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First of all - these are church songs - I'm not asking you to listen to the lyrics, but the slidey guitar parts in both songs. There's some slide in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGDVlOKoOoE&feature=youtube_gdataHere's another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg4cYdP1ngwNeither one of these sound particularly complicated (no chords as far as I can tell - 2nd one is heavily effected). I would just like an opinion if you think these are lap steel, pedal steel, electric, or acoustic slide. I don't currently own a slide, but I used to use an XLR Gender-Bender as a slide now and then on my old electric guitar - 10+ years ago. Never performed with it, just ye olde bedroom/basement guitar noodling. I have 2 weeks until I'm scheduled to play these songs. I'm trying to decide whether to go out and get a slide and woodshed these or simply fill in something else. Note that in the 2nd one, there's at least a couple other electric guitar parts that I can concentrate on. I'm pretty sure the 2nd one is not a pedal steel. I would almost believe it's an acoustic or dobro, as the string scrape sound is still in there. Actually, now that I think about it, I have just over a week, as the rehearsal is Thursday night the 19th. I have the other songs nailed down pretty well already for that night and the following Sunday services. So, your verdict on what type of axe these are played on? I should mention that I have a really capable amp simulator/FX unit where I've been able to match pretty much any electric tone/effects I've had a mind to so far. These would be a little bit of a challenge. But delay before a big reverb will help in both cases in my opinion.
Last edited by rockstar_not; 09/02/13 07:57 PM.
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"Called Me Higher" has a part that could be a violin, or perhaps an electric guitar with a volume pedal. I don't really hear slidey stuff in there, just a lot of ambient guitar sounds. Should be easy enough to pull off with what you have.
"You're Beautiful" briefly sounds as though there are two slide parts, an electric guitar of some kind (sounds like a pedal steel at the beginning timbrally, but nothing you couldn't do on a six-string), and maybe a hint of dobro in the other channel. The parts are very much in the background, again, I think you could create an adequate impression of both parts with one instrument. Use of a volume pedal would be effective on this piece, too.
Last edited by Ryszard; 09/03/13 02:38 AM. Reason: We don' need no steenkin' harmonica
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First of all, I want to say I really like both of these songs!
regardless of what was used in the original recording, I think you could approximate both of them pretty well with an electric guitar and finger slide. A volume pedal would be really useful to obtain the fade-in, but you can also do that by rolling on the guitar's volume knob with your little finger
In order to get enough string height on an electric guitar (which would typically be set low) I slide a small nail between the strings and fretboard. This is something that can be done quickly for one song, then removed just as quickly for the next song. Experiment and use the smallest nail possible to achieve resonance with the slide. The larger the nail, the harder it will be to insert it.
As far as where to put the nail, that depends on the key of the song. I like to put it on whichever fret would be the key if a 1st position style A chord were played there. That way open strings on the B G and D should fit most places in the song
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Thanks guys. I think that I might just stick with a volume pedal. No nails will touch my new Epiphone, yet!
I hear the slide stuff in the first song at about 2:23 and at 4:00 or so. It's subtle.
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Sounds to me like the effect is done with a volume pedal. Slide, not so much, if at all. I would try with a volume pedal to see if it does the job.
Depending on your guitar, it MAY be possible to get volume effects by wrapping your LH pinky around the guitar's volume knob. Start with the volume at zero, pick a note, then roll the volume up. With a little practice, this effect ca be quite convincing.
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So, your verdict on what type of axe these are played on?
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My best guess from one listen is the basic sound is not a slide guitar but some kind of slo-mo effects pedal....something that cuts off the attack and then swells the volume. It can be done with a volume pedal but its hard to do it as consistently as a dedicated effect can do it.
Keith
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higher sounds like steel guitar in the places where I heard it. In the solo at 5 min,,, sounds like steel in the background too. Possibly a guitar using it's volume knobs too for swells.
