I always wanted a lap steel guitar. There’s just something emotive, haunting and kind of beautiful about the sound they make. From the traditional country music of everyone from Hank Williams to Ryan Adams to the psychedelic sounds of Pink Floyd there’s just something about that plaintive lap steel sound I love. So a couple of months ago, I finally treated myself to one.
It’s an entry level instrument bought secondhand on eBay from someone who had acquired too many guitars during lockdown. Like all guitars you can spend as much as you want to on one of these. At the end of the day though these instruments are not much more than a piece of wood with a pick up on it. I’ve actually seen them made from skateboards. So if you want to give it a try, the price of entry is cheap. Beware though – actually they are far more complex to play than they first appear.
For one thing, they make even an experienced guitarist feel like a beginner. If you have played a little slide guitar the learning curve is less steep, but it’s, still a whole new playing experience. As the name suggests, it sits on your lap for one thing. You play it with a solid metal for another and if you choose to, with metal finger picks on the other hand. Grappling with all that is one thing, the other is the fact that there are umpteen tunings to choose from. There tunings that suit blues, country, swing, rock and Hawaiian styles to name, but a few.
Finding A Tuning That Works For You
Fortunately, as with everything else these days, there’s plenty of information on lap steel guitar playing available online. I was quickly able to discover the most popular tunings, and after some experimentation (and a few broken strings!) have I think found one that suits me and my music – Open E tuning.
I have played fingerstyle and slide guitar with open G and C tunings and am a big fan of DADGAD tuning. This made things a little familiar when I tried those tunings on the lap steel. I also tried variations like open A tuning which again I could get my head around fairly easily. The iconic C6 tunings and their variations – that Hawaiian sound – were far too difficult for me however. Not surprisingly everything you play in those tunings sounds Hawaiian. I’m sure with practice a far wider range of sounds would emerge. For me however and the style of music that I make an open tuning is better.
Open E tuning on the lap steel, going from the bass string to the treble is: E B E G# B E. Essentially an open E major chord. This makes playing full major chords, a snap since they simply read, chromatically up the neck if you place the bar across all six strings. You also have pairs of notes that are very familiar in standard guitar playing. You very quickly get those well worn but still great sounding blues and rock riffs . Minor chords are a little tricky with this tuning but its easy to cheat a little by using the high B and E to form partial minor chords. The chances are you’ll be accompanying other instruments like guitars and keyboards which will fill out the minor chord.
Should You Buy A Lap Steel Guitar?
There are lap steel guitar moves called slants where the bar is angled across several strings to produce minor chords, but I’m not quite there yet. I have picked a couple of tricks though such as sounding a harmonic chord and running the bar up the neck. Think Bugs Bunny – the opening tune ends with this sound. Not sure how useful this will be to know, but its fun to play.
So far I’ve played Lap steel guitar on two of the new songs my partner and I are working on. Those will be available on our Youtube channel, Bandcamp and Soundcloud when they are finished. I would say that as an experienced guitarist, the lap steel is fairly easy to get some nice sounds out of but probably pretty difficult to master. I don’t intend to master it myself, just to add to include it my arsenal of creative tools. I’m glad I did.
