 2006 1:27 pm

Yeah, it's hard to write GOOD music, no matter what on.

Petr http://www.luma-electronic.cz/lp/elpe.htm

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 2 Aug 2006 1:04 am

Basilh, nice little diddy...reminds of the early Steel albums ..

here's a Steel written tune...

Lower Ten Blues, copyright 2004

This is one of my projects from 2004. The first two verses are played in two different fretboard positions.

www.tprior.com/LTB_low.mp3

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TPrior
TPrior Steel Guitar Homesite

[This message was edited by Tony Prior on 02 August 2006 at 02:08 AM.]

Howard Tate · Post by **Howard Tate** » 2 Aug 2006 6:16 am

I like that Tony, very nice. Didn't Mooney write "Crazy Arms"? I keep expecting HowardR to say something about ruining your steel by writing on it.

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Howard

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 2 Aug 2006 3:53 pm

Here are a couple of tunes that I wrote on steel. I don't think they're very "ambient" sounding: http://soundhost.net/b0b/Smokin.b0b.mp3 http://soundhost.net/b0b/iAintGotTheBlues.mp3

Also, the 5 originals on my first CD were all written on steel: http://b0b.com/samples.html

Sometimes I write on computer, without any real instrument: http://soundhost.net/b0b/Poppa.mp3

Most of the time I write on steel because, as they say, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

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<img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b2005.gif" width="78 height="78">Bobby Lee (a.k.a. b0b) - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Williams D-12 E9, C6add9, Sierra Olympic S-12 (F Diatonic)
Sierra Laptop S-8 (E6add9), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (E13, C6 or A6) My Blog

Buck Reid · Post by **Buck Reid** » 2 Aug 2006 7:11 pm

I have four "Steel Written" tunes on my latest CD!

Email: breidmusic@comcast.net
Web : www.BuckReid.com