page_title: Pedal steel guitar
section_title: Lap steel
hierarchical_section_title: Pedal steel guitar / Lap steel
caption_attribution_description: English: Rickenbacker lap steel guitar, Electro B6, with Beauchamp horseshoe pickup, late 1930s.
context_page_description: The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited glissandi and deep vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with American country music.
  Pedals and knee levers were added to a steel guitar in the 1950s, allowing the performer to play a major scale without moving the bar and also to push the pedals while striking a chord, making passing notes slur or bend up into harmony with existing notes. The latter creates a unique sound that has been popular in country and western music— a sound not previously possible on a non-pedal steel guitar of any type.
  From its first use in Hawaii in the 19th century, the steel guitar sound became popular in the United States in the first half of the 20th century and spawned a family of instruments designed specifically to be played with the guitar in a horizontal position, also known as "Hawaiian-style".
context_section_description: The first lap steels had a smaller body, but still retained a guitar-like shape. Instrument makers rapidly began making them into a rectangular block of wood with an electric pickup, the precursor of the pedal steel. According to music writer Michael Ross, the first electrified stringed instrument on a commercial recording was a western swing tune by Bob Dunn in 1935. He recorded with Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies. Brown has been called "The father of western swing"
caption: Rickenbacker lap steel guitar, Electro B6, with Beauchamp horseshoe pickup, late 1930s
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