The
pedal steel guitar is a type of
electric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered with guitar effects such as...
that uses a metal slide (the "steel") to stop or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of
steel guitarSteel guitar is a type of guitar and/or the method of playing the instrument. The name steel guitar comes not from the material of which the guitar is made, but from the name of the steel, a slide held in the left hand....
, it uses foot pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence its name. The instrument is supported horizontally on legs, with the strings facing up towards the player, and is typically plucked with thumbpick and fingers or (two or three)
fingerpickA fingerpick is a type of plectrum used most commonly for playing bluegrass style banjo music. Most fingerpicks are 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 the end of the fingers...
s. The pedals are mounted on a cross bar below the body and the knee levers extend from the bottom of the guitar's body and are used to change the pitch (higher and lower) of its strings in the process of the guitar 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
portamentiPortamento is a musical term originated from Italian primarily denoting a vocal slide between two pitches and its emulation by instruments such as the violin, and is sometimes used interchangeably with anticipation. It is also applied to one type of glissando as well as to the "slide" or "bend"...
, 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
copedentCopedent is a table used to describe the tuning and pedal arrangement on apedal steel guitar. The term was coined by Tom Bradshaw in an early 1970s article in Guitar Player magazine. It is short for "ChOrd PEDal arrangemENT". According to Bradshaw, the term is pronounced "co-PEE-dent"...
s. The range of copedents that can be set up varies considerably from guitar to guitar. Aftermarket modifications to make additional copedents possible are common.
The pedal steel was developed from the console steel guitar and
lap steel guitarThe 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...
. 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.
Description
A pedal steel guitar is typically rectangular in shape, and has no specific resonant chamber or conventional guitar body but only one or more
guitarThe guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that adapts readily to a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four-, seven-, eight-, ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen- and eighteen-string guitars also exist. The size and shape of the neck and the base of the 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 tuningC6 tuning is the most common tuning for electric steel guitar, both on single and multiple neck instruments. On a twin-neck, the most common tuning is C6 tuning on the near neck and E9 tuning on the far neck....
and the farther away using an
E9 tuningE9 tuning is a common tuning for steel guitar necks of more than six strings. In particular, it is the most common tuning for the far neck on a two-neck table steel guitar or pedal steel guitar, most often combined with C6 tuning for the near neck, and also a popular tuning for single neck...
. 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 models with 14 strings on one neck can be found. Three-neck instruments are less common than those with one or two, but are not unknown.
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 to specific tuned notes, changing the instrument's tuning during performance.
History
The pedal steel guitar is the latest development in a story that started with the invention of a technique of playing used in
HawaiiHawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states, and is the only state made up entirely of islands. It is located on an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of Australia. The state was admitted to the Union on August...
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 above the neck of the guitar. Several people have been credited with the innovation.
The Hawaiian style of playing was very popular in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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 or metal and the addition of an electric pickup; this was the lap steel guitar. It was the first
electric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered with guitar effects such as...
to achieve commercial success. Several pioneering manufacturers of the
electric guitarAn electric guitar is a guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered with guitar effects such as...
were first famous for their work on the then more popular electric steel guitar, among them
Adolph RickenbacherAdolph Rickenbacker was a Swiss-American who founded the Rickenbacker guitar company.Born Adolf Rickenbacher in Switzerland, he emigrated to the United States with older relatives after his parents died, settling in Wisconsin. He moved to southern California as a young man...
,
Paul BigsbyPaul Adelburt Bigsby was the designer of the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and proprietor of Bigsby Guitars...
and
Leo FenderClarence Leonidas Fender , also known as Leo Fender, was a Greek-American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, now known as Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, and later founded MusicMan and G&L Musical Products...
.
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. The
Gibson Guitar CorporationThe Gibson Guitar Corporation, of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a manufacturer of acoustic and electric guitars. Gibson also owns and makes guitars under such brands as Epiphone, Kramer, Valley Arts, Tobias, Steinberger, and Kalamazoo. In addition to guitars, the company makes pianos through its...
used a system of pedals to change the tuning of the strings on one of their console steels beginning in 1940. This instrument, the
Electraharp, had a cluster of pedals radiating from its left rear leg that operated similarly to the pedals on a harp.
Alvino ReyAlvin McBurney , known by his stage name Alvino Rey, was an American swing era musician and pioneer, often credited as the father of the pedal steel guitar...
was an early player of the Electraharp.
