# Talk:Lap steel guitar

--204.50.54.201 01:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)I'd like to know of some resources to help begin learning lap steel--204.50.54.201 01:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Try http://www.hsga.org/new_design/learning1.htm for a start. Good luck! Andrewa 19:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The Author of the master article listed a/the common tuning notes of C6 as "C-E-G-E-C-A";  But I think he intended to say C-E-G-A-C-E (1-3-5-6-1-3).  I've never seen the author's version before, so am assuming it's a typo.
The 6th tuning (1-3-5-6-1-3) for any root note is a barn door to broad capability on Steel and Slide Guitars, ...in any style of Music.
Linked below is the largest and broadest discussion of C6 that I'm aware of, ...and I've searched far and wide over the last 17 years.  It's also an excellent discussion of how scales and chords are navigated with a Steel Guitar's or Slide Guitar's open tuning;  And covers all styles of music (well, not opera and hip-hop!):
http://www.steelguitarforum.com/Forum2/HTML/003549.html .
Although the online lesson site that sparked the discussion is intent on making the navigation of non-pedal Steel's scales and chords easy to understand (requires some basic music theory knowledge, ...with a theory briefer / refresher also provided);  That discussion gets quite advanced, ...so here is an index that sorts out entries in the discussion relative to subject and experience level:
http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum8/HTML/002238.html
Linked below is the largest community of Steelers on the planet, ...and great folks they are;  An indexed treasure trove of information / discussions about pedal and non-pedal Steel Guitar, their Artists, their Music, learning resources, technical discussions and gear discussions:
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/index.php
Aloha,
Denny T~.
Author of the Lessons discussed.
Anyone notice that the picture on the title card is actually of a Pedal Steel?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.181.80.246 (talk) 08:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC) 
66.133.240.112 10:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I think Roy Smeck used an A7 tuning.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.149.38.37 (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2013 (UTC) 

When people feel compelled to insert these lenghty lists of players into these articles, it sure would be nice if the list was alphabetized.
Just sayin'.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.206.161.253 (talk) 09:38, 24 January 2014 (UTC) 

I second this.  Moreover, I question whether a list of "notable players" is really necessary in every article about an instrument.  There are articles all over Wiki that are nothing but lists, and it would be neater, and -- I think -- more appropriate to generate these lists as separate articles, and then simply link to them in the main article about the instrument.  This would make for greater consistency among the instrument articles, as currently some of them have such lists included (e.g., guitar, bass), whereas others do not (e.g., crumhorn, baryton).  It would also keep what are often hotly contested arguments over who should and should not be on the lists, out of the main article.  Something to think about, anyway.
74.95.43.249 (talk) 20:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
In perusing this list, the question arises as to what is meant by "notable player" with regards to the central theme of the article:  Lap Steel Guitar?  It seems to me that a central criterion for membership in any such list should be that someone is primarily notable for playing that particular instrument.
Instead, I see a lot of people who have on various occasions indeed played lap steel, and who are indeed "notable", but who are primarily notable for things other than their lap steel playing.  From just a quick sampling I would put Jeff Beck, Chuck Berry, Jerry Garcia, David Gilmour, Steve Howe, John Paul Jones, John Lennon, Jimmy Page, and probably several others into this latter category, and remove them from the list.  For example, while John Lennon has indeed played the instrument, when most people hear the name John Lennon, "lap steel guitar" is not the first (or even the third) thing that pops into their head.  Ditto for Jerry Garcia and the others.
Favor deleteting the heading "notable players" because it often turns it to a free-for-all contest over who is notable. --Eagledj (talk) 13:18, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

I added some references to the History section.  
While doing so I found that I question the mention of the theremin in this section.  It's not a stringed instrument, nor is it the earliest electronic instrument, and it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the lap steel guitar (or any kind of guitar, for that matter).  I left it in, but some consideration should be given as to whether it really needs to be there, and if so, whether some further explanation is in order.  @67.206.161.253 -- I also alphabetized the list of players. :)  74.95.43.249 (talk) 20:02, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

