Sometimes it might seem that there are as many ways of tuning a pedal steel as there are pedal steel players. But if you strip the personal touches and enhancements from the guitars of the most players, you’ll find a common denominator of 3 pedals and 3 knee levers. In most instructional materials, the pedals are called A, B and C, and the knee levers are called D, E and F.1
- Pedal Steel E9 Chord Chart Pdf Printable Full
- E9 Chord Chart
- Pedal Steel Chords Chart
- Pedal Steel E9 Chord Chart Pdf Download
This standard copedent2 provides multiple inversions of all of the major and minor chords, all of the fundamental country and blues licks, and a healthy assortment of jazz chords. I’ve been playing for over 20 years, and I’m sure that there are a lot of positions and licks in the basic 3+3 setup that I still don’t know. Most steel players don’t strum chords, but they understand where the notes of the chord can be found on their instrument. The close intervals in the tuning make it necessary to skip strings to get the simple triad harmonies. For example, the open position includes all the notes of an E major chord on strings 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10. Here are the basic pedal positions for chords on the open strings:
Of course, all of these positions can be moved up the neck to get the desired chord. In most cases, if you accidentally hit the wrong string you will get a 6th, 7th or 9th chord that extends the chord you were trying to play.
This is Volume #6 of my 10 String E9 Pedal Steel Basics. In this lesson I made a custom chord diagram that shows how to play Major, Minor, and Dominant 7th Chords in ALL KEYS. It's similar to Vol. #3 however, in this lesson covers chords in All Keys. This Download Comes With: High Resolution PDF File of the Chord Diagram - for printing.
A long time ago, steel players used pedals to simply change tunings. They would play a passage in an E tuning, for example, and then press the pedals to play the next passage in an A tuning. This technique is still useful in blues and old-timey music, where a more primitive sound is desired.
This shows the changes to the scale when the A pedal bends 5 &10 a full step, and the B pedal pulls 3 & 6 a half-step. With A & B pedals pressed the third fret lines up with a major chord on your basic grips. C chord animation? This page shows how the C scale pattern changes when you press the pedals. Here's a sample of my new instruction. Its a 6 minute Quicktime movie about C Chords on the E9th. C6th Chords find them with these charts. E9B6th Chords find them with these charts. Includes Movies to download! Cmin7b5 chords locations. This is the standard-bearer for pedal steel instruction books. It is extremely comprehensive in scope. Written by DeWitt Scott, founder of the International Pedal Steel Guitar Convention and member of the Pedal Steel Guitar Hall of Fame, this course teaches E9 tuning, Nashville set-up pedal steel with three floor and three knee levers. Mar 07, 2016 - Visit the site to Buy The Printable Version of this Chord Diagram.
Modern pedal steel playing includes the use of pedals while the strings are sounding and the bar is in motion. For example, the modern player player may pick strings in the I (no pedals) position, then slide up three frets, activating the VI (pedal A + knee F) position during the slide for a smooth transition up to the next inversion of the triad.
Another modern steel technique involves playing complete melodies using pedals instead of moving the bar. If you look carefully at the tuning chart, you can see that almost two full octaves of the E major and A major scales are available at the nut of the guitar. These scales are of course movable up the neck with the bar. The scale “licks” available using pedals at the I and IV positions are a large part of the modern country sound.
I hope this little article has served to demystify the E9th tuning a bit. It’s intimidating at first – all those strings, all those pedals and levers – but the theory behind it is really fairly simple. Where a guitarist uses fingers to play notes on different frets, the steel player uses pedals to bring those notes to the barred fret.
As with any instrument, there’s the familiar routine: learn your scales, learn your chords, Practice! If you’re a good guitarist, chances are you could be a good steel player. It’s easier than it looks, and steel players are always in greater demand than lead guitarists. A word of caution, though – once you start making “that sound”, you may never look back. This may just be the world’s most pleasurable addiction…
Copyright ©1996 by Bobby Lee
1Some older instructors reverse the names of the “D” and “E” levers, following a convention started by Jeff Newman.
2Copedent is the word steel guitarists use to describe the combination of string tuning and pedal arrangement.
-Bobby Lee
posted 17 April 2003 10:26 AM profileWhen you say E minor, I am assuming you mean that the 6th (and possibly the 3rd) string is being lowered to a G note.Based on this assumption, I would offer the following suggestions:
You would have any given fret's minor chord (instead of that fret's major chord) as you probably already know.
Now how to use them? Ok, Two frets up from any fret you have the relative minor chord to the 4 chord. How to get paint tool sai license. IE, at fret 10 you would have Dmin which is relative to the F chord, which is the 4 chord in the key of C.
If you move two more frets up to fret 12, you would have the relative minor (Eminor) to the V chord (G).
Now if you want the relative minor to the I (C) chord, you would find this at fret 5. Or 3 frets down from the I chord.
To summarize:
Pedal Steel E9 Chord Chart Pdf Printable Full
1. Three frets down from the I chord is the I chord relative minor.
2. Two frets up from the I chord is the 4 chord relative minor.
3. 4 frets up from the I chord is the 5 chord relative minor.
E9 Chord Chart
If you did not already know it, there are 3 relative minor chords to any major Key. IE, key of C you have:
1. C = Amin
2. F = Dmin
3. G = Emin
The great thing about this minor chord inversion is it completes the final inversion of any major or minor chord on any 3 consecutive strings (3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10).
Ever since LG gave us the F lever, we have had the three inversions of a major chord. And we had two of the minor inversions. But we never had the 3rd inversion ,UNLESS one used the B and C pedals. Which of course required one to change their foot position.
With the 'subject' minor inversion, we now can obtain any major or any minor inversion using just the A and/or B pedals and various combinations of the E and F knee levers if needs be.
I personally use it all the time. I would not want to play a PSG without lowering at least the 6th string to a G (I do it by splitting). In the future I will be lowering string 3 to a G as well, which will then totally complete what I feel music calls for with respect to major and minor chords.
Pedal Steel Chords Chart
Hope this helps, and may Jesus bless you in your quests,
carl
Pedal Steel E9 Chord Chart Pdf Download
[This message was edited by C Dixon on 17 April 2003 at 10:29 AM.]