C6 Course Recommendations?

[Anthony Parish]

I worked through Cindy Cashdollar's Western Swing course, and I liked it very much. What other non-pedal steel guitar courses are out there that you would recommend? Jerry Byrd? Others? I do not have VHS/cassette/CD players anymore, so that might limit the selection. I know this question pops up on the forum periodically, but the "search" function seems to come back mostly with info about C6 pedal-steel (not info about lap steel or console steel). Thanks much.
Tony Parish

[Rick Aiello]

Jerry Byrd’s “Big” course book is a slant bar technique manual.

Also, lots of C6 “music” homework type material.

His representative songs are either Hawaiian based or things he recorded like Dance of the Goldenrods … so it’s not really a source for popular songs to play on steel guitar …

Doug Beaumier’s C6 material … http://playsteelguitar.com … is a great source of playable material …

I recommend both

[Jim Fogarty]

Andy Volk's transcriptions and learning material........especially this (below).....are highly recommended.

https://www.volkmediabooks.com/products ... eel-guitar

[Michael Kiese]

Aloha Anthony,

Bottomline, get Jerry Byrd's course. The man invented C6 tuning.

In my opinion, Jerry Byrd's course sets the standard for all steel guitar. It's a full blown course that is the culmination of Jerry's life work. It also has a lot of tunes included in it. Of the tunes included in the course are: Sand, How'd Ya Do, Hawaii Aloha, Blue Hawaiian Moonlight, Hanalei Moon, South Sea Moon, and Tennessee Waltz. ALL of those tunes are GREAT tunes to learn.

I bought Jerry's course from Michael Scott, DeWitt Scott's son. He won't be making it available for sale much longer, so the window is closing if you want a copy. Michael also sells a Jerry Byrd Video Instruction course from the early 80's. Both are very good.

Michael also has a list of 200 transcriptions of Jerry Byrd recordings. There are a lot of songs to pick from that aren't covered in Jerry's book course, though Jerry's book course does have quite a few songs in it.

I have purchased the full book course and video course, and almost all of the 200 transcriptions at this point. It's wonderful reference material.

Michael Scott jokingly told me that I may be one of 10 people ever who possess the entire Jerry Byrd compendium.

I don't go through it all page-by-page. Instead, I use it as a reference by skimming over all the chapters. I identified and focused on things I could immediately apply.

The transcriptions are very helpful because Jerry had clever ways about playing certain passages. There are LOTS of golden age tunes in there that Jerry covered. There are some Jazz tunes as well like Mood Indigo, Stardust, and Sophisticated Lady.

If you wanted to do the Jerry Byrd course front to back, you can. He takes you through all the early tunings. It's a lot of great insight of where tunings came from and how they developed. Jerry was right there at the beginning and he literally wrote the book.

If you want to learn C6, take the course from the man who invented C6 and dedicated his life to the pursuit and stewardship of Steel Guitar.

Anybody who learns C6 is technically a student of Jerry's. You're standing on his shoulders.

Just my 2¢.

http://www.scottysmusic.com/byrdinstruction.htm

[Anthony Parish]

Such great information, opinions, and suggestions. Jerry Byrd it is!
Thank you,

Tony

[Joe Cook]

Michael, you've convinced me to buy the Jerry Byrd course. Looking forward to really digging into it!

[Michael Kiese]

Aloha Tony and Joe.

I'm confident you guys won't regret your choice. There's literally a lifetime of insight in Jerry's courses.

From first hand anecdotes of people who knew Jerry, and from videos on YouTube, Jerry apparently had a very cantankerous and forceful personality. His way was the right way, and you "must" do things this way or that. His parents were German immigrants and he was born in 1920, so I'm sure they were very strict and that upbringing is definitely part of Jerry's personality.

Sometimes he makes mountains out of mole hills, in my opinion. For example, he insists to always tune by ear on a gig, to refrain from using an electronic tuner. Jerry insisted that a "professional musician" should be able to quickly change tunings on the fly by ear.

I'm like "nah, that's dumb advice". lol.

Even growing up in Hawai'i, I'd listen to some of the old groups and they tuned everything by ear. It's very hit and miss. Mostly miss. Electronic tuners are a wonderful thing.

In my opinion, one should never tune out loud once on stage in front of an audience. Silent tuning is a must. Your audience doesn't want to hear you tuning while enjoying their night.

Also, it's just a bad idea to switch tunings on the same set of strings mid-set. Most vintage steels do not have high precision high ratio tuners, and even if they did, it's STILL a bad idea. A professionally run band has very little downtime between songs. You're constantly transitioning from song to song and keeping the energy up. You have talking points prepared, etc.

Dead space always ruins energy. You build up some nice energy during a great song, the audience applauds, and then you have dead space AND tune out loud. Bad idea. You're hitting one of your prepared talking points to fill dead space, while guys in the band are tuning out loud. Bad idea.

I was listening to Jerry's Christmas album. The steel chimes on Silent Night, are not badly out of tune, but it most certainly is not in tune. I was kinda shocked that he let that slide on a recording. So....maybe Jerry should have used a tuner, lol.

That said, Jerry does have a lot of great insight. His playing speaks for itself, but not every single thing he said is gospel. I suppose one has to have a very demanding personality to create that type of course in the first place.

But there are certain things that you have to take with a grain of salt. All that said, it's amazing everything that he figured out on his own without formal education. Win one for the working class kids.