How To Play A Lap Steel Guitar

A crash course in the fundamentals of lap-steel guitar: bar control, muting, intonation, slurs, and vibrato.

In our never-catastrophe quest to get improve players, it sometimes makes sense to put down the guitar and pick up some other instrument. I'm not talking about detouring into the globe of oboe or harpsichord—got a decade or two to spare?—but rather exploring guitar's close cousin, the lap steel.

If you're a "steel-curious" guitarist or bassist (FYI, John Paul Jones plays wicked lap steel) looking for a reason to take the kickoff step, this lesson is for you. We'll encompass the essentials of bar command and muting, grapple with playing in melody, drill downwards on slurs and vibrato, and fifty-fifty endeavor some slant-bar techniques. You'll hear each example demonstrated on an early on-'50s Fender Deluxe 6, and you tin can download a PDF of the music to piece of work on at your leisure.

Whether you use it as a source of chilling colors in the studio or drag it onstage for wailing solos, adding lap steel to your arsenal can yield huge musical dividends. It doesn't cost a lot to take the plunge (cheque out "Got Steel?"), and no other new gear is required—your pedals and amps will sound as awesome with lap steel as they do with your guitar.

Continue It Elementary
Non-pedal steel guitars have either six or eight strings that are played in a listen-boggling number of tunings, and some lap steels even take two or three necks to accommodate multiple tunings. Although those multi-neck creatures are a ball to play, we'll go on things straightforward in this lesson and focus exclusively on the most basic of all steel guitars: a single-neck 6-string.

Choosing a tuning is tricky because it oft comes down to what style of music yous determine to play. For case, well-nigh Western swing players use C6 on a six-cord neck, while Hawaiian players may prefer an A6 tuning. Open East tuning is a favorite among blues and rock steelers (as well as such bottleneck greats every bit Derek Trucks), and that's what nosotros'll explore in this lesson.

But don't stress about specific tunings in the early stages of your steel evolution. The key is to start somewhere and branch out with other tunings as yous gain confidence. The essential techniques nosotros'll embrace here will serve y'all well on any steel in any tuning—even if you eventually current of air upwardly behind a behemoth doubleneck 10-string pedal steel.

Open E Tuning
Before nosotros brainstorm grappling with bar control, muting, and intonation drills, allow'due south melody up. From low to loftier, open E tuning is East–B–E–Thou#–B–E. Y'all'll observe that in open E, the 6th, 2nd, and 1st strings are identical to standard guitar. A-ha! This 50-pct mutual ground volition help you navigate the neck if y'all've never played in open Due east before.

Tip: If you have a tuner that offers alternatives to equal temperament, endeavor tuning to open E using just intonation (aka JI). Some steel guitarists swear by JI for playing fretless in an open tuning.

Get a Grip
Steel guitar is all about the tonebar, which is likewise known as simply a "bar" or sometimes a "steel." Confined come in different sizes and materials, but traditionally steelers use a metallic cylinder with a rounded tip or "bullet nose." Most modern confined take a concave thumb grip on the barrel stop, and you'll see how handy that is when you try slant-bar moves later in the lesson.

The basic grip: The bar sits in your left-mitt palm, nestled betwixt the first and 2d
fingers and supported by the thumb.

Hold the bar in your open left-paw palm, nestled between your first and second fingers and supported by your thumb. Cupping the bar with these three digits, plough your hand over and place the bar gently but firmly on the strings, perpendicular to them and parallel to the fret markers (Photo ane). These markers map the locations of chromatic notes up and down each string—no mystery here, if y'all play guitar or bass.

Photograph one

The bar gets supported in 3 ways: Past your thumb, which rides up off the strings while gently squeezing the front side of the bar, your index finger which rests on superlative of the bar, and by your pinky, ring, and middle fingers that sit lightly on the strings backside the bar and provide dorsum pressure level against your thumb.

Here's our basic bar grip equally seen from the headstock side of the neck. Notice how 3 digits trail behind the bar, resting lightly on the strings. In improver to providing actress bar back up, they dampen unwanted noises equally you motion
along the strings.

Though they're handy visual references, fret markers don't tell the whole story. Because your viewing angle shifts as you move the bar up or downwardly the strings, you lot can't really meet where its miniscule contact bespeak sits relative to the fret marker. Experienced steelers play past ear, not past sight. (Learning to trust your ears to guide your left hand while executing split-second moves is a skill you tin can bring back to guitar.)

Muting—the Cardinal to Steel Bliss
When you showtime offset running a tonebar forth the strings, things can sound pretty gnarly, simply that'due south where muting comes in. No, let me describe it differently: Muting is crucial to mastering steel, and each mitt plays an of import and unique function.

In our basic grip, three digits trail backside the bar, and they practice double duty. In addition to providing bar support, they glide lightly along the strings dampening unwanted noises every bit you move around the neck.

