Steelin’ from Mike Neer

Do steel guitar-related puns ever get old?  Not sure,  but I do wanna bring up that a significant part of my practice life in 2013 has been centered around Mike Neer’s Steelin’ Scales and Modes book.

This tetrachord exercise (below) recorded in three tracks – though not super pretty in execution – is something I’m proud of simply because before Neer’s book I’d have little idea how to approach the theory behind scales and modes and how they’re applied. The point is not that I’m harmonizing three scales (bla) it’s that I have the basic set of tools to make this work or at least understand how it works.

The harder part – doing this in all 12 keys – is yet to come. Maybe one a month for a year?

I try to steel whatever I can retain from Mike Neer and his blog, his YouTube channel and his Steel Guitar Forum posts.