Lap steel guitar

. Note that it is a solid block with only a token resemblance to a guitar shape. Spanish guitars were introduced into the Hawaiian Islands as early as the 1830s. The Hawaiians did not embrace the standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries. They re-tuned the guitars to make a chord when all the strings were sounded together, known as an "open tuning". This was called "slack-key", known in Hawaiian as "kī hōʻalu", because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it. became available, Joseph Kekuku, on the island of Oahu, developed and popularized playing an open tuning while seated with the guitar across his knees while pressing a steel bar against the strings. Following Kekuku's lead, other Hawaiians began playing in this new manner, with the guitar laid across the lap, instead of in the traditional way of holding the instrument against the body. In 1916, recordings of indigenous Hawaiian music outsold all other U.S. musical genres. This popularity initiated the manufacture of guitars designed specifically to be played horizontally. Despite incorporating a resonant chamber in their body, these early acoustic versions of the instrument were not loud enough relative to other instruments. However, in the early 1930s a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup. Electrification not only allowed the lap steel guitar to be heard better, but it also meant that their resonance chambers were no longer essential. The result was that steel guitars could be manufactured in any shape – even in the form of a rectangular block bearing little or no resemblance to the traditional guitar shape. This led to table-like instruments in a metal frame on legs called "console steels". ==Types of lap steel guitars==

There are three categories of lap steel guitars: • Acoustic lap steel guitars: These are traditional acoustic steel-string acoustic guitars modified to be played on the performer's lap. The modification is to raise the strings higher off the fingerboard than a traditional guitar, which can be done by inserting an adapter on the instrument's bridge and its nut. This prevents the steel bar from hitting against the frets. Wood-body resonator guitars are called "Dobros" and steel bodied ones are called "Nationals". The types do not sound the same — the Nationals are brassier and are usually preferred by blues players. • Electric lap steel guitars: Describes instruments that are specifically designed to be played horizontally and feature an electric pickup so that they do not require any resonance chamber. Guitars in this category may differ markedly from one another in external appearance, and include instruments made from rectangular solid blocks of wood. Some may be small enough to be played on the lap; others may have more than one neck (making the instrument heavier), and may be built on a frame with legs, which is then known as a console steel. ==Tunings==

Over centuries in Western countries, the traditional Spanish guitar developed a near-universal tuning of ascending fourths (and one major third) consisting of E–A–D–G–B–E; The tuning chosen for these instruments is a crucial foundation on which steel guitar style is built. The tuning used determines the notes that the player has available in a chord, and affects how notes can be played in sequence. The addition of a sixth interval into a tuning had a dramatic effect on the steel guitar because it created numerous positions and playing pockets which were not accessible in a simple major chord. The C6 was a common tuning for six string lap steels in the 1920s and 1930s. A fundamental challenge of lap steel guitar design is the inherent constraint it places on the number of chords and inversions available in any given tuning. Another strategy was to increase the number of strings on the instrument (the more strings available, the smaller the pitch intervals between them, and therefore more notes available when the bar is placed straight across the strings). A third strategy was to add additional necks to the same instrument, thus providing separate sets of strings that could each be tuned differently. ==The Hawaiian "craze" in the United States==

In the U.S. Mainland in the early 20th century, after the 1898 annexation of Hawaii, the Hawaiian "craze" stage shows, Hollywood films perpetuated the musical image of an idealized island lifestyle. The steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. Pioneer lap steel players between 1915 and 1930 included Sol K. Bright Sr., Tau Moe, Dick McIntire, Sam Ku West and Frank Ferera. Ferera was the most-recorded of any lap-style guitarists in that time period. – which was essentially Hawaiian music, sung in English, intended for white audiences. As an example, Honolulu-born Dick McIntire and his Harmony Hawaiians recorded Hawaiian songs sung by American pop crooner Bing Crosby in 1936. Tin Pan Alley obliged the demand for Hawaiian songs by publishing a large supply of hapa haole music. Many amateur and professional musicians throughout America formed Hawaiian combos in the 1930s and 1940s. The introduction of electrified guitars in the 1930s had a profound effect, boosting commercial Hawaiian music. ==Lap steel pioneers==