Photo 2

Though the left hand is actively involved in muting, information technology'due south the correct hand—the picking hand—that does the panthera leo's share. Steel is a fingerstyle instrument. Whether you play with a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpicks on your index and heart digits (the traditional arroyo), bare fingertips, or even classical-style nails, every part of your right mitt—from the "karate chop" edge, to the heel of your palm, to the underside of your thumb, to whatever finger that's not engaged in plucking—will be called on at some point to keep the peace.

Photo ii shows what I telephone call the "all-notes-off" clamp. This grip literally imprisons all the strings in some part of your right hand. Here, the band, eye, and alphabetize fingertips mute strings one, ii, and 3, respectively. The lesser three strings are held silent by the underside of the thumb.

Playing steel ofttimes requires simultaneous muting and picking. Here the index finger plucks the 4th string while the other fingers clamp down on side by side strings to go on them from ringing.

Some other all-notes-off approach uses the palm heel and karate edge to clamp down on the strings. Called "palm blocking," this method is frequently used past pedal steelers who play 10- and 12-string instruments and demand to have more meat available to span all those wires. Palm blocking is the classic pedal steel arroyo, only some contemporary pedal steelers rely instead on "pick blocking," a more recent development based on fingertip control.

However you mute the strings—using some combination of fingertips and base of your hand—this is your master playing pose. From here, you selectively pluck strings while holding others quiet. This requires a high degree of finger independence (another skill that translates to guitar). Once you commencement moving the tonebar to play riffs, you'll sympathize why it's important to simultaneously attack and mute the strings.

And speaking of riffs, let's dive in.

Slur, Slide, and Wobble
Though Ex. 1 is simply two measures long, it illustrates 5 techniques nosotros'll be using once more and again in this lesson: pull-offs, hammer-ons, ascending and descending slides, and vibrato. Allow'southward break it down.

On steel, pulls and hammers consist of alternate a bar note with an open string. Beat 1 illustrates a pull-off on the 3rd cord. Simply place the bar over the 1st fret mark, pluck A, and lift the bar off the string. If you heighten the bar cleanly, the open third string volition band out nice and loud. 1 assault, two notes.

Nosotros reverse the process going between the 2nd and 3rd beats: Pluck the open 5th cord (and of beat 2) and briskly drop the bar onto it (beat out 3's downbeat). But rather than landing direct over the third fret marker, slide toward it from below, every bit indicated in the note. This "hammer-slide" is a quintessential steel move, equally is its mirror image, the "slide-pull" y'all'll come across in beat 4.

The phrase ends on a long sustained notation treated with singing vibrato—another signature steel sound. Just like on guitar, vibrato is a very personal and expressive technique. Though speed and width is a matter of taste (in the audio example, I use a moderately fast vibrato with a narrow pitch deviation), the hallmark of a potent vibrato is consistency. You want to hitting your target note and so roll back and forth above and below it using the same amount of variation and a steady pulse. In other words, go sharp and flat in equal amounts at a stock-still speed. This takes practice, but—wow—it's then much fun to hit a fat, snarling notation on a steel and so get in scream with vibrato.

Click here for Ex. 1

Bluesy Double-Stops
There's a magic interval—a minor third consisting of the five and b7 of any key yous're in—that adds a soulful weep to any blues riff, and all the greats from Howlin' Wolf to Kenny Burrell to Billy Gibbons have repeatedly leaned on it to make their enduring music. Judge what? In open E tuning, this interval lies in a directly line beyond the 3rd and second strings, allowing the states to easily work it with the bar.

We're in the primal of E over again for Ex. ii, and so our magic minor tertiary is B–D, and we make a real repast of it in the showtime measure. When playing unmarried-notation passages—especially on the higher strings, as in measure two, vanquish 4—it helps to tip the bar upwards on its nose. This way you lot're not dragging it across any unused lower strings, creating extra friction and scraping sounds. While playing off the tip like this, go along to mute the inactive strings with your trailing left-hand fingers.

Click here for Ex. 2

Permit It Rip and Ring
Substantially a block of forest equipped with a pickup, lap steel sustains like crazy, and Ex. 3 is all nigh exploring this sonic attribute. Long notes give you a chance to piece of work on vibrato control, so we're also taking advantage of that. When you hit each of the iv sustained moments of vibrato, listen carefully: Is your eye pitch focused? Pulse steady?

In contrast to the long, sustaining notes, we of a sudden get busy in the concluding measure. When executing those last two pull-offs, pop the bar off the strings with a quick flick of your wrist.

Here's another cool thing virtually steel: It's very responsive to where you're picking the strings. As you'll hear in the audio instance, the first fourth dimension I play the double-stops in measure three, they have a thick, throaty tone considering I'm attacking the strings in the middle of the neck, shut to the bar. On the repeat, I pluck closer to the bridge for more bite. It's only a few inches one manner or the other, just the timbral change can be dramatic.