We currently have two articles, "Lap steel guitar" and "Lap slide guitar" which seem to be essentially about the same instrument.  It has been this way for over a decade, but reading the two, it does not appear that there is any real reason to have two articles; both tread the same ground and do not draw any real distinction.  We really should consider merging both to the most common term (being "lap steel guitar") and giving them some rewriting.  Any objections with a reason why this would be a bad idea?  --Jayron32 17:55, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Don't Merge, but do some serious cleanup to both articles to make the distinction clearer.  Please correct me if I am mistaken about the most common uses of either or both terms, but my understanding has been: Lap steel guitar mostly refers to a specific instrument (generally electric, with a short scale, tiny body, very high action); Lap slide guitar most often indicates a playing technique that could be done with other kinds of guitars.—Theodore Kloba (☎) 19:58, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure that distinction exists.  The term is used both for the instrument and the technique.  Indeed, lap steel guitar seems to be the preferred term (see here)  Google ngram (which searches print sources only) has literally no mentions of the phrase "lap slide guitar".  lap steel guitar gets 487,000 ghits, while lap slide guitar has less than 10% of that number.  Where I can find the term, it tends to be used interchangeably with "lap steel guitar", or not used in any way as to be distinct from it.  A very few sites occasionally use the term to refer only to modified standard acoustic guitars which have a nut and bridge extender to allow them to be played steel style (see for instance this one, but that distinction does not seem widespread.   --Jayron32 20:27, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
Maybe it would be better to turn Lap slide guitar into a disambiguation pointing either to Lap steel guitar and Slide guitar—Theodore Kloba (☎) 20:42, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
Don't Merge--I have worked on the article "slide guitar" recently and have included the lap slide guitar in the article, trying to make distinctions clearer. To the extent that I succeed, I would vote to make "lap slide guitar" into disambiguation with a redirect to "Slide guitar", because both styles are  blues-style music and their terminologies fit better, both using the word "slide" Think of it as substituting the word "blues" when you hear the word "slide"; whereas "steel" typically refers to any non-blues style, Hawaiian, country,  jazz, etc. On the other hand, "lap steel guitar" is a distinct instrument (as stated by others above). A redirect from lap "slide" to lap "steel" would not be wrong, but might miss the mark because of the mixed genres. The problem being that blues players; i.e., "slide guitarists", represent a different world than steel players and we have to somehow reconcile the differences in their terminology for which there are few reliable sources.--Eagledj (talk) 19:58, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean by "disambiguation with a redirect".  If it's a disambiguation, it will have links to multiple pages.  If it's a redirect, it can only go to one place. As I mentioned above, I favor disambiguation. —Theodore Kloba (☎) 19:37, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Then I'd vote to delete "lap slide guitar" and redirect to "slide guitar" which in the same genre and covers both. "Lap slide guitar", as it stands, totally without sources, will take a lot of work to bring up to standards—only to be duplicated in another article. Even its first four words are misleading about what the actual subject is. --Eagledj (talk) 15:41, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Delete "Lap slide guitar" – It's a little used phrase that could be used for a slide guitar played on the lap.  There's no usable (or referenced) information here that would benefit "lap steel guitar" (a distinct, well-known instrument). As a redirect, "slide guitar" would be the better choice, but I don't think it's a useful search term. It amazes me that so many of these instrument articles have existed for years without any reliable sources and full of personal opinions/original research.  They cast a bad light on WP. —Ojorojo (talk) 22:46, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I agree that slide guitar would be the better choice for a redirect. It wouldn't hurt to put a redirect hatnote there saying Lap slide guitar redirects here. For [concise description of what a lap steel guitar is] see lap steel guitar.  It seems we're more or less at a consensus.  Maybe temporarily put the content from lap slide guitar into a subpage of this Talk in case any of it proves to be worth saving for the merge.—Theodore Kloba (☎) 16:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
I think we're at a pretty good consensus to get rid of "Lap slide guitar" in some way.  I'll go ahead and set it as a redirect, if some of the content is needed to be merged, we can get it from the page history.  It looks like the consensus is to redirect it to Slide guitar so I'll go do that.  --Jayron32 17:50, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

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hi, I was wondering about writing/researching some stuff about this being related to chitra veena, as explained in for example  http://www.ravikiranmusic.com/chitravina.htm . it's atleast worth mentioning that there existed older instruments with the characteristic playing technique and that there is some evidence of  influence (should that be correct) right?  ~🐈🐈~♪~何? 14:25, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

