Here’s an ear challenge to anyone who learns anyone else’s steel parts from recordings.

Do this so that the ear can also interpret the exact moves, in addition to memorizing the physical moves.

The exercise is simple: Once all of the steel moves  are mechanically memorized, it’s time to listen to the recording again and again, singing what you can play only in your mind (No Guitar is needed to advance this level of mastering the part).

Listen to it closely through some earbuds while walking or on your car system when driving…Learn it through listening.

Your hands already know how produce the mechanical aspect to playing those steel licks. When you sit back down to the PSG, you’ll start phrasing it more like the way you hear it.

Your playing will be more emotional and less about the way you needed to teach your hands and feet to physically achieve those moves in the first step.

This is how the heart enters our music. Once we can sing the music we play in our mind, we can then sit back down at the instrument and those parts start sounding more like us because we are connecting the mechanical with the emotional by listening.

Even though the parts will sound like the player we are imitating, the emotion sounds more like us.

True story, When I first joined Vince’s band he asked me to play the great melody of John Hughey’s solo for “Look At Us”.

After I had identified the moves, this was my method for processing the request.

It’s a great way to learn anything someone else composes.