A steel guitar (Hawaiian: kīkākila) is a type of guitar played by sliding a steel bar or another hard object across plucked strings. The steel bar is called a "steel," which is where the instrument gets its name. Unlike a regular guitar, a steel guitar does not have frets, but it has markers that look like frets. The way it is played is similar to using one finger (the steel bar) to press and slide along the strings. This instrument can create smooth, sliding sounds between notes and can make a deep, vibrating sound that resembles the human voice. Usually, one hand plucks the strings, while the other hand gently presses and moves the steel bar across the strings.
The idea of using a slide to make music dates back to early African instruments. However, the modern steel guitar was first created and popularized in the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiians began playing a regular guitar horizontally across their knees instead of holding it against their body, using the steel bar instead of their fingers. Joseph Kekuku developed this style of playing, called "Hawaiian style," around 1890. This technique later spread to other countries.
In the early 1900s, music featuring the steel guitar became very popular in the United States. By 1916, recordings of traditional Hawaiian music sold more than any other type of music in the United States. This popularity led to the creation of guitars designed to be played horizontally. The typical instrument is called a Hawaiian guitar, also known as a lap steel. These early guitars were not loud enough to compete with other instruments, but this changed in 1934 when a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup. This invention allowed the steel guitar to be heard clearly, and it no longer needed large sound chambers. After this, steel guitars could be made in many different shapes, including flat, metal-framed instruments called "console steels." These were later improved around 1950 to become the more flexible pedal steel guitar.
In the United States, the steel guitar influenced many types of music in the early 1900s. It combined with jazz, swing, and country music and was often heard in Western swing, honky-tonk, gospel, and bluegrass. Blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta liked the sound of the steel guitar but continued to play their guitars in the traditional way, using a slide (a tube, like a bottle neck) around a finger. This method, once called "bottleneck" guitar, is now known as "slide guitar" and is often linked to blues and rock music. Bluegrass musicians adapted the Hawaiian style of playing on a resonator guitar called a "Dobro," a type of steel guitar with a strong neck. This guitar is sometimes played standing up, held horizontally by a shoulder strap.
Steel guitar versus traditional Spanish guitar
There are clear differences in how the steel guitar and the traditional Spanish (classical) guitar are built and how they make music. The steel guitar can create smooth sliding sounds, called glissandi, which allow it to move easily between musical notes in a way that sounds like the human voice. This is the main feature of the steel guitar. However, the steel guitar also has some important limits. Unlike the classical guitar, where fingers press individual strings to make chords and notes, the steel guitar uses a solid steel bar that rests across all the strings. This design means the steel guitar can only play chords in the specific tunings it is set to, which limits how many different chord combinations it can produce. In this way, it is similar to using one stiff "finger" instead of several separate ones.
The way notes are played and stopped also differs between the two instruments. On a Spanish guitar, lifting a finger off the fretboard stops the note from sounding. On a steel guitar, a note continues to play until the musician manually stops it or another note is played on the same string. A beginner who has not learned how to stop notes may find the sounds overlap and become unclear, like a piano with its sustain pedal held down constantly.
Finally, the Spanish guitar has frets that help players produce exact pitches, as long as the instrument is properly tuned. The steel guitar does not have these guides. Instead, the musician must place the steel bar precisely over imaginary positions on the guitar to stay in tune. This makes controlling pitch much harder and requires more skill from the performer. The table below provides a simple comparison of the two instruments, though there are many exceptions to these general descriptions.
History
In the late 1800s, European sailors and Portuguese vaqueros, hired by Hawaii’s king to work on cattle ranches, brought Spanish guitars to the Hawaiian Islands. For unknown reasons, Hawaiians did not use the standard guitar tuning that had been common for many years. Instead, they adjusted their guitars so that when all six strings were strummed, they created a major chord. This method is now called "open tuning." The term for this style is "slack-key" because some strings were loosened to achieve the sound. When steel strings replaced catgut strings, new ways of playing emerged. Hawaiians used smooth objects, such as pieces of pipe or metal, to slide over the strings to the fourth or fifth position, making it easier to play three-chord songs. It is difficult to hold a steel bar against the strings while holding the guitar against the body with the hand turned inward, so Hawaiians placed the guitar across their laps and played it with the hand turned outward. This style became popular in Hawaii and spread internationally.
