A steel guitar () is a guitar played while moving a steel bar or similar hard object against plucked strings. The bar itself is called a "steel" and is the source of the name "steel guitar". The instrument differs from a conventional guitar in that it has no frets—but markers that look like frets. Conceptually, it is somewhat akin to playing a guitar with one finger (the bar). Known for its smooth, gliding glissandi over every pitch between notes, the instrument can produce a sinuous crying sound and deep vibrato emulating the human singing voice. Typically, the strings are plucked (not strummed) by the fingers of one hand, while the steel tone bar is pressed lightly against the strings and moved by the opposite hand.
The idea of creating music with a slide of some type has been traced back to early African instruments, but the modern steel guitar was conceived and popularized in the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiians began playing a conventional guitar in a horizontal position across the knees instead of flat against the body, using the bar instead of fingers. Joseph Kekuku developed this manner of playing a guitar, known as "Hawaiian style", about 1890 and the technique spread internationally.
The sound of Hawaiian music featuring steel guitar became an enduring musical fad in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, and, in 1916, recordings of indigenous Hawaiian music outsold all other U.S. musical genres. This popularity spawned the manufacture of guitars designed specifically to be played horizontally. The archetypal instrument is the Hawaiian guitar, also called a lap steel. These early acoustic instruments were not loud enough relative to other instruments, but that changed in 1934 when a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup. Electrification allowed these instruments to be heard, and it also meant their resonant chambers were no longer essential. After that, steel guitars could be manufactured in any design, even a rectangular block bearing little or no resemblance to the traditional guitar shape. The result were table-like instruments in a metal frame on legs called "console steels", which were technologically improved in about 1950 to become the more versatile pedal steel guitar.
In the United States, the steel guitar influenced popular music in the early twentieth century, combining with jazz, swing and country music to be prominently heard in Western swing, honky-tonk, gospel and bluegrass. The instrument influenced Blues artists in the Mississippi Delta who embraced the steel guitar sound but continued holding their guitar in the traditional way; they used a tubular object (the neck of a bottle) called a "slide" around a finger. This technique, historically called "bottleneck" guitar, is now known as "slide guitar" and is commonly associated with blues and rock music. Bluegrass artists adapted the Hawaiian style of playing in a resonator guitar known as a "Dobro", a type of steel guitar with a reinforced neck, sometimes played with the musician standing and the guitar facing upward held horizontally by a shoulder strap.
Steel guitar versus traditional Spanish guitar
Several distinct differences exist in both the construction and musical capabilities of the steel guitar and the traditional Spanish (classical) guitar. The steel guitar is capable of producing smooth glissandi, enabling it to glide seamlessly between pitches in a manner reminiscent of the human voice—a feat not possible on a traditional fretted guitar. This is the hallmark characteristic of the steel guitar. The instrument also has significant limitations. Unlike a classical guitar, where the fingers press individual strings to produce chords and notes, the steel guitar employs a solid steel bar placed across all the strings. This allows the instrument to play only the chords available within its tuning, significantly reducing harmonic flexibility. Functionally, it is akin to playing with a single rigid "finger" rather than multiple independent ones.
Note articulation differs between the two instruments. On a Spanish guitar, lifting the finger from the fretboard immediately silences the sounding note. By contrast, a note on the steel guitar continues to sound until it is manually dampened by the player or another note is played on the same string. A novice player who has not learned this blocking technique, finds the notes are superimposed and blurred together, much like a piano played with the sustain pedal permanently depressed.
Finally, while frets on a Spanish guitar ensure precise intonation (assuming the instrument is properly tuned), the steel guitar lacks such guides. The performer must place the bar precisely over imaginary fret positions to remain in tune, making accurate pitch control more demanding to master. The table below compares the two instruments in a simplified general overview.