Click here for Ex. 3

Intonation Drills
As you lot start to play higher up the neck, you're quickly reminded that the notes are closer together than when you lot're playing down by the nut. Because we don't have physical frets to practise the dirty piece of work for us, we accept to intuitively make intonation adjustments by hand, on the fly—often at quick tempos.

The best way to come to terms with the expanding and contracting distances is to play scales or chromatic passages along ane string, as in Ex. 4. Notice how one time we get rolling, we're alternating between the open cord and the adjacent bar tone. (I like to retrieve of this as yodeling.) The repeating open string provides a pitch reference against which to play the bar notes. Information technology's a great mode to get your bar mitt in sync with your ear, and you tin utilize this yodeling drill to any cord and any calibration.

Click hither for Ex. iv

Bar Control to Major Tom
Though information technology's easy to coax legato tones from the steel, playing staccato notes takes practice, so that's what we'll tackle in Ex. 5. The thought here is to echo the aforementioned ascending and descending phrase while alternating between well-baked, curt tones and long, juicy ones.

Here's how to produce a staccato joint on steel: After attacking a note, quickly lift the bar off the string—just a pocket-sized distance—but proceed the trailing left-hand fingers on the strings to mute them.

In measure one, ascend through the scale attacking every note and giving it a staccato articulation. Then in measure two, descend through the same scale giving it a legato treatment: Each cord gets an initial attack and all subsequent notes are slurred. In measures three and four, reverse the articulation while ascending and descending through the same scale sequence.

This alternate between short and long tones puts your bar command and muting to the exam. Once you get that down, attempt randomly shuffling the one-mensurate "cells" and articulation you lot use to them: ascend staccato, arise legato, descend legato, descend staccato, and then on. Finally, try a game suggested past PG'south Jason Shadrick: As you ascend and descend through the scale, randomly switch between staccato and legato articulation each time you move to a different cord.

For music theory buffs: The scale we're playing in this example is used in flamenco music, and likewise found throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle E, and India. Information technology goes by many names, but we'll call it Phrygian ascendant (i–b2–three–4–5–b6–b7). In this instance, we're playing F# Phrygian ascendant (F#–G–A#–B–C#–D–E), which is the fifth style of B harmonic minor (B–C#–D–East–F#–G–A#).

Click here for Ex. v

Blues Power
A lap steel lesson would feel incomplete if we didn't explore the blues scale (1–b3–4–b5–5–b7). In Ex. 6, nosotros starting time arise through the A dejection scale (A–C–D–Eb–Due east–Chiliad) starting in the fifth position, and then cut loose with some greasy licks using those notes.

With its mix of staccato notes and legato slides, this example offers plenty of opportunity to piece of work on bar control. Measure out three has two sneaky moves that illustrate how to slip in and out of notes with your tonebar. Both occur in beat 3: The first is the grace note that lets us smash C from a whole-step higher up; the second is the sassy exit that's equivalent to a quarter-tone bend on regular guitar.

Click hither for Ex. six

Playing Changes
It tin can be a claiming to coax modest harmony from a major open up-chord tuning, which is why we need to work on arpeggios. Ex. 7 mixes major and modest arpeggios in the context of a I–IIIm–bVII–IIm progression. (Y'all might recall Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" from Nashville Skyline. This is the same verse harmony, played at a slower tempo.)

We're in the key of A, so we're outlining A, C#m, 1000, and Bm using a combination of staccato notes and legato slurs. Each chord alter requires a quick position shift, which is always enervating on a fretless instrument. The trick is to familiarize yourself with the private arpeggios before you lot attempt to string them together.

The closing IV-I cadence is pretty slick—a classic "weeping" steel move inspired by 1950s honky tonk ballads. In the second catastrophe, beat out four, slow down equally y'all work through the descending D arpeggio. Later on plucking D on the 4th string, only slide down to A for the downbeat of the final measure. As you lot arrive at this low A, strum an A triad above it on strings three, 2, and i.

Click hither for Ex. vii

Driving Sideways
So far, we've been using the tonebar in two means: placed straight beyond several strings at a correct angle to them, or rolled onto its tip in the "bullet nose" position. At present it'southward time to attempt placing the bar on the strings at more of a 45-caste angle—this is known as "slant bar" technique.

When playing rapid unmarried-notation passages, information technology helps to tip the bar up on its nose.

Although you can play slants on adjacent strings, for this lesson nosotros'll stick to slant positions that cantankerous three strings and span an expanse of two frets, with the middle cord muted and i annotation plucked on each adjacent string. And there are 2 possible orientations for the slant: The bar tip tin can point either toward the span or toward the nut. We'll call the first position a forward slant and the latter a reverse slant.