Oahu-born Joseph Kekuku became skilled in this style of playing by the end of the 1800s and helped popularize it. Some sources say he invented the steel guitar. He later moved to the United States, performed in vaudeville shows, and toured Europe playing Hawaiian music. The Hawaiian style of playing spread to America and became popular in the early 1900s. Notable players during this time included Frank Ferera, Sam Ku West, "King" Bennie Nawahi, and Sol Hoʻopiʻi. Hoʻopiʻi was perhaps the most famous Hawaiian musician who helped share the sound of the steel guitar worldwide. This music became so popular that it was called the "Hawaiian craze," and its rise was influenced by several events.
The annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1900 increased American interest in Hawaiian music and traditions. In 1912, a Broadway musical called The Bird of Paradise premiered. It included Hawaiian music and costumes and became very successful. The show toured the United States and Europe and later inspired the 1932 film Bird of Paradise. Joseph Kekuku was part of the original cast and performed with the show for eight years. In 1918, The Washington Herald reported that Hawaiian music had become so popular that The Bird of Paradise created the greatest musical trend in the United States. In 1915, the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal and introduced Hawaiian guitar playing to millions of visitors over nine months. In 1916, recordings of traditional Hawaiian instruments sold more than any other music genre in the U.S.
Radio broadcasts also helped spread Hawaiian music. Hawaii Calls was a radio program from Hawaii that aired on the U.S. mainland west coast. It featured the steel guitar, ukulele, and Hawaiian songs in English. Later, the program was broadcast worldwide on over 750 stations. In 1923, Sol Hoʻopiʻi began live broadcasts from KHJ radio in Los Angeles. By the 1920s, schools in the U.S. began teaching children how to play Hawaiian music. Buddy Emmons, one of the greatest steel guitar players, studied at the Hawaiian Conservatory of Music in South Bend, Indiana, at age 11 in 1948.
The popularity of the steel guitar, then called "Hawaiian guitars" or "lap steels," encouraged instrument makers to produce them in large numbers and improve their designs for this style of playing.
In the early 1900s, steel guitar playing split into two styles: lap-style, played on instruments designed or modified to rest on the performer’s lap; and bottleneck-style, played on a traditional Spanish guitar held flat against the body. The bottleneck-style became linked to blues and rock music, while the lap-style was connected to many genres, including Hawaiian music, country music, Western swing, honky-tonk, bluegrass, and gospel.
Use in musical genres
Solo African-American blues musicians helped make the bottleneck-style (slide guitar) popular near the start of the 1900s. One of the first southern blues musicians to use the Hawaiian sound in blues was Tampa Red. A historian named Gérard Herzhaft said Tampa Red's style "influenced all modern blues." The Mississippi Delta was home to blues pioneers like Robert Johnson, Son House, and Charlie Patton, who used a tube-shaped slide held on a finger. The first known recording of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who played two instrumentals called "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag." Western swing musicians Bob Wills and Leon McAuliffe used Weaver's song "Guitar Rag" in 1935 for a famous instrumental called "Steel Guitar Rag." Blues musicians used a regular Spanish guitar, inserting a finger into a tube-shaped slide or a bottleneck while using the remaining fingers to press frets for rhythm. This method allowed players to use the slide on some strings and press frets on others. Slide players might use open tunings or traditional tunings, depending on their preference. Lap slide guitar is a style of playing a lap steel guitar, usually linked to blues or rock music.
The earliest known use of a Hawaiian guitar in country music was in the early 1920s, when cowboy movie star Hoot Gibson brought a musician named Sol Hoʻopiʻi to Los Angeles to perform in his band. In 1927, a musical duo called Darby and Tarleton made the acoustic steel guitar more popular with their recordings of "Birmingham Jail" and "Columbus Stockade Blues." Jimmie Rodgers used an acoustic steel guitar on his song "Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues," released in 1930. In the early 1930s, acoustic lap steel guitars were too quiet to compete with other instruments, a problem inventors tried to fix.
In 1927, the Dopyera brothers created the resonator guitar, a non-electric instrument with a large cone under the bridge to make it louder. The name "Dobro," from "Dopyera" and "Brothers," became a common term for this type of guitar. Pete Kirby, known as "Bashful Brother Oswald," played the Dobro on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry for 30 years with Roy Acuff's band. He held the guitar horizontally with a shoulder strap. Oswald's Dobro attracted attention, and he said people were curious about how he played it. Josh Graves, also known as Uncle Josh, helped bring the resonator steel guitar into bluegrass music with Flatt and Scruggs, making it a familiar part of the genre. The Dobro was less popular in mainstream country music until the 1970s, when younger musicians like Jerry Douglas revived its use.
