Great players don't always make great teachers, frequently the opposite. My experience is that a lot of music teachers take your money and are more interested in showing off than helping you learn. Don't waste your time with teachers like that. Also, memorizing dozens of licks in a short time is tedious and you almost never retain memory of them. The pedal steel is very much a "lick" instrument so you do have to learn licks. But you slowly add them to your scale playing, one at a time. Licks are what make your playing interesting and unique.

My son and I were in Australia about 7 years ago.... beautiful country. Nice to know country music is alive there. After I came off the road I played at The Kansas City Opry (Tuffy Williams) for a year and had the same thing you're experiencing... any song, any key and some you never heard before. You'll learn fast like that!

That sounds great. I was in a country music club few years back. Of course with the weird last 2 years we've had, I can't even imagine any clubs opening back up again soon. Cheers mate!

Post your video soon, then another one a month or two later. I'd like to see your progress. Maybe give you some advice after I see them.

Well, I'm mostly using simple 2 note scales, occasionally improvising around those scales. The reason to improvise a little is to keep my playing from being too predictable or boring. That comes with time and practice. Working with the simple major scales is fine for beginners. Sometimes you will make a mistake and realize "hey, that sounded great"! Then you incorporate that into your playing. Or you slowly add more non-scale licks that you learn from various KZfaq vids or elsewhere. These non-scale licks are typically transition things that sound a little dissonant but resolve nicely back into the major scale notes.

AMPLIFER: Amp Type - Clean Gain - low.. about 7 o'clock Volume - to desired level EQUALIZER: Bass - 3 o'clock Middle - 1 o'clock Treble - 2 o'clock EFFECTS: Booster/Mod - 12 o'clock Deadly/Fx - 8 o'clock Reverb - 11 o'clock TONE: Presence - 12 o'clock Master - 3 o'clock Power Control - 50W Having said the above, your tone varies based on your ability, room acoustics, guitar, pickup, old strings, etc. Here's the thing... if you have a good guitar and amp and new strings, and you still can't get good tone... it's probably in your technique, mostly the right hand. Allow time to be your friend as your tone will improve the more you play and get comfortable with the instrument.

@@gilroyhollistermusic9199 Thanks Gilroy. I tried your settings and I like the sound a lot!

Tone is in your hands. Gilroys tone is what it is because of the time he put in and the hard work and dedication. Your tone will develop over time. You have a good rig and can get a fabulous sound with what you have.

For this video I ran the signal out of my Boss Katana-100 amp "Phones/Rec Out" jack and ran that into a Roland VS 2400 Digital Studio that I recorded this song onto. As I played, that mixed signal went into the camera audio input. In all previous videos I mic'd everything. I did this one through the Roland to get better sound quality on the backing track. My guess is that if I used your equipment for this video it would sound pretty much the same as my equipment. Morris Music comment is correct. So my advice for you is.... Use just a little Digital Delay and Reverb, no other effects. Do not over use heavy effects to compensate for inexperience (in other words "hide your mistakes"). It becomes a crutch and you never learn to play correctly. You want to hear your mistakes loud and clear! Adjust your tone controls to the room you're in... I try for not too bright or too much muddy bass. Work on coordinating your right hand and your volume pedal. Slightly raise your volume pedal (reduced volume) when you first pluck the strings on these slow songs.Then quickly increase the volume to sustain the notes. This gets rid of the initial harsh sound of the picks on the strings. This takes time to perfect. One more thing beginners might do is over vibrate the bar in their left hand. This is usually to compensate for being out of tune. You sound out of tune because your bar position is slightly off or... On most pedal steels, some strings are always slightly out of tune due to cabinet drop. This one is tricky to overcome... it involves slight bar movements - sharp or flat - to compensate based on what pedals you are using. I think this is something expert studio players learn to do subconsciously. I try to avoid (or not linger on) the more obnoxious pedal/string combos that expose this problem on my guitar. I am out of tune for these reasons in several places on all my videos. I just deal with it..!! Ha! Lastly, try putting new strings on your steel. This helps tone and intonation. Hope this helps!