Notating the Pedal Steel Guitar
The following section contains all the special markings that I will use to write steel guitar music on this website, in my lessons, and in sheet music that I publish.
When you take lessons with me, you will learn how to read the sheet music of any instrument and play it on the steel guitar. The information below, on the other hand, is how we might notate some of the specific capabilities of the pedal steel guitar. The pedal steel guitar is unique in its ability to bend and slide strings at the same time. As a result, there needs to be a detailed system to convey that message to the player. I feel that my system described below is the best way to convey the nuances of the pedal steel guitar. My hope is that this system will help define with precision what the pedal steel guitarist is playing.
These marks should also help to build your sheet music literacy as you eventually read more music that doesn't contain these markings.
Position Markings
In the sheet music of many instruments, you may notice special markings that are used specific to that instrument. For example, violin sheet music will include fingering or scale position over certain measures where there may be confusion over how to play a section or phrase.
With steel guitar it may be helpful to mark the bar position and pedal engaged under some sections of notes. This can give the player a general idea of where a section of notes is played on the instrument. It also makes reading the music a little easier. Here's how it would look with steel guitar bar markings:
The "o" following the fret number indicates that no pedals or levers are used, pronounced "open". The "a" or "ab" following the fret numbers indicates the a or ab pedals are engaged before striking the strings.
I usually will not introduce a new position marking until the point at which the position changes.
In some cases, I will put string numbers above the boxed fret markings to help you quickly find the right strings to strike:
If the same strings are struck again, I will rewrite the string numbers in order to make it clear that they are to be struck again:
Portamento Notation
A "portamento" technique is a slide from one note to another, but, unlike a "glissando," it is smooth so that all the continuous minute pitches are heard between the original note and the last note. Instruments like the piano cannot play portamento, though instruments like the violin and the trombone can. The portamento is the signature technique of the Steel Guitar.
The steel guitar's unique characteristic among other instruments is its ability to play several simultaneous notes with a portamento technique. In some cases that means altering the pitch of different notes at different degrees simultaneously. No other instrument can do this like the pedal steel guitar. As a result special notation should be used to make the music as easy to read as possible.
In my transcriptions, I have used legato slurs to show that the notes are all blended together with a slide or bend ("portamento").
It looks like this:
The parentheses are there to indicate that the notes are not restruck, but rather are left to ring out after the pedals/levers are engaged, and/or after the bar is slid.
The parentheses around the notes also help to differentiate between legato and portomento. When the parentheses are used, it is for a slide or bend. When parentheses are not used it indicates legato playing.
Legato technique is simply playing two subsequent notes smoothly into each other. Every instrument can perform this technique. Legato is the opposite of staccato where subsequent notes are played disconnected from each other. On a steel guitar, legato would be performed by striking each successive note one after the other with as little silence between the notes as possible. This is obviously different than bending or sliding one note into another ("portamento").
So to differentiate the two, I put parenthese around the notes under the slur for portamento, and no parentheses around the notes under the slur for legato technique.
Here are the two compared:
If I really want to emphasize that the notes should be played legato but not slid into each other, then I use a dashed legato slur.
In the legato example above, the dashed line tells you that the notes are played with as little space as possible between them, but the pedals and bar slides are not to be sounded out at all. This is not a common way to play the pedal steel guitar, but the notation should be available in the case that this level of precision needs to be conveyed to the player.
Also note that the pedal steel markings under the sheet music further indicate that the notes are to be struck each time and note blended with pedals or bar slides. So, in the portamento example, you are striking the strings a total of 2 times. Whereas with the legato example, you are striking the strings a total of 6 times.
I realize that there is a slide notation in use for standard guitar as well as for trombone, but I have elected not to use this notation. Since the portamento technique is found so often on the pedal steel guitar and it is used with multiple voices at the same time, the guitar slide notation ends up looking cluttered with some of the lines overlapping the staff lines. Plus the parentheses may still be necessary to indicate which notes are restruck or not after the slide, further adding to the clutter of the guitar slide notation. So the single legato slur for an entire phrase is used instead.
