Posted by Gary Sill on 6/28/2010 to
Steel Guitars
Jeff had a week long one-on-one teaching program where you visited Jeff at his home and you had 100% attention from Jeff in attempting to improve your steel playing.
I have read articles and talked to people about this experience even though I never attended one of the one-on-one sessions.
One thing I have found out was that Jeff was insistent that one of the first things you had to do was play the C scale on your pedal steel. If you did not know how to do it, then Jeff helped show you and make you proficient in doing so. He thought it was the beginning one thing that would assist you in making some sense out of the pedal steel guitar.
All at once after learning the C scale cold, you found it much easier to back up a singer and even do better melody if you had a break in the middle of a song on the bandstand.
I attended several live sessions at ISGC in St. Louis where Jeff was the teacher and I believe he believed so much in learning the melody to a song. After all, who is also known as the man who plays the melody---Lloyd Green.
As a friend of mine once said, when Lloyd and Jeff are playing, there is no doubt what the song is. This might be a great goal for us all to play he melody that is in the song. What a better way to learn it is to look at my E9th. course for sale in my store. It basically gets you started playing the major C Scale on your instrument and then after that short learning process, you can play any of the major scales on the neck by moving the bar.
Jeff and Lloyd both play that way by playing the melody right on. Let's all take a look at this method of simplifying the instrument and putting us on a fast track to learning how to play better melody.
Thank you Jeff Newman and Lloyd Green for assisting me in my struggle of trying to be on the melody. By listening to your recordings, I have learning lots.
Get a quick start on your steel with the C Scale methodology.