Pedal Steel Guitar article
Pedal Steel Guitar: A Complete Guide
No frets, foot pedals and a steel bar — here's what actually defines this instrument and where its famous sound came from.
Look at one properly for the first time and it barely resembles a guitar at all — no frets, no neck to wrap your hand around, a bank of foot pedals underneath and knee levers poking out the sides. That's a pedal steel guitar, and once you understand what all those controls actually do, its famous crying, gliding sound stops being mysterious and starts being genuinely fascinating engineering.
What You're Actually Looking At
Rather than fretting strings, the player rests a polished steel bar across them with the left hand while fingerpicking with the right. Foot pedals and knee levers connect to a mechanical changer that raises or lowers specific strings' pitch on command, and a volume pedal shapes how notes fade in and out. There's no fixed fret to stop a note, so intonation depends entirely on the player's ear and the fret markers printed on the neck as a visual guide.
Where It Came From
The lineage runs back to Hawaiian lap steel, where players raised a guitar's strings and slid a bar across them instead of fretting conventionally. Electrification in the 1930s made the sound louder and more sustained, and through the 1940s and 1950s builders experimented with mechanical systems to change pitch without repositioning the bar entirely.
The breakthrough moment most historians point to is Bud Isaacs's playing on Webb Pierce's 1954 hit "Slowly", where a single pedal let him glide smoothly from one chord into the next mid-note. It's widely credited with showing Nashville exactly what the instrument could do. Buddy Emmons and Harold "Shot" Jackson then did much of the work standardising the modern format, founding Sho-Bud in 1957 — one of the first companies built specifically around it.
E9 and C6: The Two Standard Tunings
| Tuning | Associated with | Strengths |
|---|---|---|
| E9 | Nashville country, honky-tonk | Major chords, vocal-style bends, smooth chord transitions |
| C6 | Western swing, jazz, Hawaiian music | Richer voicings, diminished chords, single-note lines |
Many professional players use a double-neck instrument to have both available, switching between E9 for country fills and C6 for swing or jazz-leaning passages within the same set.
The Copedent: Reading the Instrument's Own Language
Every pedal and knee lever's exact effect is documented in what players call a copedent — a chart showing each string's open pitch and every change produced by every pedal or lever. No two setups are guaranteed identical, which is exactly why tablature written for one pedal steel guitar's copedent doesn't automatically transfer to another instrument.
The Volume Pedal Is Not Just an Effect
New listeners often assume the volume pedal under the right foot is a minor extra. It isn't. Players use it to fade notes in after picking, produce violin-like swells, hide the pick's initial attack and balance loudness through a pedal change — it's woven into phrasing the way breath control shapes a singer's line, not bolted on afterward. Overuse can make playing sound shapeless, so good technique coordinates bar movement, picking, pedal changes and volume together as one continuous gesture.
Blocking: The Skill Nobody Mentions First
Because a pedal steel guitar has no frets stopping a string's vibration, unwanted sustain is a constant background problem. Players manage it through blocking — palm blocking, where the picking hand lightly stops strings after playing, or pick blocking, where a finger or thumb halts a string immediately after it sounds. Clean blocking is what separates a controlled, musical phrase from a wash of ringing, unintended notes.
Beyond Nashville
While a pedal steel guitar's home is unmistakably country music, it has genuine range well outside it. David Gilmour has used it in rock contexts, B. J. Cole brought it into pop, ambient and experimental territory in Britain, and Susan Alcorn has pushed it into free improvisation entirely removed from its Nashville origins. That range says something real about the expressive potential of a pedal steel guitar once you get past the twang most people associate it with.
Where to Go From Here
Curious about buying one? Our complete buyer's guide covers what actually matters when choosing an instrument. If you're picking one up for the first time, the beginner's guide starts from the very basics, and the best options for the money breaks things down by budget. It's also worth reading common mistakes to avoid before you start learning.
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