SECRETS OF THE MASTERS

Here are some words of wisdom for your enjoyment from some players
whom I admire. Their advice runs the gamut from gear talk, to
practice tips to deep philosophical thought. In no particular order,
heres the straight scoop!
BUDDY EMMONS, Steel Guitar Forum, March 1998 HOW TO
PRACTICEWhen I look at the strings on my guitar, I see intervals. I
see strings 1 and 2, 1 and 3, or 4 and 5 as whole tones apart. I see
major thirds, minor thirds, and see which fret to put the bar for a
certain note between those intervals. I see fourths, fifths, sixths, and
octaves telling me what string to play when I hear those notes in a
melody. To make this work, you must be able to recognize intervals
when you hear them. I put as much emphasis on the mental part of
practice as the physical. The beauty of hearing and recognizing
intervals is that it will work for any tuning or any instrument. Thats
why some people can pick up a strange instrument, listen to its
intervals and be playing melodies in a manner of minutes.
JUNIOR BROWN, Guitar Player Magazine, March 1997 VOLUME
PEDAL USEThe idea I plant in a students head is to stay at one
volume. The whole idea of a volume pedal is NOT to make volume
surges, but to keep your sound even. When you let a note sit for a
minute, its natural tendency is to fade away. But you can keep it from
decaying by opening up the pedal. On a screaming Les Paul, youd use
distortion and sustain. On steel, you do it by working the volume
pedal. You really notice it on a slow tune. Youve got a certain range of
loudness. You swell within that, but not beyond or below it.
BOB BROZMAN, Guitar Player Magazine, April 1998 PICKING STYLEI
imagine theres a big spring pushing the heel of my picking hand down
on the strings. The only way to release the spring is to pluck the
string. And as soon as Im done depending on note length the
spring clamps down again. With steel, youve got to be relaxed with
the bar relaxed as a squid in your arms and fingers. But for plucking,
youve got to be tense.
JERRY BYRD Personal letter, February, 1995 ON DIATONIC TUNING
My tuning is a 7-string near-diatonic tuning: E, C, B, A, G, F, E
from high to low. The D between the E & C notes would make it a
perfect diatonic scale a C scale with the third on top. I play many
kinds of songs in it but mostly the slower things. Im not a single
string style player for the most part.

MICK GOODRICK, The Advancing Guitarist/Hal Leonard Books 1987

ON LISTENINGThere are many ways to listen. Dont assume that just
because youre a musician, you already know what it means to listen.
Learning how to listen is an ongoing activity that you can improve but only if you work at it. Music is like life on a small scale. Life is like
music on a large scale.
STACY PHILIPS, The Art of Hawaiian Steel Guitar, Mel Bay, 1991
HAWAIIAN VIBRATOListen carefully to the vibrato of players you like.
Try to imitate the width and speed of their bar oscillation. In slow to
moderately paced tunes, the speed of many Hawaiian-style players
approximates triplet timing and a width of a bout fret to either side
of the central note.
JERRY BYRD HSGA Quarterly, January 1994 AMP & VOLUME PEDAL
SECRETSI set the peak volume that I want on the amp not the
instrument. Thats usually about 4.5 or 5, depending on where Im
playing. I then turn the volume on the instrument fully open. I set the
treble control on 2 or 3 and the bass to about 7. These setting may
vary depending on which instrument Im using. That other knob (the
middle) I set on 6 or 7 also. Then I set the tone control on the
instrument half-way between treble and bass, a nice soft tone with a
little edge, so it wont sound too bass-ey or too whine-y.
I like and use a volume pedal but NOT continually. And I use it
differently from almost anyone I know, in that you can always hear the
attack the actual picking whereas many use it to continually
squeeze the notes and little or no actual attack is ever heard. Thats
not good because you will become addicted to it. Your subconscious
mind will tell you to push that thing down and then pick what strings
you want to use, and in case you mess up, youve got another grab at
it, and THEN you open it up. The only time I use a fully closed volume
is when I want to use the violin effect, as its called, with each note
played with no sound and then opened,. My volume pedal is also made
differently in that the volume INCREASES on the up sweep, not down,
as all others. I find it the easiest and have always done it that way.
Also, I use a 500 meg. Audio taper control all around on both guitar
and volume pedal.
GERALD WEBBER, 10 AMP TRICKS FOR STEEL GUITARISTS, Vintage
Guitar Magazine, 1996Bonus Trick: Add a piezo tweeter to the speaker
cabinet. Piezo tweeters do not need a crossover, they sound nice, and
they are very inexpensive. This trick will help add clarity in the high
end while helping individual note definition. Ive even seen players
wire a plug to a piezo tweeter, plug it into the extra speaker jack

and just set it on top of the amp!

