My current playing challenge is trying to figure out how to best emulate the sound of an acoustic pedal or lap steel guitar on the arranger keyboard (in auto accomp mode).

Because my style of auto accompaniment mode playing requires my left hand to be fully occupied playing 3-4 note chords, it's simply NOT possible (for me) to utilize the keyboard's pitch bend and/or mod wheel for note bend & vibrato, an important ingredient of pedal & lap steel guitar playing.

Because of this, I need to assign these functions to footpedal control & keyboard aftertouch instead. In my search for the appropriate controller function to use to emulate the gliding of the metal bar from one note to another (often a full octave), I've discovered that Tyros' dedicated foot controller 'glide' function combined with 'portamento' more effective than a footpedal activated 'pitch bend', which merely switches between two distinct notes (including no tones in between), while foot pedal activated 'glide' and 'portamento' include ALL the tones between (the cracks) as well. In addition, both 'glide' and 'portamento' not only allow you to set the degree (interval range) of the bend, but the speed (transition time) between these notes as well. For note vibrato, I assign this to 'keyboard aftertouch', giving it a slight delay before it kicks in. For steel guitar playing, I assigned my Tyros custom 4 pedal unit as follows: from left to right:

Portamento; Break; Fill Self; Glide

I realize that I've just begun in my journey of figuring out how to best emulate an acoustic Steel Guitar when playing in auto accomp mode on an arranger keyboard. Unfortunately I couldn't find specific information on this topic when searching on Google. However, I did discover an article on the GENERAL topic: "keyboard emulation of acoustic instruments" which I found to be informative: http://www.iaekm.org/0307_fe_1.html

Realizing that listening to recordings & actually watching how pro acoustic steel guitar players play their instrument to be the best way to figure out (at this point) how to emulate what their doing on the arranger keyboard, I discovered these instructional videos (WMV) clips:

Country Pedal Steel Guitar: http://209.130.127.3/Homespun_Tapes/VD-BOU-ST01_Guitar2.wmv

Hawaiian Steel Guitar: http://209.130.127.3/Homespun_Tapes/VD-BOB-HW01_Guitar2.wmv

Lap Steel Guitar: http://209.130.127.3/Homespun_Tapes/Steel_Guitar_Cashdollar2.wmv


Advice, tips, and input from others here with experience playing (emulating) the Pedal Steel or Hawaiian Steel Guitar on the arranger keyboard would be appreciated.

Who knows, I may even attempt to add a steel guitar flavored Christmas song to my holiday repetoire now.

Thanks in advance for input and feedback.

Scott

[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 12-06-2004).]