For years, this article existed in Wiki without any citations. I have tried to improve it recently by adding considerable referenced content. I am looking for input regarding deletion of some unsourced material. I've abbreviated "Tunings" to serve as a broad overview and left out some of the the detail that only sophisticated devotees would really understand; see Wikipedia:NOTTEXTBOOK. Also, the "Notable Players" section is a quagmire where everyone has his favorite player and adding them becomes a free-for-all (as I stated 3 years ago on this page, see above). Many players played both lap steel and pedal steel (Buddy Emmons). I propose deleting "Notable players" or putting it as a list on a separate page not in the main article.  Eagledj (talk) 21:09, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Having not heard any comments to the contrary, I have deleted "Notable players" section. Why do we need "Manufacturers" to be in the article? Just asking. Eagledj (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
"Manufacturers" list deleted, sound files added. Eagledj (talk) 17:58, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Lap steel guitar/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Vaticidalprophet (talk · contribs) 07:36, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
This article was clearly written with love, and I enjoyed reading it. Some opening points:

The birth dates and short biographies for people discussed are often good, but in some cases they're simply distracting. For instance, I'm not sure why Jerry Byrd or Josh Graves have their birthdates given, as the article immediately jumps to discussing their impact without giving any more of their biography outside of the music.
Some of the non-free audio clips may be replaceable. For Hoopii's clip, as the beginning of his career overlapped with the era now in the public domain, there may be PD recordings that can be used. For others, it's possible there are recordings that weren't published under proper copyright or didn't have their copyright renewed -- this may be the case for less popular/more niche recordings, for instance. If you can, it would be worthwhile to look into these.
Vaticidalprophet 07:36, 1 July 2021 (UTC)


### Reply
Thanks for your critique. I used the birth dates (especially the year) to help the reader place the musician in his age group to figure out what was going on in music during his lifespan. Pete Kirby born in 1911 would have a different musical exposure than Josh Graves born in 1927. I'd be glad to copyedit the distracting text if you wish. As for Hoopii's clip: In 1925 his trio began performing regularly on the Hollywood nightclub scene, as well as on Hollywood-based radio station KFWB. They also began cutting discs -- under the name "Sol Hoopii and his Hawaiian Trio" for one of the earliest West Coast labels, Sunset Records. The public domain cutoff date is 1925 for musical compositions but even longer for sound recordings (95 years after first release). If I could find one of the these recordings, we might make PD cutoff by only a few months. How strongly do you feel about pursuing this?  Eagledj (talk) 12:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Not too strongly -- I take a liberal reading of NFCC. I'm more concerned about future-proofing, as a lot of people do take less liberal ones than me and may read the current level of non-free clips in the article as problematic. I'm happy, though, to keep them if a reasonable search can't turn up alternatives. Will return with further comments. Vaticidalprophet 13:52, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
I revised the Jerry Byrd bio and deleted some extraneous text.Eagledj (talk) 19:44, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
Have taken another look through the article, and I'm very inclined to pass it. There's still a bit of stuff hanging around I'm not sure contributes to reader understanding rather than reader confusion (as quite a lot of songs are sampled and discussed in the article, I don't think the included "contains a sample" under "See also" helps most readers rather than forcing them to recall exactly what songs were where), but nothing that's outright banned at the GA level, and as I said this is overall clearly a high-quality labour of love. Happy to pass, even with nitpicks. Vaticidalprophet 06:42, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't this article state in which year the first solid-body electric lap steel guitar was introduced to the public? How could someone have written an article on this subject and failed to mention this information, which anyone visiting this article would expect to find here? 98.123.38.211 (talk) 22:10, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Currently the article has this phrase "The steel guitar was the first foreign musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music" which seems awkward at best, and incorrect at worst.  If we're talking about where the instruments came from, nearly all instruments are foreign (not original to the US): drums, guitars, accordions, organs, pianos (things that used to be common in popular music) + the winds. If we're talking about when the instrument came into American pop music, by then (1910) Hawai'i was not foreign, it was a US territory. (And is of course a state and part of "American" music today).  I'm having trouble finding a statement that sounds correct and isn't just "The steel guitar came from Hawai'i and gained a foothold in mainland American popular music"  ("pop" as a term doesn't appear until the 1950s so is also incorrect to use for the 1910s, 30s, etc.) -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (talk) 23:38, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Sounds right. Do it! --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 23:50, 26 August 2025 (UTC)