Steve Fishell explains how pedal steel guitar works

you this this deal is essentially just a system of Bell Bell cranks levers Springs rods and and what not cooperating linkages I think is a good way to describe it that all allow you to change a basic tuning from from one chord to another and what happens here is we've got a basic ee tuning here just like your open a on a guitar we've got a B and E a G sharp a B and an E so you got an open e chord there and the first pedal down here on the floor raises the B note of that open e chord up to a c-sharp so there you've got a c-sharp minor' and then the second pedal raises the the G sharp up to an A so you've got an ISA suspended chord there with that that when you put the two pedals together your a note stay the same your G sharps go up to a and the C sharp the B excuse me that B's go up to C sharp and you suddenly have an a chord so the open E chord goes up to an a chord with the two floor petals and actually you end up playing maybe 50 60 % of the time thinking in terms of a rather than E so then you've got all these licks that come off that that pedal down position and that's probably the sound that people are really familiar with that's just all working with the floor pedals and using them to your advantage to bend notes in a fixed position so you add the bar to it then you've got the freedom to take a cord and move it all around and add vibrato to it I'm going to add your own nuance and and shadings and emotion to the note just by moving the bar so it just kind of opens it up to a lot of lot more possibilities and rather than being in a fixed position on a guitar you're able to slide in between the frets add a little bit of vibrato to it and then you're off to the races you know the other five pebbles over here from five to eight I'll work on this back neck and this neck is tuned to c6 I've got it in a special tuning for a song tonight so I can't give you a really good demonstration of it but it it's it's just an ability to take take a c6 chord and alter it in in various ways this floor pedal over here works on the ninth neck and it raises the e to F sharp so that allows you to play a a F sharp minor open so that's a two minor chord and we already have a an E and a and then we have another neat we have a system of knee levers by the way we have even talked about kneeler from C heavily knee levers allow you to alter you know a basic chord even more just like just like a guitar player would be able to to alter his his chords and you know where this with bard and without the knee levers you just be stuck you know in one place but with the knee levers you're able to lower notes I'm using I'm doing that with an E or lowering uh over here we've got a G sharp that we lower to an F show and we have a and E that we lower to dich so they just give you more range and so when you put those together go from an E chord to a B chord all in the same spot it's even kind of in tune right now which is amazing so we have a beat a beat chord here then we have an open E chord when you release the knee levers then when you hit the floor pedals you go up to an a chord so there you have one four and five EI and B all right in one spot and then you also have minor chord and then that two minor I was telling you about that that f-sharp minor definitely not in tune so it gives you the ability to think like a guitarist and move around rather than just being locked into one place with your Barre the knee levers give you that freedom to to alter the basic chord it can be a bit like driving a four-wheel drive but so so that's what's going on it's just a you know more flexibility with the chin

Channel: Guitarist

Views: 1,453,807

Rating: 4.9038968 out of 5

Keywords: Pedal Steel Guitar (Musical Instrument), Guitar, Emmylou Harris (Musical Artist), emmylou harris hot band, country, pedal steel, slide guitar, Slide Guitar (Musical Instrument), Lap Steel Guitar (Musical Instrument), country bends, pedal steel guitar lesson, pedal steel guitar how to play, Country (Musical Genre), ZumSteel D-10

Id: NrbSL92Kz1Y

Length: 6min 59sec (419 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Geta-Ve]

Never seen that instrument in my life. But incredible stuff.