Product Description
Bruce Bouton starts you off on pedal steel the right way! Working in the E9 tuning, he teaches the steel’s “natural” chords; proper use of the bar, foot pedals and knee levers; how to play in all keys; and the essential harmony scales that give the distinctive steel sound. Develop greater right-hand speed and flexibility with Bruce’s in-depth discussion of picks and hand positioning, “hand blocking,” “pick blocking” and other techniques.
Bruce covers classic licks, intros and endings, plus exercises, major to minor changes, chord inversions, string-lowering licks, unison licks, and lots more!
I’ve been playing guitar for over twenty years and finally bought a Pedal Steel.
This DVD is really an invaluable tool to anyone wishing to become familiar with
many different aspects of the Pedal Steel.
* All the basics; terminology,tuning, picking, blocking (dampening strings rapidly for that “pro” sound).
* Demonstrates how to run major scales in different configurations and the many inversions of the major
(and minor) chords with the pedals and levers.
* Reveals a few stock “hot-licks” that give you just enough knowledge to be dangerous
* Suggests many other sources of Pedal Steel information and insight into what it’s like to be a pedal steel pro
I’d like to also add that what made this DVD so wonderfully useful was ripping it to a video ipod.
Placing the ipod on the music stand next to the Mel Bay Pedal Steel Guitar Chord Chart
and using the headphones to pace myself through each new exercise and technique. The DVD itself is
only an hour or two, but I let myself take it in very small steps and after six months and two cycles through it, five minutes at a time, with hours and hours of practice – I’m totally addicted to my pedal steel.
Bruce seems like a nice guy and was easy to take virtual direction from. I’d love a more advanced DVD, which he elludes to in the DVD but is not yet available…which is not surprising, given the relative obscurity and underuse of the pedal steel in modern music.
If you’re gonna plop down the huge chunk of change that is a pedal steel, you need to know that it takes years to learn to play. It takes a ton of patience just to tune the thing, much less learn all the chords and licks. Approaching the tutorial with that frame of mind will maximize your enjoyment of it. If you expect this DVD or any other product to magically teach you to play the pedal steel for your gig or session tomorrow, you’re throwing good money after bad. It’s clear that the instructor views the pedal steel as a discipline that provides a real longer term satisfaction. If you’re on board, you must purchase this DVD.
July 7th, 2009