Steel Guitar Notation Examples
The following is a list of notation examples of portamento techniques for the pedal steel guitar. Some of these maneuvers cannot be performed on any other instrument other than the pedal steel guitar.
The examples below are some of the more simple and commonly used portamento techniques. Studying these examples will help those who want to learn to write Nashville-style steel guitar music in standard notation.
1.
The G is raised to A. The A is not struck on Beat 2.
2.
The G is raised to A. The A is not struck on Beat 2 while the E is struck.
3.
The G is lowered to E. The A is struck on Beat 2.
Notice that these are the same exact notes as in Example 2 above. But they are played differently.
4.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. The G is raised to A. The E is muted before Beat 2. The A is left to ring on Beat 2.
5.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. The G is raised to A. The E is struck again on Beat 2. The A is not struck on Beat 2.
6.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. The G is raised to A. The E rings out across Beat 2. The A is left to ring on Beat 2. They are both muted at Beat 3.
(If you are familiar with classical notation, you may wonder why I don't notate multiple voices on the same staff. I find that multiple voices on the same staff will require extra rests. The extra rests plus all the markings for slides, pedals, and string jumps clutters the sheet music. So I have adopted this cleaner system using legato slurs and parentheses.)
7.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1.
The G is raised to A.
The E rings out across Beat 2 and Beat 3.
The A is left to ring on Beat 2 and rings across Beat 3.
They are both muted at Beat 4.
8.
The C, E, and G are struck on Beat 1. The G is raised to A. The C and E ring out across Beat 2. The A is left to ring on Beat 2. They are all muted at Beat 3.
9.
The G is struck on Beat 1.
The G is raised to A.
The C and E are struck on Beat 2 while the A is left to ring from the pre-bend strike.
They are all muted at Beat 3.
10.
The C, E, and G are struck on Beat 1. The C is lowered to B and left to ring on Beat 2. The E is raised to F and left to ring on Beat 2. The G rings out across Beat 2. They are all muted at Beat 3.
11.
The C, E, and G are struck on Beat 1. The C is lowered to B on Beat 2 and left to ring. The E is raised to F on Beat 2 and left to ring. The G is raised to A and left to ring. The B and F are muted at Beat 3. The A is muted at Beat 4.
12.
C, E, and G are struck on Beat 1. The C is lowered to B on Beat 2 and left to ring. The E is raised to F on Beat 2 and left to ring. The G is raised to A and left to ring. The D is struck on Beat 2. They are all muted at Beat 3.
13.
C and G are struck on Beat 1. The C is left to ring for 2 beats. The G is raised to A and left to ring. The E is struck on Beat 2. They are all muted at Beat 3.
14.
C and G are struck on Beat 1. The C is left to ring for four beats. The G is raised to A on Beat 2 and let ring for 3 beats. The E is struck on Beat 2. The E is muted at Beat 3. The C and A ring until the end of the measure.
15.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. They are struck again right before Beat 3 and raised to F and A and on Beat 3 and are muted at Beat 4.
With grace notes (acciaccatura), I usually leave the slur marking out to keep the music clean. It is to be assumed that the grace note notation implies bending and sliding into the next note or notes.
These last few examples show that ties can be used to carry over altered notes across the next Beat(s). Remember that ties are different from slurs because they connect the same notes across beats or measures. Slurs connect different notes played smoothly into each other.
16.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. They are raised to F and A between Beats 2 and 3 and left to ring to the end of the measure.
17.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. They are struck again on Beat 2. They are raised to F and A between Beats 2 and 3 and let ring to the end of the measure.
18.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. They are struck again on Beat 2. They are raised to F and A a third of the way between Beats 2 and 3 then lowered back to E and G two thirds of the way between Beats 2 and 3 and let ring to the end of the measure.
19.
The E and G are struck on Beat 1. They are struck again on Beat 2. They are raised to F and A a fourth of the way between Beats 2 and 3 then lowered back to E and G halfway between Beats 2 and 3 and let ring to the end of the measure.
These are some of the examples I can think of. There are of course several thousand more ways to use the portamento technique on the steel guitar, but these should give you an idea of what the notation will look like.
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