![]() The guitar is typically plucked using a thumbpick and metal or plastic fingerpicks. Either way, a Hawaiian guitar’s strings never touch the fretboard, and any frets or markers are purely for reference. Some of these early acoustic instruments were built with a raised nut to hold the strings off the fretboard-usually about 1/2" above it-but sometimes a standard acoustic was converted to a Hawaiian guitar by raising the strings with an arched metal extender positioned over the nut. On a Hawaiian guitar, the player alters pitch by lightly pressing a metal or glass bar against the strings and sliding it around (rather than pushing strings down to the fretboard with fingers, as on the Spanish guitar). The method soon became popular all over Hawaii. He then taught it to his classmates, who carried the style to other islands. Kekuku developed a method of playing this new instrument-called “steel guitar” after the bar used to play it. As a boy, his shop teacher helped him fashion a cylindrical steel bar and metal fingerpicks. Legend has it the guitar was first laid flat by a young Joseph Kekuku on the island of Oahu in 1874. The Hawaiians developed a playing style based on straight major chord tuning called “slack-key” because the strings were slackened relative to standard tuning. The 6-string guitar was introduced there by visiting European sailors in the latter part of the 19th century. It originated, pre-pedals, in the Hawaiian Islands. Its expressive potential is still being expanded, and it’s been adopted worldwide in a variety of musical styles, from the African highlife of King Sunny Adé to the nü-jazz of Nils Petter Molvær.Īloha The pedal steel’s history began before country music existed, far from the centers of hillbilly and honky tonk. Meanwhile, pop, rock, and even avant-garde artists have embraced the instrument. Recently it’s become rare to hear pedal steel on mainstream country radio, though there are signs of a slight return. The instrument’s sinuous string bending and crying sound has long distinguished the songs coming out of Nashville and Bakersfield from pop, rockabilly, and blues. It was a big hit for me in 1970, and it bought me some time.For many, pedal steel guitar is synonymous with country music. It was an unusual sound for the time, with a touching emotional quality,” she writes in “Simple Dreams.” She later adds, “I learned to sing it better. “…it sounded like a gritty orchestra string section. Producer Elliot Mazer (Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot) pulled together a group of Nashville session musicians called Area Code 615, which also included violinist Buddy Spicher and bass player Norbert Putnam. As soon as the fiddle player and Weldon Myrick, who’s the steel guitar, began to play those chords, they got real into that and became personally involved.” And it happened to the musicians, who are jaded session players. “I think I kind of butchered it, but it is definitely in those chords. I think my phrasing was horrible,” she said. “I can remember the day I recorded ‘Long, Long Time.’ It was 10:30 in the morning, but I was really into this kind of achy feeling, because the music – it’s in these chords. Later, in an October 1985 interview with Esquire, Ronstadt recalled the day of recording.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |