Practise - how much do you put in?

[dessa]

Feel quite humbled by you guys. Must get back into practising again!!

[Malcolm]

What is this practise thing you guys are talking about ?

[Nick Bidmade]

Thanks Ken - I guess the difference between a player of your ability and the likes of me is that I need to keep playing the tunes I CAN play, because they do seem to sound better as I get better at tuning, bar positioning and grip flexibility! Maybe one day these will come naturally - maybe after putting in the practice on exercises!!!

[Zumbilly(Murdoch)]

Very interesting post and interesting replies.
Playing pedal steel has never come easy to Me. In the early days I played for an hour before going to work and then most evenings I sat for at least three hours.I was getting poor results perhaps due to not having a proper schedule. After learning the absolute basics with bad blocking and crap intonation I managed to get in with a pub band and My playing improved immensely with the band driving Me,I was the only lead instrument and whilst I could not copy any of the licks and intros of the big timers I was able to sound good enough for the drunken personnel who frequented the pub.
I continued to play at home for at least an hour a day but with no real direction,I do not follow a routine.
Since retiring I have had no excuses, I have a guitar set up permanently and I tend to play at various times of the day and for varying amounts of time.Sometimes I play for ten minutes and sometimes for an hour the total time in one day usually is never less than four hours.I do tend to repeat the tunes and licks I am familiar with and find that I do improve on these tunes and licks.I noodle a lot by playing a "no name "tune in several keys and try to find different ways of playing similar things.I still think that I do not spend enough time on scales and picking techniques though.
Sometimes I do not think I am learning anything new but often I will be playing with the band and all of a sudden I do a lick that just seems to come from nowhere and then I realise it was due to the seat time at home,the difficulty is remembering that lick later on.
I suppose We all learn at different speed,main thing is I still enjoy it.
There was a thing I heard years ago about a fan saying to a famous golfer that He was very lucky,the golfer replied by saying "The more I practise the luckier I get"
So get Your bum on the seat guys !!

[bob adams]

Sadly seat time is against me and on occasions it is between midnight and 2.00am if I'm not knackered!
The trouble is when you're on the nuts and bolts end until 11.00 pm you can't face it an hour later, tonight a D11 ZB ...it will be sweet soon............. it's almost there!

Anyway my reward is this!

A chap appeared at my door last week with a little 3 x1 Maverick he had bought locally (and paid too much) 'nothing' worked as it should.
These were made to lower 8 & 2 only! ...............As much use as a chocolate ash tray.
Now contrary to its design it lowers 8 & 4 allbeit with the loss of the C pedal function.

Which brings me to my point..... Try this!

Move between any two frets let's say:.......5th to 3rd down to an open G.
pick strings 1/3/5 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down
pick strings 1/5/6 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down

Now use your B&C pedals: pick strings 3/4/5 then 4/5/6 over the same frets 5 4 3 as you would normally use it! ... surprise, surprise! identical notes! ... so you 'can' live without the 'C' pedal for those moves!

For interest I've set this little guitar up to raise the 2nd string ½ and 1st string a whole tone, so with that and a couple of slants to get our A&F chord three up from the root it functions to our normal disciplines.

On a loaded guitar we raise a shoulder when we come across a really sweet change, but isn't it funny how you can boil an egg in a spoonful of water when you really have to!........... Interesting is it not!

Hope I haven't gone off piste here Ken but it does form a great deal of 'my practice' time!

[Ken Byng]

Sadly seat time is against me and on occasions it is between midnight and 2.00am if I'm not knackered!
The trouble is when you're on the nuts and bolts end until 11.00 pm you can't face it an hour later, tonight a D11 ZB ...it will be sweet soon............. it's almost there!

Anyway my reward is this!

A chap appeared at my door last week with a little 3 x1 Maverick he had bought locally (and paid too much) 'nothing' worked as it should.
These were made to lower 8 & 2 only! ...............As much use as a chocolate ash tray.
Now contrary to its design it lowers 8 & 4 allbeit with the loss of the C pedal function.

Which brings me to my point..... Try this!

Move between any two frets let's say:.......5th to 3rd down to an open G.
pick strings 1/3/5 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down
pick strings 1/5/6 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down

Now use your B&C pedals: pick strings 3/4/5 then 4/5/6 over the same frets 5 4 3 as you would normally use it! ... surprise, surprise! identical notes! ... so you 'can' live without the 'C' pedal for those moves!

For interest I've set this little guitar up to raise the 2nd string ½ and 1st string a whole tone, so with that and a couple of slants to get our A&F chord three up from the root it functions to our normal disciplines.

On a loaded guitar we raise a shoulder when we come across a really sweet change, but isn't it funny how you can boil an egg in a spoonful of water when you really have to!........... Interesting is it not!

Hope I haven't gone off piste here Ken but it does form a great deal of 'my practice' time!

Nice one Robert. I've just been doing some stuff on strings 3,4 & 10. A wide grip, but it gives some interesting sounds. Mike Johnson uses that grip a lot, and typically for him some of the moves are tasty indeed.

[dessa]

Lloyd used the 3,4 &10 grip on Gene Watsons "PaperRosie"

[Will C]

Bob said:

Move between any two frets let's say:.......5th to 3rd down to an open G.
pick strings 1/3/5 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down
pick strings 1/5/6 at frets 5 4 3 with your A&B pedal down

Now use your B&C pedals: pick strings 3/4/5 then 4/5/6 over the same frets 5 4 3 as you would normally use it! ... surprise, surprise! identical notes! ... so you 'can' live without the 'C' pedal for those moves!

- Using 1 instead of 4 duplicates the effect of raising 4 by the C pedal, the rest is unchanged, so yes, you get the same effect and it's a great work-around. The only downside is that you don't get that nice transition from the ii to I when you release the C pedal.

But Bob's raised a nice point: we don't use 1 and 2 enough. If you are playing an open chord (e.g. C at 8) you can get the V chord (G) just by hitting strings 1,2 and 5. It's all part of really learning where the notes are.

[Danny Mitchell]

Excuse my uninformed tuppence worth, but referring to strings 1+2, playing a major chord but omitting string 5, then bringing in 1+2 with the LKL raise always puts a smile on my grizzled coupon.

Great thread

[Jif]

When I first bought the Carte Uni, I put aside a night a week where I would just work through scales and picking exercises. I worked through the Wright Hand (Joe Wright) and this made a tremendous improvement in my picking techniques. I was still at the really early stages of learning and getting quite frustrated with my lack of progress. Doing this in a disciplined way really worked for me.

Lately it's been mainly woodshedding, or learning from tab. I have a couple of the Buck Reid tab sheets and his backing tracks, so it's great to hear that you struggled with them Ken Makes me feel a bit better. I was/am getting somewhere with Cry, but Scrapple the Apple - Phew! But, I find attempting stuff like that educational as you can see how the Pros put things together and learn lots of little tricks and techniques they use.

I'm retired now so I should really spend more time learning new techniques etc, started off getting into B6 but have not been following through much on that recently. Must get started on that again. But I do play every day, for at least an hour, usually 2-3 hours and I'm enjoying discovering new ways to do things, taking a bit more time to work out what I'm actually playing note wise and what other string combinations you can use.

The possibilities are infinite on this beast, that's one of the aspects I like most about the instrument, and if you're still discovering new ways of doing things Ken after all the years you've been playing, then that kinda proves the point.

I'm off to practice