The British Steelies Society

Looks to me like all meets will cease in the not too distant future for a while, which made me think it might be an idea to setup having a virtual meet for all British Steelies in the meantime. How would this work? Perhaps if each group put forward a tune for the month along with a backing track, then we could all put together a video recording of our individual versions and post them up onto the Pedal Steel Recordings section.

I realise that many members won't have video camera recording equipment to do this, but it would be relatively easy to just use mobile phones or a tablet to record a video then post it up here. The quality may not be as good as using a video camera but that would not matter, it would be good to see all the different versions and see what other groups are doing. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a video recording, it could just be an audio recording, but it would be good to see other members here in their full glory

If many of us are going to be self isolated soon it would give us something to get our teeth into to while away the boring hours.

It would probably require the organisers of each meet to put forward their choice of tune on a monthly basis. How many active meets do we have at present, must be at least 4, that would give us plenty of material to get on with every month. It would also get some interesting activity going on here. Maybe a dedicated area in the Pedal Steel Recordings section could be set up to make it more cohesive.

Just a thought

I agree, this would be fantastic! I work from home one day a week at present and connect via Skype for calls and screen sharing, etc. I would love to join a virtual steelies meet, especially as I struggle to join the physical meetings with various family commitments. Please keep us all in the loop Geoff. Self-isolation may just be the catalyst for steel guitar excellence...!

Good idea indeed Geoff,

Please all be mindful however that video cannot be uploaded directly to this forum, it has to be hosted elsewhere, ..You Tube etc. And then linked to here!

If it flies though I'm sure we could find enough people with You Tube channels or the likes to accommodate it!

As with everything else in life it takes dedication time and effort to produce it; especially if it is genuinely done to benefit, critique or teach and not self promote!

As you say, welcome and certainly food for thought!!! BA

Absolute corker Geoff!!! I can see no downside to this idea, whatsoever.
Let the 'N.S.M.' (Noble Steel Meets) commence

simon_f3 wrote:. . . I would love to join a virtual steelies meet, especially as I struggle to join the physical meetings . . .

Not surprising Simon - you're in - COVENTRY

Tony Russell Davis wrote:

simon_f3 wrote:. . . I would love to join a virtual steelies meet, especially as I struggle to join the physical meetings . . .

Not surprising Simon - you're in - COVENTRY

Too true, Tony! Though I must point out that I didn't get 'sent to Coventry!' - it was a conscious choice to move here Actually we are in a little village between Coventry and Rugby so it is still quite rural. I tried city life briefly but, being a country boy at heart, it was surprisingly difficult to find any decent pasture land inside the Coventry ringroad!

Thank you guys for your encouragement, it was just an idea that popped into my head but I think it could work, be fun to do and take our minds off the virus to a certain extent.

First off I would like to say that I don't want to be the boss of this but I am willing to facilitate and co-ordinate it. By that I mean the rules and guidelines should be set by the current forum admins and mods, I will put forward suggestions though for you guys to consider. Second off, much as I'm flattered Danny, I think it should be named the British Steelies Virtual Meets or something similar.

Yesterday I had a good long think about the practicalities and tried out a few ideas I had. Bob you highlight some relevant points, some of which I've looked into to try and find simple solutions. Here's what I'm suggesting,

(1) Set up a google email account in the name BSteelies or something similar.
(2) Use the google account to set up a Youtube channel under the name British Steelies which we can all upload videos to.
(2a) I will PM the account details and password to anyone who wants to be involved, they will then have access to the google email account and the Youtube channel. Best not to put these details in public view for obvious reasons.
(3) Backing tracks can be shared via the google email account, i.e. by sending an email from that account to that account and attaching mp3 file so anyone with access to the account can download it.
(4) Use whatever device you have to record the video of you playing the tune and then upload it to the British Steelies Youtube channel.
(5) Have a set format for naming your video upload in Youtube, i.e. Apr(nameofsong)(yourname).
(6) Only songs chosen by the meet organisers each month can be uploaded, anything else can be uploaded as it is now using personal Youtube accounts.
(7) Perhaps one individual from each group could post up a learning video each month, such as Willies tips and tricks
(8) Any videos uploaded which are not the meet songs will be deleted.

I realise it's not the same as meeting in person, where a lot of the enjoyment is the banter and individual discussions on technique etc but it could still be a lot of fun.

I would be prepared to put together a wee How To Guide to help anyone get to grips with doing it. I can do this for android and pc, I don't use Apple gear so perhaps someone else could help there.

I've already tried some of what I'm suggesting and will try it out in full today to verify that it will work.

Hi, I think I have a workable solution on how we can do this and manage it safely.

I have set up a google drive, (vsteelmeet), to upload videos to, once the video files have been uploaded to the vsteelmeet google drive, I will then upload them to a Youtube channel I have created for the purpose under the channel name Virtual Steelies Meet.

In order to allow others, (apart from myself!), to upload to this google drive I need to give others a share permission to be able to upload to this google drive. This requires that I have any members who wish to participate email address that they use for their personal google account, (don't require password, so your security is safe!), I can then set up a share so they can upload their files directly to the vsteelmeet google drive from their own personal google drive page.

This requires that any members wishing to participate has a google account, if you don't have one then it's easy to set one up.

This may sound a bit complicated but in practice it's easy to use once you've initially done it.

If enough people are interested I will put a How To Guide together to help folks get started.

My idea was that the organisers of the real meets put forward a tune of the month each and supply a backing track in MP3 format, which could then be downloaded for everyone involved to use in their video. So that would be 3? 4? tunes a month for everyone to work out a version of.

This will require the meet organisers to be involved, so I'm requesting that these members pm me to indicate whether they want to be involved. I'm up for getting this up and running but there has to be enough interest from members in the first instance otherwise I'll be putting a lot of work in for no benefit to the forum.

I have been trialling what I have set up today and it all seems to work fine, here's a video I used in the trial just to prove it will work. Something I was mucking about with last year but never bothered uploading to my personal channel. The background was filmed on Harris, at the end of the vid you might notice a sea otter swimming across from the right side of the screen and then diving for fish

Now I'm off to play some steel