Beautiful is steel in the beginning. The repeating lick could be guitar with an EBOW. (google it if you're not familiar with the EBOW) playing technique can also come close to that sound using the volume knobs. Sounds like backwards playing swell to max....
In reality, if you are playing these in a worship service you don't have to have the instrumentation exact to the original version. No one expects the instrumentation to be exact.
If you have real tracks you can grab the steel from there..... but it won't play it exact.....
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 09/03/13 06:37 AM.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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First Song
If you look at other youtube videos of this group performing live, they have someone playing a lap steel in their group. He's playing similar to whats on the recording.
Second Song
Doesn't sound like a guitar to me, sounds more like a synth, with pitch bend
I play dobro, lap steel, and pedal steel. These are single note effects, possibly with some chordal tones, but definitely doesn't need a pedal steel, just lots of resonance, delay and reverb.
Andrew Lloyd
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Good ears, guitarhacker, the first song is a steel guitar back there in the mix. The giveaway is in the type of sustain and overtones, the pedal steel guitar is so stiff that all you hear are the strings themselves.
Attempts to duplicate those parts with a plank and a slide, well, you couldn't really nail what's going on there since you don't have pedals to change string breaks, but if I had to cover this song I would simply come up with some tasty embellishments in those places, and not necessarily use the slide at all. Volume Pedal? Naw, I prefer wrappin' my little finger around the Volume knob on the guitar and using it to create the swells, Envelope changing by picking first with vol down and then using the knob as the Attack, stuff like that. Use of pre-bends, picking with two fingers instead of the flat plectrum (yes, I often use a thunmbpick and fingers, you can grab that thumbpick and play it just like the regular plectrum when called upon to do so yet still have those three fingers for picking double stop notes on the inside and high strings).
The 2nd song is a pedal steel as well. Here, however, it is coupled with a standard guitar, they are workin' it together and there is plenty of crossfade going on between the two as well, likely a "hands on" Producer at mix time here.
Again, for live performance, it is only important that you create that sustained "mood" more than trying to suddenly become a steel guitar player without a steel guitar.
Clean tones, but put the Compressor at the beginning of your signal chain, adjust it for that clean sustain. Then work up some single note and double note licks to suit, the second song does not feature that "pre-bend" sound, which makes it a bit easier to work up.
There is also plenty of PAD hiding in this second song, keyboard most likely, but could be a guitar synth. If you have a MIDI pickup, you might tty doubling both the MIDI Pad and the p/u output to amp, such that you are doubling those sustains but with the one instrument controlling two different sounds. As with any trick like that, avoid the urge to over-do it. A little goes a long way, a lot is a kill.
--Mac
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Thank you all for the thoughtful replies, critical listening, advice, etc. Points well taken that there are multiple effected things going on - I'm not going to be able to cover all of that by my lonesome. I am also aware that it's not my job to duplicate exactly what I hear on recording, but if you hang with me long enough, I take that on as a personal challenge. If I can get close, I'm going to do it. I should also say that I've always wanted to learn slide on electric, and this seemed like a good excuse to go drop the 10$ to buy a slide, but I've held out in the past for one of those fancy 'flip the lever' slides like this: JetSlide at Musician's Friend but I've never been at a shop that has one on hand to see if I can make the lever thing work. Ring slides intrigue me as well like this one: Shubb Axxys Here's what I do have going for me - I have a patch already in my Zoom G5, with a really long attack on the compressor and nice sustain - it feeds a delay which actually does octave harmonics on each successive feedback, then feeds a big hall reverb. It volume swells nicely on it's own, in other words. No pinky action on the volume knob (though I've been there before) The G5 also has a pedal which you can program for volume swells, but it's travel is pretty tight (one of my only complaints with the unit), so I rely more on the patch than the pedal for volume swells. It's a very purty pad that results out of it. But, it's not going to sound slide-y like on "Beautiful". I might just get a cheap pinky slide to see if I can get close on the tone. I'm thinking neck humbucker, tone turned about halfway, with a Fender Deluxe Reverb for the amp, with minimal dirt. Slow attack on the compressor ahead of the amp, with delay and reverb following the amp as a starting point for the patch.
