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John Ely's Steel Guitar Web

Late Breaking...

With the late, great Speedy West during my set at Scotty's 1994 convention in St. Louis.

ChordLocator Updates—June 21, 2010

Both the generic and advanced chord locators now offer the option to label the results with note names or degrees. This will be helpful for those who want to learn how to construct the basic chords in the various chord families.

Additional features make all the locators easier to use. For example, once you choose a tuning for one of the locators, that tuning is pre-selected for any other locator you use during the same session... Go to Generic Locator

ScaleLocator Updates—June 22, 2010

The scale locators now have much improved display of results, using the same graphics engine used by the chord locators. The scale forms generator is virtually complete; I consider the basic scale locator to still be in beta—more work needs to be done to eliminate unuseful results... Check out the Forms Generator

The Mailing List

I would encourage students of the steel guitar to sign on to my mailing list on the Guestbook page. Here's what I send mailing list members:

Updates on the release of instructional materials
Newsletter covering various steel guitar topics
Free tab arrangements sent periodically

If you're interested in arrangements, you can use the Guestbook to let me know your tuning(s), playing level, and any requests you have... Details

Arrangements Update

I will have steel guitar arrangements up and going starting in July 2010. I now have the ability to create audio to go with the tablature. Feel free to download the sample arrangement and steel guitar lesson pages to get a feel for what the arrangements will look like... Details

Lessons

Thanks to an evolving Internet, I can now offer private steel lessons anywhere in the world to folks with the basic Skype video chat setup on their personal computer! I gave my first lesson in September 2009 and it was awesome with relatively few glitches... Details

Hotspots...

Beginner's Pages

If you a beginner, here are a few tips I hope will point you in the right direction, including basic equipment such as picks and steel bars and a little about the psychology of learning steel guitar. It is not the easiest instrument to take up, but the payoff is huge... Details

String Gauge Chart

Choice of string gauges is one of the most asked about technical topic in setting up a steel guitar. I have listed common string gauges used for each pitch from the rarely used high A string to the low A (very few will try to tune a note below this pitch). And there a host of issues that will affect your choice of strings gauges. Feel free to download my handy string gauge chart... Details

ChordLocator

I wrote the chord locators to allow you to locate chords commonly used in most steel guitar styles on whatever tuning you happen to play. No knowledge of music theory is required to use the Generic Chord Locator. I'm continuing to add to the menu of chord types and chord voicings within each chord type -- if you think I've omitted an important chord in any of the chord categories please let me know... Details

The Advanced Chord Locator is for experienced musicians who have a voicing in mind and want to see if it's available on their tuning. You can also use this locator to determine if your voicing might be available transposed up or down using open strings... Details