In the development of lap steel guitar in the early twentieth century, many innovators contributed; among the most prominent were: Sol Ho'opi'i (pronounced Ho-OH-pee-EE) was perhaps the most famous Hawaiian musician whose work spread the sound of instrumental lap steel play worldwide. It was a Western swing tune released in 1935, performed by Dunn in collaboration with "Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies". The guitar he played was a Rickenbacker A22, nicknamed the "Frying Pan". Formerly a trombone player, Dunn's guitar playing introduced horn-like solos, with the staccato phrasing of jazz players, and, according to historian Andy Volk, was of indelible influence on subsequent generations of steel players. Byrd also recorded with Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and others. After his Nashville career, Byrd made Hawaii his permanent home. ==Western Swing==

In the early 1930s, the newly electrified lap steel guitar took a prominent position in a type of dance music known as "Western swing", Lap steels were the first multi-neck electric instruments. The added size and weight meant that the instrument could no longer be reasonably supported on the player's lap and required placement in a frame with legs known as a "console" steel guitar, that is still ostensibly a lap steel. accommodated by instrument maker Leo Fender, eventually played instruments with four different necks. ==Honky-tonk==

By the late 1940s, the steel guitar featured prominently in the emerging "honky-tonk" style of country music, developed in Texas and Oklahoma bars and dance halls (called honky-tonks). The style features a simple two-beat sound with a prominent backbeat. Helms' playing style helped move country music away from the hillbilly string-band sound popular in the 1930s and toward the more modern electric style that took over in the 1940s. ==Dobro==

The Dobro or resonator guitar is a uniquely American lap steel guitar with a resonator cone designed to make a guitar louder. The dobro never became popular with blues players, who generally prefer the National guitar, which has a similar resonator design but uses a metal body. Kirby introduced the instrument to a nationwide radio audience. His dobro attracted interest and fascination; he said, "People couldn't understand how I played it and what it was, and they'd always want to come around and look at it." ==Sacred steel==

This gospel music tradition, now called "sacred steel", began in the 1930s church services in the "House of God", a small African-American denomination where the steel guitar emerged as an alternative to the church organ. Darick Campbell (1966–2020) was a lap steel player for the gospel band, The Campbell Brothers, who took the musical tradition from Pentecostal churches to international fame. Campbell was a master at mimicking the human singing voice with his guitar. He said, "My method is to always think of my guitar as a voice". ==Lap slide guitar==

Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument, but a style of playing lap steel that is typically heard in blues or rock music. Players of these genres typically use the term "slide" instead of "steel"; and Freddie Roulette. In 1923, Sylvester Weaver was the first to record this style. In the 1940s, blues players like Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker popularized electric slide guitar this way, using a traditional guitar in standard tuning. The term "bottleneck" was historically used to describe this type of playing. Early blues players used open tunings, but most modern slide players use both standard and open. ==Lap steel obsolescence==

The expense of building multiple necks on each guitar made lap steels unaffordable for most players and a more sophisticated solution was needed. Gibson introduced a pedal steel guitar as early as 1940, but it never caught on. Bigsby, working alone in his shop, made guitars for leading players of the day, including Joaquin Murphey and Speedy West. Nashville guitarist Bud Isaacs received one of Bigsby's two-pedal guitars in 1952. It was a wooden double–eight string model. The song became one of the most-played country songs of 1954 and was No. 1 on the Billboard's country charts for seventeen weeks. More importantly, the sound was immediately recognized by lap steel (non-pedal) guitarists as something both unique and impossible to produce on a non-pedal lap steel. Other prominent lap steel players—including Noel Boggs, Jerry Byrd and Joaquin Murphey—refused to switch. According to music historian Rich Kienzle, this decision hindered Boggs' later career. ... So I decided to stay with what I had and keep my identity and ride it out... I never made the change-over." Joaquin Murphey stayed with the non-pedal lap steel long after his contemporaries had switched over, and with his C6 tuning. He felt that the Nashville-standard E9 was, in his words, a "gimmick". He stated in a 1995 interview, "I can't do all that fancy Nashville stuff and I hate it anyhow". ==See also==