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 Brilliant Pedal Steel Player 
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Post Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
Many here know pedal steel is my main instrument but Paul Franklin has been the preeminent virtuoso on pedal steel for many years and was brilliant as a teenager in the late 60s. Paul is the son of a steel player and his father builds a very fine custom made instrument - the Franklin Steel Guitar. Like the Stick world everyone knows everyone and I'm proud to have been acquainted with Paul for most of my steel career. If you've never really had an up close view of a master steel player take a look. His picking ability and left hand bar control borders on prestidigitation. If you think those bar slants are easy - try it some time.It took me 30 years to be able to do that in tune. You may or may not appreciate country music but just like any other genre there's good and bad. This would be "good". It's worth noting Paul recorded and toured with Dire Straits for several years and is a monster rock and bebop jazz picker as well.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fScolqR-_Y[/youtube]


Fri Dec 05, 2014 10:26 am
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Post Re: Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
He's doing some pretty far out stuff there. It's hard not to smile when you hear this instrument.

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Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:05 am
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Post Re: Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
I don't know if you call this an "iron" in English ("fer" in french)...well...if you look carefully he plays it with a huge angle to make special effects. Nice solo...

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Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:23 am
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Post Re: Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
He's upstaging the singer!


Fri Dec 05, 2014 12:27 pm
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Post Re: Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
The angled bar slant is not a "special effect" per se but just a way to get 2 notes that are not on the same fret. Getting in and out of it smoothly and in tune with a highly polished,heavy and very slippery stainless steel bar without fumbling it out of your sweaty nervous hand out onto the dance floor is the skill here. (Ask me how I know that...) And then you have to make music out of it. Plus of course the slant angles are different on each fret and are different depending on which 2 strings you're on on the same fret - 2 & 5, 3 & 5, 6 & 10,etc,etc and which direction the angle is pointing so there are hundreds of angles to practice and internalize. Very few of even the best players do much slanting and just try to find other ways to get those combinations - it's that difficult. The 8 pedals and 8 knee levers are used to raise and lower various strings 1 or 2 and as many as 5 at a time - some up, some down - between 1 and 3 semitones so you can get IV chords sus4s, IImin, IIImin, VImin, V7, I7, Maj7, etc,etc,etc,etc all out of one fret position in a given key. So the tuning is not fixed - it's fluid and being changed subtly or drastically up to several times a second w/the feet and knees while you're sliding that bar around on an essentially fretless instrument and picking 10 or 12 strings spaced about like a Grand Stick with 2 or 3 brass fingerpicks & a thumbpick with an impeccable level of speed and accuracy while muting unwanted notes on the fly with the palm, side and unused fingertips of your picking hand as well as various parts of your bar hand. It's common to have 2 or 3 pedals and 2 or 3 knee levers in play simultaneously. Many times the listener thinks he is hearing a bar sliding on strings but he is really hearing ringing strings being raised and/or lowered under a stationary bar. And oh yea - you're riding a volume control with your right foot like a B3 player except for when you occasionally need both feet on the pedals. You have to eat, sleep,breath and dream that instrument for at least 20 years to get anywhere near this guy's skills. There was no teachers,internet or YouTube when I was learning this thing. All I had was mail order books and courses and my imagination. There's probably only 2 or 3 others who can even play almost this well and you're only hearing about 10% of what this guy can do. You ought to hear him on the other neck - the jazz neck.


Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:29 pm
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Post Re: Brilliant Pedal Steel Player
I meant a "trick" and not an effect like...reverb, etc...sorry...my english is not perfect...lol.

But the results give us a nice effect...lol.

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Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:48 pm
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