In about 1950, Paul Bigsby began making custom pedal steel guitars that featured pedals mounted to a rack between the front legs of the instrument.
Speedy WestWesley Webb West , better known as Speedy West, was an American pedal steel guitarist and record producer. He frequently played with Jimmy Bryant, both in their own duo and as part of the regular Capitol Records backing band for Tennessee Ernie Ford and many others...
got the second of Bigsby's creations, and used it extensively in his work with
Jimmy BryantJimmy Bryant was a prominent American session guitarist. He was billed as "The Fastest Guitar in the Country".-Biography:Ivy J. Bryant, Jr. was born in Moultrie, Georgia, the oldest of 12 children...
. Zane Beck began adding knee levers to console steel guitars, and in 1953, added a set of four knee levers to Jimmy Day's console steel. Beck's knee levers lowered the pitches of the strings they operated, which was an action opposite of what the pedals accomplished.
Around 1953, 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 PierceWebb Michael Pierce was one of the most popular American honky tonk vocalists of the 1950s, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the decade. For many, Pierce, with his flamboyant Nudie suits and twin silver dollar-lined convertibles, became the most recognizable face...
'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. Two of these tinkering musicians were
Buddy EmmonsBuddy Emmons , is an American guitarist.Emmons has been called "The World's Foremost Steel Guitarist" and his talent is greatly admired by fellow steel guitarists...
and Jimmy Day, and their playing and mechanical innovations alike have done more for the development of the pedal steel guitar than any other contributors.
Emmons and Day 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. Although Emmons' and Day's setups do the same thing, Emmons and Day used the opposite of each other's pedals to raise the strings. To this day, when one buys a pedal steel, the manufacturer will ask whether the player wants an Emmons Setup or a Day Setup. Emmons incorporated a third pedal to his setup, based on a change Ralph Mooney had used on his instrument. Emmons joined forces in 1957 with another steel-playing machinist named
Harold "Shot" JacksonShot Jackson was a country music guitarist best known for playing Dobro and pedal steel guitar. He also designed and manufactured guitars under the name Sho-Bud.-Biography:...
and formed the
Sho-BudSho-Bud is a brand name for a manufacturer of pedal steel guitars. The founders were SHOt Jackson and BUDdy Emmons, both active steel players in the 1950s. In the 70s they also expanded their line and offered acoustic guitars. They also made a line of resonator guitars in conjunction with Gretsch...
company, the first pedal steel guitar manufacturer. Sho-Bud guitars incorporated all the innovations that had taken place during the 1950s, including Emmons's third pedal, Beck's knee levers, and ten strings. The single-neck pedal steel guitar was now standardized with three pedals and (up to) four knee levers.
Both lap and pedal steel guitars were closely associated with the development of
country musicCountry music is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States and the Appalachian Mountains...
and
western swingWestern swing is a style of popular music that evolved in the 1920s in the American Southwest among the region's popular Western string bands. Fundamentally an outgrowth of jazz, much Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka,...
. The pedal steel's liquid, yearning sound has begun in recent years to be coveted by many modern musicians, beginning in
jazzJazz is a musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
and
bluesBlues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre created within the African-American communities in the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
. In particular the rising popularity of
alternative countryAlternative country is a term used to describe a number of country music subgenres that tend to differ from mainstream or pop country music. The term is sometimes known as alt-country and has included country music bands and artists that have incorporated influences ranging from American roots...
has brought the instrument's beautiful sound to a much wider audience, and it has been used in many different musical genres.
Jùjú musicJùjú is a style of Nigerian popular music, derived from traditional Yoruba percussion. The name comes from Juju, a form of magic and the use of magic objects or witchcraft common in West Africa. It evolved in the 1920s in urban clubs across the countries. The first jùjú recordings were by Tunde...
, a form from
NigeriaNigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and one Federal Capital Territory. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger...
, uses pedal steel extensively.
A
ConcertoThe term Concerto is usually a three-part musical work in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra...
for Pedal Steel Guitar and OrchestraAn orchestra is an instrumental ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
has been written by
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the municipality of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123.445 inhabitants...
composer
Michael A. LevineMichael A. Levine is an American composer born on 20 February 1964 in Tokyo, Japan, and currently based in Los Angeles.-Biography:His Concerto for Pedal Steel Guitar and Orchestra is believed to be the first concerto ever written for the pedal steel guitar...
