Pedal Steel Comping and Backup Lessons Vol 1

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Hi, this is Dave Anderson with onlinelessonvideos.com. Today, we’re going to do comping and backup in standard chord progressions. This is going to be over in the key of G and we’re going to do a faster version as well as a slower version with backing tracks. So let's get started.

Okay, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at this chord progression that we got. You should have a PDF file of it and it's in the key of G. what I'm going to do first is just kind of go over the comping parts with you in different positions. So, the chords are G, C and D. There is a D/F# which means that it's a D chord, F# is the lowest note and then there is an E minor in the progression.

So, let's put the D/F# aside for a minute and not confuse ourselves with that. We’ll just think of it as a D chord. So, for the G in the first chord, starting on the first position would be on the third fret—

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Now, we can go through all these chords right on this third fret. We don’t even have to move the bar if we want to. So we could G with it open and that’s with our different groups 10, eight and six—

Eight, six, five—

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Six, five, four—

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Five, four, three—

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So that’s a G chord. We can move to the C just by pressing the A and B pedal down, same groups—

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Now for the D, what we can do is do a dominant change and we can go into the B pedal. So I lift up my A and then my left knee lever in—

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So there are our main three chords—

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G—

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C—

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D—

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Now for that E minor in this position, it’ll just be the A pedal down—

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And that will give us A minor. So, with that, with all the groups, you’ve got the whole chord progression without even moving the bar really.

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G—

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C—

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A and B down—

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D with B pedal on the left knee lever in and D again—

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Then G—

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Open C—

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A and B down—

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And then back to that D with the B in left knee lever in. then you get C—

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D—

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G—

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E minor—

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C—

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D—

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G—

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Now that’s in the first position. Now, we can also move up and what we can do is work between the third and the fifth and the sixth fret. Using for the G chord open—

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C, as it was before—

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And now we can slide up to the D—

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