Thank you shboom, FAEbGBD, Alone&Forsaken, lougelyzard, and Jerryghr, for your added valuable contributions.



Unfortunately it's not enough of a window of time for me to accomplish. I had thought that many of the critical PSG pitch bend changes need to occur right 'during' the (chord) changes. The only way to keep the left hand chord voice (acoustic piano) continuing to sound (rather than abruptly end) while operating the pitch bend 'wheel' is to set the left voice to 'hold' or utilize the sustain (damper) pedal. Pose, do you do this?




Right you are, and the costly Steinway Grand can never even begin to approach sounding like a Pedal Steel Guitar either.




It makes perfect sense that a REAL steel guitar player would be against emulating on the keyboard what THEY worked hard (for years) to accomplish on the real thing. As with all real instruments playing, compared to the Synthesizer emulation of the same, there's NOTHING like the REAL thing (at least not yet). That said, I'm unclear about the last part of your sentence: "each one says it better and in stereo". Can you please clarify what is meant by this?

On a final note, has ANYONE here used a keyboard 'ribbon controller' to emulate the pitchbends & glides of pedal steel guitar playing? I would think this could produce the most realistic sounding results, though this obiviously requires taking one of your hands OFF the keyboard (to play) as well.

Thanks,

Scott

Good suggestion. I had actually contemplated this myself, but unfortunately my keyboard (Yamaha Tyros) doesn't support one. Now that you mention it, I'd sure like to see breath controller input support on Tyros II. Steve Deming, please add this to my Tyros II wishlist !



Another good suggestion, which would allow you to apply pitch bend to only a selected number of notes in the chord, in the same way you can with the pedals on a real PSG. Curious if any PSG emulating kb players have actually done this? Not sure what you mean by the 'random' octaves though

Scott



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

For any others interested, I just discovered a terrific website link which demonstrates, both with audio clips and musical notation, how to emulate the sound of a Pedal Steel Guitar with Pitch Bend (or Glide if utilizing a footpedal) and Volume Pedal. This supports Glenn Toth's approach. Gotta grab that volume pedal out of the closet now and give it a try. Here's the link:
http://www.fenderplayersclub.com/pdfs/lessons/pedal_steel_licks.pdf

Scott

Scott:

To answer about small window of time, I usually just use a appropreate style with just the basic bass drums and guitar going. This frees up the left hand. (in my opinion the biggest mistake non country players make is to put to much junk in,trying to supe it up. Country is very basic music, no organs string sections etc).
If you are working the left hand doing a guitar backing (or piano) there is no window open. but if your letting the style do most of the work, there is time. I sometimes do activate the hold on the left, but not usually on country, continous sound on country usually dosn't fit.

Real steel players comments...what I was meaning is they of course don't think a keyboard even comes close to a steel guitar, but the sound they hear, of a performed country song with a steel lead in stereo, sounds so clean and tight the overall results is outstanding. Nothing fancy just clean sound.

I would guess if you persist in honing your skills on the tyros (getting all the right settings to make it the easeist way to operate) then perfected the riffs etc. you can probably get a very good go at the pedal steel. I'm content to do a simulation and the only critics are other musicians, most listeners are listening to the tune and the overall sounds they hear, not realising they're hearing a live computer chip being played.

Question: I beieve you made mention that the tyros had a way to change the bend speed when using glide on a pedal. The 9000 seems only to bend matching the BPM of the tune. This is to slow at times, does the tyros let you speed up the duration?

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I've tried to play a simple tune with a standard pedal steel guitar.

blue bayou

Hope you like it.

Exound:
Yeaaah I like it. Verrrry nice job. or as they say down south (real purty) lovely backing and nice trills on the guitar.

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Exound, nice "Blue Bayou" lead solo line incorporating pitch bend & vibrato.

Were the 'uniquely' pedal steel guitar sounding 'pads' & 'fills' (which include pitch glide (or portamento?) & pitch blending) which can be heard in the background, played by you as well, or are they part of the auto accompaniment backing itself? I'd really like to learn how to incorporate those pedal steel guitar effects in my 'live playing'. Exound, many thanks for sharing. - Scott

Thnx loungelyzard and Scott.

No like I said it is a very simple tune.
The Country Ballad (2) style on the PA1x is great and has all the credits.
I only play the melody with a pedal steel guitar sound which is one of the STS (or OTS on Yamaha I think)in that style, and can be played better if I practice more.

Jan

There's the answer, Scott... trade the Ty in for brand new PA1x!