+ Comparison of steel guitar and Spanish (classical) guitar Feature Steel guitar Spanish (classical) guitar Playing mechanism Single steel bar against strings, no frets Fingers press individual strings against frets Number of strings 6–14 6 Attack Typically finger-picked Strummed or finger-picked Note articulation Smooth glides (glissando); continuous Glissando possible, but pitch changes occur in semitone increments Chord formation Largely limited to the instrument’s original tuning configuration Individual fingers can fret different strings independently, permitting a wider range of chord voicings Note sustain Sustains until decays or is manually muted Typically silenced when finger is lifted off fret Intonation Determined entirely by bar placement Frets establish pitch locations
History
In the late 19th century, European sailors and Portuguese vaqueros, hired by Hawaii's king to work cattle ranches, introduced Spanish guitars in the Hawaiian Islands. For whatever reason, Hawaiians did not embrace standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries. They re-tuned their guitars to make them sound a major chord when all six strings were strummed, now known as an "open tuning". The term for this is "slack-key" because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it. With the advent of guitar strings made of steel instead of catgut, new possibilities opened for the islanders. They used some smooth object, usually a piece of pipe or metal, sliding it over the strings to the fourth or fifth position, easily playing a three-chord song. It is physically difficult to hold a steel bar against the strings while holding the guitar against the body (hand supinated) so the Hawaiians placed the guitar across the lap and played it with the hand pronated. Playing this way became popular throughout Hawaii and spread internationally.
Oahu-born Joseph Kekuku became proficient in this style of playing around the end of the 19th century and popularized it—some sources say he invented the steel guitar. He moved to the U.S. and became a vaudeville performer and also toured Europe performing Hawaiian music. The Hawaiian style of playing spread to America and became popular during the first half of the 20th century; noted players of the era were Frank Ferera, Sam Ku West, "King" Bennie Nawahi and Sol Hoʻopiʻi. Hoʻopiʻi ( ) was perhaps the most famous of the Hawaiians who spread the sound of instrumental lap steel worldwide. This music became popular to the degree that it was called the "Hawaiian craze" and was ignited by a number of events.
The annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1900 stimulated Americans' interest in Hawaiian music and customs. In 1912, a Broadway musical show called The Bird of Paradise premiered; it featured Hawaiian music and elaborate costumes. The show became quite successful and, to ride this wave of success, it toured the U.S. and Europe, eventually spawning the 1932 film Bird of Paradise. Joseph Kekuku was a member of the show's original cast and toured with the show for eight years. In 1918, The Washington Herald stated, "So great is the popularity of Hawaiian music in this country that The Bird of Paradise will go on record as having created the greatest musical fad this country has ever known". In 1915, a world's fair called the Panama–Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal and over a nine-month period introduced the Hawaiian style of guitar playing to millions of visitors. In 1916, recordings of indigenous Hawaiian instruments outsold every other genre of music in the U.S.
Radio broadcasts played a role in fueling the popularity of Hawaiian music. Hawaii Calls was a program originating in Hawaii and broadcast to the U.S. mainland west coast. It featured the steel guitar, ukulele, and Hawaiian songs sung in English. Subsequently, the program was heard worldwide on over 750 stations. Sol Hoʻopiʻi began broadcasting live from KHJ radio in Los Angeles in 1923. By the 1920s, Hawaiian music instruction for children was becoming common in the U.S. One of the steel guitar's foremost virtuosos, Buddy Emmons, studied at the Hawaiian Conservatory of Music in South Bend, Indiana, at age 11 in 1948.
The acceptance of the sound of the steel guitar, then referred to as "Hawaiian guitars" or "lap steels", spurred instrument makers to produce them in quantity and create innovations in the design to accommodate this style of playing.
In the early twentieth century, steel guitar playing branched off into two streams: lap-style, performed on an instrument specifically designed or modified to be played on the performer's lap; and bottleneck-style, performed on a traditional Spanish guitar held flat against the body. The bottleneck-style became associated with blues and rock music, and the horizontal style became associated with several musical genres, including Hawaiian music, country music, Western swing, honky-tonk, bluegrass and gospel.
Use in musical genres Blues music
Solo African-American blues artists popularized the bottleneck-style (slide guitar) near the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the first southern blues musicians to adapt the Hawaiian sound to the blues was Tampa Red, whose playing, says historian Gérard Herzhaft, "created a style that has unquestionably influenced all modern blues". The Mississippi Delta was the home of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton and other blues pioneers, who used a prominent tubular slide on a finger. The first known recording of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two instrumentals, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag". Western swing pioneers Bob Wills and Leon McAuliffe adapted his song, "Guitar Rag", in 1935 for the influential instrumental "Steel Guitar Rag". Blues musicians played a conventional Spanish guitar as a hybrid between the two types of guitars, using one finger inserted into a tubular slide or a bottleneck with one finger while using frets with the remaining fingers (usually for rhythm accompaniment). This technique allows the player to finger the frets on some strings and use the slide on others. Slide players may use open tunings or traditional tunings as a matter of personal preference. Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument but a style of playing a lap steel guitar usually referring to blues or rock music.
Country music