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I have tried to emulate steel in the past with a slide..... nope.... doesn't work, since the 6 strings on the guitar don't have pedals to change them....and generally the steel is tuned differently anyway.
An older glass Bayer aspirin bottle... (or is it Excedrin?) was used by many slide players. I have several but don't really spend much time playing slide.
I also have set down on a steel several times and even with coaching and some patient instruction, was not able to produce pleasing tones..... the real player smiled and sadly shook his head.... I recon that if I had one to mess with I could get the hang of it, but no....trying to fake it on a guitar isn't the best solution.
Have you tried the real tracks in Real band? Using envelopes and rendering the tracks a few times, it may be possible to get something close. That's my preferred method these days.
Last edited by Guitarhacker; 09/03/13 01:26 PM.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Not Bayer, not Excedrin.
The classic glass slide bottle, ala Duane Allman was the Corocidin bottle.
You may still be able to get your hands on an original Corocidin jar by keeping the eyes open at yard sales and especially estate sales. Last one I found still had a few of the little red cold pills in it. Don't eat the pills, they would be gettin' kinda old at this point.
--Mac
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. . . An older glass Bayer aspirin bottle... (or is it Excedrin?) was used by many slide players. I have several but don't really spend much time playing slide. Coricidin bottles were used by Duane Allman and others. The company went out of business for a while because the decongestant had excessive sedative properties. Before it came back on the market someone bought the molds and reintroduced the bottles only as "Corriacidin" or some such misspelling. I still have one of the originals somewhere.
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Guitar hacker - this is for live performance, not for home recording. For home recording I've actually done ok with a sound font of a pedal steel on a very simple line. If you hit my website and click on The Golden Age it's in the intro of the song
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Scott, I understand your unwillingness to use a nail or other device to raise the strings enough to use a slide (although, in my experience, trying to use any slide on a guitar with a low action yields less than satisfactory results) I think it was Mac who recommended pre-bending the string then fading the sound in as you release the bend (or conversely, fading in as you bend the string to raise the note) That approach would probably work in both of these songs because I didn't hear any long pitch changes (longer than you could bend the string) Another approach, since you are a techie, is to program the G5 pedal as a whammy pedal and use it with the swell patch that does such a good job of replicating the steel guitar fade-in. If you can fade and change pitch at the same time, you've got 90% of the steel guitar sound (except for the ability to play chords, with some notes remaining the same while others rise or fall.) If you have a harmony patch in that G5, I've noticed that some harmony devices do a good job of emulating a steel guitar (holding one note the same while the other note rises or falls). It only works with chordal harmonies though, scalic harmonies always change both notes. In order to obtain chordal harmonies, your device needs to have a way to follow the chords in the song. (The Digitech HarmonyMan pedal does exactly that in case you want to buy more gear.) this demo shows how the pedal accomplishes the pedal steel thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr1o0B6n9xEstarting around 2:30 it demos how one note stays the same while the other rises or falls (to the best of my knowledge, this is the only harmony pedal that can do this... the others are scale-based)
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song one sounds like a pedal steel at the 2:23, 4:00 and 5:00+. The 2nd song could be a lap steel since you can hear string noise.
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I have the recording from our rehearsal last night. If anyone is interested, I'll put some parts up on as a private track on SoundCloud and send you a private link.
(BTW - one of the features that continues to make me use SoundCloud over the other services out there).
-Scott
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I thought I saw somewhere that a company was making a nut and bridge for converting a normal "low action" guitar into a slide guitar..... yeah those strings need to be up off that neck or it simply sounds bad.
It's possible to play a slide on a fret-able guitar, but still, the action should be a tad bit higher than some might like or feel comfortable playing on. Or else your technique has to be superb to avoid the fret noise.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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