CINDY CASHDOLLAR The Complete Dobro Player by Stacy Phillips,
Mel Bay, 1996 LISTENING TIPSHow do you teach feel to students?
If you listen to someone who just plays by reading and then someone
who plays by ear and rips into an incredible solo that comes from a
totally different dimension, then you can tell the difference. Go back to
the basics. Listen to Django Reinhardt, Sol Hoopii, Joaquin Murphy,
Bobby Koeffer - there it is. If you set high goals youre never satisfied
with learning that one tune. Soon the vampire-like feeding instinct
takes over and you need more and more. You should never stop
learning.
HOWARD ROBERTS Guitar Player Magazine, May 1985 DOUBLESTOP ARPEGGIOS & SUBSTITUTIONSDouble stop arpeggios can be of
great value in adding harmonic color and depth to your solo lines.
Doublestop thirds can be used to embellish chord melodies, where
the illusion of lush harmony can be achieved with the addition of one
note. With a modest amount of knowledge, you can achieve
considerable control by knowing what substitutes work for a given
device. For example, in many situations, Imaij7, IIIm7, and VIm7 are
interchangeable. IVmai7 substitutes for Iim7 and VIIb5 substitutes for
V7.
GREG FISHMAN ON STAN GETZ Artist Transcriptions, Stan Getz Bb
Tenor Saxophone, Hal Leonard, 1993 THE KEY TO GETZS PHRASING
Extremely resourceful with his phrases, Getz always created different
ways to play the same basic theme. The technique he used to achieve
this variety was to displace the entire phrase by one to four beats.
Stan was comfortable playing a phrase on any of eight starting places;
the downbeats of one, two, three, and four, and the upbeats as well. It
was this ability to phrase at any of these eight starting points that
helped make Getzs solos sound so fresh and spontaneous.
MIKE AULDRIDGE, Complete Dobro Player by Stacy Phillips, Mel Bay,
1996 ON LEARNING PEDAL STEEL AFTER PLAYING DOBROThe steel
opened a lot of musical ideas. Before that I had no idea what I was
doing! I played strictly from my heart. I didnt know anything about
music theory. You have to understand theory to play pedal steel. You
go through a stage when you think too theoretically and your playing
gets kind of sterile. Once you get through that and you can bring your
heart back into it, but approach it with knowledge, it gives you like a
road map of things to go to. When I first started to play it sounded
like electric Dobro. When I tried to get Buddy Emmons' licks I couldnt

get them. I didnt know what he was doing. I could come close and I
ended up making them mine. I got ideas from him but I didnt do what
he was doing. After a couple of years you can start getting ideas from
other instruments. I get pedal steel licks from violin sections.
RALPH KOLSIANA (Hawaiian Steel Pioneer) Steel Guitar World, 1994
HOW CAN STEEL PLAYERS PLAY MORE SOULFULLY? A steel player
should try to know the song they're playing so well they're able to put
a little more of themselves into it. . When you're playing a number
that you know, you kind of project yourself into playing what you feel
and hear, what it is you're trying to say to the listener. You're trying to
tell it in your own way.
PETE GRANT Steel Guitar Forum, 1999 HOW TO PRACTICE
Accuracy first. Take something you're trying to bring up to speed (or
just get faster) and find the most comfortable tempo where you can
play everything in that piece well. If there's a stumbling block, work it
out; fix it. Then fan out the tempo: play it a little faster, then a little
slower; then play it faster yet and slower yet. Continue that until your
slow is very slow. The slow gives you the precision. It also gives you
the opportunity to play LOUD with your fingers. This gives you a
greater dynamic range. You need that. If you can pick loud, you can
always pick softer. If you always pick soft, well...you can pick soft or
softer. The technique really works, and it works faster that continually
pushing your speed.
BUDDY EMMONS, The Steel Guitar Forum, May 2000 CROSSOVER
TECHNIQUE & PLAYING WITHOUT PICKSThe crossover technique is
not mine nor did I get it from anybody. I believe it's an option most
players eventually find when they hit a dead end and run out of
fingers. There is a difference in the tone of the thumb/finger
combinations, much to do with strength of attack and/or pick angle.
My first finger curves inward and gives more of a ninety-degree angle
to the string, so I get a rounder sound with the index/thumb
combination. If you want to take some of the zing out of the G# at
some point in an E9th ballad, align the middle finger with the thumb.
That changes the pick to string angle and moves the middle finger
away from the bridge for a sweeter and softer sound.
I still play a bit without picks, but I don't find myself doing anything
different in the way of finger positioning. The biggest plus I find in not
using picks, outside of a closer feeling to the guitar, is not having
metal collide with metal and causing a pick to either shift or fly off my
finger. This is especially critical in crossover situations or any other
technique that strays from the normal hand position.

The Steel Guitar Forum, June 2001 I'm playing certain songs
without finger picks in order to keep the wider four part chords of a
more equal timbre. It also helps knock the edge off the high single
notes and works especially well with the deep tones the Sierra is
capable of.
WES MONTGOMERY, via Google.com ON TALENT vs.
DETERMINATION
Natural talent? Now, I've had a lot of arguments on this. My
interpretation of natural talent, or gift, is something that you don't
have to indulge in at all. I mean, like if I was a natural electronic
engineer, and you showed me a television set for the first time, I
would see right away what was wrong with it. But if I have to study
reasons why, and build up my own theory, I'm putting hard efforts into
it. Now, over a period of time, I might make that come out where
people will respect it. But they won't be going through the hardships they'll just be seeing it at the point of completion. This is where people
have been mistaken about me. They don't know about the times when
I'd be sitting up, thinking. If I'd go to a movie show, I'd be looking at
the picture, but I'd be hearing changes. You understand? This is how
much determination I had for playing.
STACY PHILLIPS The Complete Dobro Player by Stacy Phillips, Mel
Bay, 1996 PULL-STRING TECHNIQUE ON DOBRO & LAP STEELI pull
with the ring finger of my bar hand, though on heavier strings or 2-fret
pulls my pinky adds its brawn. (If you could learn to use your middle
finger instead, you could still damp with the other fingers. The problem
is that the middle finger helps hold the bar.) There is a tendency for
the pulling finger to push the string down a bit as it is pulled toward
you. This can cause it to disengage from the bar and stop the sound. It
may be necessary to place the pulling finger a bit towards the bottom
side of the string and pull up slightly to avoid this. I sometimes use the
thumb of my barring hand as a brace against the side of the neck to
help exert leverage against the string.