. It was premiered on April 16, 2005, in a performance by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, with Gary Morse (of
Dierks BentleyDierks Bentley is an American country music artist who has been signed to Capitol Records Nashville since 2003. That year, he released his self-titled debut album. Both it and its follow-up, 2005's Modern Day Drifter, are certified platinum in the United States. A third album, 2006's Long Trip...
's and
Dwight YoakamDwight David Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter and actor, most famous for his country music. Active since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty albums and compilations, and has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts.-Early life:Yoakam was born...
's bands) as soloist, and Paul Gambill conducting. The piece is believed to be the first concerto ever written for the solo steel guitar.
Playing
A performer typically sits on a stool or seat at the instrument. The right foot is used mainly to operate a volume pedal. The left foot is primarily 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 are mounted from underneath the body of the steel guitar.
The strings are positioned high above the neck of the instrument. Rather than being pressed to a
fretA 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...
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 technique of angling the bar so that the strings played are unequal in length and different intervals between the notes are played is called "slanting". The right hand plucks the strings, usually with a set of thumb and finger picks. A technique used by either hand to mute the vibration of the plucked strings is called "blocking" or muting. In combination with the variable volume pedal settings of the right foot different sonic effects are implemented. The volume pedal is used in many ways with one of the more prominent techniques used is to extend the length of time a string sustains its sound as it decays naturally as the energy of the plucked string dissipates the volume pedal is pressed downward to extend the note's time.
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
dyadsIn music, a dyad is a set of two notes or pitches. Although most chords have three or more notes, in certain contexts a dyad may be considered to be a chord. The most common two-note chord has pitches a perfect fifth apart...
(two-note chords). In the E9 tuning, many characteristic idioms involve
tonicThe tonic is the first note of a musical scale in the tonal method of musical composition. The triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord. More generally, the tonic is the pitch upon which all other pitches of a piece are hierarchically referenced...
-
dominantIn music, the dominant is the fifth degree of a musical scale. The dominant has the role of creating instability that requires the tonic or goal-tone for release....
and
tonicThe tonic is the first note of a musical scale in the tonal method of musical composition. The triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord. More generally, the tonic is the pitch upon which all other pitches of a piece are hierarchically referenced...
-
subdominantIn music, the subdominant is the technical name for the fourth tonal degree of the diatonic scale. It is so called because it is the same distance "below" the tonic as the dominant is above the tonic - in other words, the tonic is the dominant of the subdominant. It is also the note immediately...
harmonic relationships.
Mastering the pedal steel guitar can take time due to its technical and complex harmonic innerworkings and unique physical techniques utilized to create the trademark sounds of the instrument. As showcased in country music, where the pedal steel guitar is most commonly heard, talented players are highly esteemed.
For a table of several tunings of the pedal steel guitar, see
copedentCopedent is a table used to describe the tuning and pedal arrangement on apedal steel guitar. The term was coined by Tom Bradshaw in an early 1970s article in Guitar Player magazine. It is short for "ChOrd PEDal arrangemENT". According to Bradshaw, the term is pronounced "co-PEE-dent"...
.
Manufacturers
Most pedal steel guitars are produced by smaller makers, and many are custom-built to player order. While there are dozens of manufacturers of pedal steel guitars (past and present), the list below represents the larger manufacturers and notable smaller manufacturers.
External links
- The Pedal Steel Pages - Where to start.
- Jeffran College - Jeff Newman's instructional website.
- digndoug.com - Doug Jernigan's instructional website.
- Steel Guitar Jazz - Videos, sound clips and photos of jazz steel guitarists.
- Brad's Page of Steel - Discusses lap steel guitars in more detail.
- Steel Guitar Forum - A discussion board for steel guitarists.
- SteelGuitarInfo.com - Information on the pedal steel guitar, provided by Carter Steel Guitars.
- Photographs of one pedal steel guitar model.
- Jerry Brightman Home website for Jerry Brightman formerly with Buck Owens.
- Steel Guitar Zone Articles, music, instructional materials and DVDs for Dobro and all steel guitar players.
- www.16tracks.com Collection of free .mp3, .wma, and .wav files submitted by the people who played them.
- Pedal Steel Power from Country Pickers - article originally published in The History of Rock 1983; republished in Crawdaddy!
Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was the first magazine to take rock and roll seriously.Preceding both Rolling...
2008