Photo three shows a opposite slant. In this instance, the target notes are on the 5th and third strings and the quaternary string is muted. Ex. 8 puts reverse slants to work in a V–IV–I progression in the key of E. In measure one, we shift from B (the V) to Eastward, before morphing back to B. The same move repeats a whole-step lower in mensurate ii, yielding an A–D–A sound.

Photo 3

In both cases, the reverse slant transitions smoothly to a straight bar position. The set on happens on the reverse slant; this is followed by the tonebar rolling back into a perpendicular orientation to the strings while the notes sustain. The height note slides down a one-half-pace, while the lesser note drops a whole-step. It's a difficult maneuver, but one time y'all go the hang of it, you'll exist able to conjure pedal steel (which provides mechanical "changers" to accomplish the same move).

We stretch out in measure three with a handy riff you lot tin can use for comping in blues, soul, gospel, and fifty-fifty some jazz, then wrap up with a cool E7 lick in measure four. That final little flurry contains some ear-grabbing contrary motion: The minor tertiary slides downward 4 frets to sustain below the loftier E that comes in above it on beat four.

Click here for Ex. 8

Photo 4 illustrates a forward camber on strings three and one. As before, the string between these 2 target notes gets muted. Ex. 9 reveals how like shooting fish in a barrel information technology is to outline diatonic triads on strings 3 and one using a combination of forward slants and straight bar positions. Okay—it'south not exactly easy to play these major and modest sixths, but you'll turn heads with these moves when you master them. Once once again, we're manually emulating pedal steel.

Photo four

One shift that really captures the honky tonk spirit happens in measure one, beats iii and 4. Hither, we're transitioning from a forward camber (Bm) across frets 6 and 7 to a straight bar (A) across fret 5, but on the way down—while still holding the slant—we overshoot the 5th-fret destination to hover higher up frets 3 and 4 before sweeping upward into A.

Click hither for Ex. 9

Tear information technology Downward, Build it Up
Many guitarists become frustrated at some point when learning steel because they experience a level of ineptitude they haven't felt in a long, long time. If you detect yourself gnashing your teeth over some technical hurdle, only remember dorsum to the days when a barre chord—or even a simple folk D chord—was hard to play without buzzing. But you lot triumphed then, and you can practise information technology again. The key is to get over the "I suck" hump and not give up.

A practiced way to arroyo steel is to find moves and phrases that sound good to you lot and then repurpose them in unlike keys, tempos, rhythms, and songs. It comes down to playing a lot—it'southward the simply way to learn how to hold the tonebar without dropping it and play in tune up and downward the cervix. Jamming with your favorite albums works well too because you tin can lay back and play fills, and not be and so completely focused on your own skills (or lack thereof).

And only to reiterate, steel technique is universal. Once y'all develop some bones chops, you tin apply them to any style of music—Hawaiian, Western swing, honky tonk, blues, Brian Eno-inspired soundtracks, any. Don't exist surprised if the steel takes y'all in musical directions you wouldn't have considered in pre-tonebar days. And because learning lap steel places such intense demands on your coordination and pitch acuity, don't be surprised if your guitar playing improves too.

Got Steel?

If you don't already have a steel but are interested in giving it a go, you have many options. Rogue sells an imported half dozen-string starter model for under $100, and Morrell Music offers a lap steel for $150 that'due south made in Bristol, Tennessee. Epiphone and Gretsch accept vi-string models priced betwixt $250 and $500, and yous tin score vintage Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker, Gretsch, National, Supro, and Valco models in pawnshops or on eBay or Reverb for a fraction of what you'd pay for an electric guitar from the same era.

If you're drawn to loftier-cease instruments, such boutique builders as Asher and Duesenberg make stunning steels using premium tonewoods, hardware, electronics, and pickups. Alternatively, you tin convert a standard guitar to play like a lap steel. For a step-past-step description of the simple conversion process, check out "Lap Information technology Up." If you lot take this route, be aware that the open up Due east tuning nosotros're using in this lesson is intended for actual lap steel guitars, which typically have a shorter scale in the range of 22" to 23". On a converted guitar, peculiarly an acoustic, it's a good idea to take open E downwards a whole-step to open D because the instrument's scale will be in the 25" range, and this longer calibration generates greater tension for the same gauge of strings.

YouTube It

In his insanely absurd three-infinitesimal intro to "Mercury Blues," David Lindley lays out everything you lot need to know most playing ripping lap steel onstage. Timeless footage from his El Rayo-Ten era.

Shot at 2015'south Bonnaroo festival, this 9-minute multi-cam video shows Ben Harper diving headfirst into the wild side of his Asher six-cord.

Steel through a Marshall stack—who knew? John Paul Jones gets loud on his lap steel in this live version of Zep'due south classic. Lots of power chords and blues licks ... plus Paul Gilbert playing cute rhythm guitar.