Sacred Steel: Learn the Pedal Steel Guitar of Chuck Campbell – Chuck Campbell

The soulful, sanctified sound of sacred steel guitar combines powerful African-American gospel music with bluesy inflections, R&B passion and rock excitement. Chuck Campbell’s innovative pedal steel playing epitomizes this amazing genre. His hard-driving licks and sweeping sustains have influenced innumerable musicians in all styles of music, and have helped bring these sounds to audiences worldwide.

Whether you are just starting out on pedal steel or you already play other styles, this lesson will open up a whole new world of musical inspiration for you. Chuck Campbell details his E tuning and walks you through his unique pedal set-up. He then shows the various ways he gets his much-imitated sounds. He teaches “framming” (strumming), picking, the use of vibrato, left and right hand string blocking, chords and scales for major and minor blues, and much more.

All of these techniques are brought into focus when he and the Campbell Brothers demonstrate his musicianship in two beloved traditional songs, Amazing Grace and When the Saints Go Marching In.