In 1934, a steel guitarist named George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar pickup. He discovered that a vibrating metal string in a magnetic field could create a small current that could be amplified and sent to a speaker. His steel guitar was the first electric guitar. In 1935, a musician named Bob Dunn played an electrified steel guitar on a Western swing tune, making it the first electric stringed instrument on a commercial recording. Dunn played with Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies.
In the early 1930s, musicians began using the newly electrified lap steel guitar in a type of dance music called "Western swing," a sub-genre of country music mixed with jazz. As the music evolved, the instrument's design and playing style changed. In the 1930s, Leon McAuliffe improved steel guitar techniques while playing with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. In 1936, McAuliffe recorded "Steel Guitar Rag" with Wills' band using a Rickenbacker B–6 lap steel, which sold well. Steel guitarists needed to change tunings for different sounds, so some added extra necks with different tunings to one instrument. This made the instrument too heavy to hold on the lap, so it was placed in a frame with legs and called a "console" steel guitar. Musicians like Herb Remington and Noel Boggs added more necks, eventually playing instruments with up to four different necks.
By the late 1940s, the steel guitar became important in "honky-tonk" style country music. Honky-tonk singers like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Webb Pierce used the lap steel guitar in their music. Most recordings from that time used a C6 tuning, sometimes called "Texas tuning." Tunings with sixths and ninths became common and linked to the steel guitar's sound.
The idea of adding pedals to a console guitar was to change the tuning of all strings with a pedal, avoiding the need for extra necks. Early attempts failed, but in 1948, Paul Bigsby, a motorcycle shop worker, created a pedal system for a console steel guitar. He added pedals between the legs of the instrument, which controlled mechanical parts to change string tension and pitch. In 1953, musician Bud Isaacs used Bigsby's invention to change the pitch of two strings while playing, making it the first time a pedal was used during a note.
When Isaacs used this setup on the 1954 recording of Webb Pierce's song "Slowly," he pressed the pedal while playing a chord, making some notes rise smoothly into the chord. This created a new sound that became popular in country music and inspired many steel guitar players. This innovation changed the style of country music in the 1950s, blending the Hawaiian influence into the new sound.
In the 1930s, the steel guitar was used in religious music called "Sacred Steel." A group called the House of God, part of an African-American Pentecostal church, used the lap steel guitar instead of an organ. Its sound was different from typical country music.
Darick Campbell (1966–2020) played the lap steel guitar for the gospel band the Campbell Brothers, who made the tradition famous worldwide. Campbell used an electric Hawaiian lap steel called a Fender Stringmaster 8-string. He could mimic singing with his guitar. His work with the Allman Brothers and other artists was not accepted by church leaders.
In the 1980s, a teenager named Robert Randolph, the son of a minister, started playing the pedal steel guitar. He helped popularize it in gospel music and received praise for his skills.
Lap steel guitars
Early lap steel guitars were traditional guitars that were tuned to a chord. The strings were raised above the frets to make them easier to play. When electric pickups were invented, lap steels no longer needed a resonant chamber. This change led to newer designs that looked less like traditional guitars. These instruments were played across musicians' knees. George Beauchamp created a lap steel guitar called the "Frying Pan," officially named the "Rickenbacker Electro A–22." It was made from 1931 to 1939 and was the first electric stringed instrument ever made. It was also the first electric stringed instrument played on a commercial recording. Musicians like Noel Boggs and Alvino Rey quickly started using this new instrument.
The Dobro is a type of acoustic lap steel guitar that uses a resonator. The word "Dobro" is often used to describe bluegrass resonator lap steels from any brand. Bluegrass Dobro players frequently use a "Stevens bar," which has a deep groove to help hold the steel bar securely. This allows the bar to be lifted and angled downward slightly for playing single notes. The technique also makes it easier to play hammer-on or pull-off notes when an open string is nearby. When playing, Dobro players often tilt the bar horizontally to change the distance between two or more notes played at the same time on different strings.
Console steel guitars
A console steel guitar is a type of electric steel guitar that has legs attached to a frame and is designed to be played while sitting. It typically has several necks—up to four—each with a different tuning. In the history of steel guitars, the console steel comes between the lap steel and the pedal steel.
Pedal steel guitars
The pedal steel guitar is an electric instrument with one or two necks, each usually having ten strings. The neck tuned to C6 (called Texas tuning) is positioned closest to the player, while the E9 (called Nashville tuning) neck is farther away. The instrument can have up to ten pedals, a separate volume pedal, and up to eight knee levers. These features change the tuning of strings, enabling the player to create more varied and complex music than other steel guitars. For example, combining pedals and knee levers allows the player to play a major scale without moving the bar. The pedal steel guitar was invented to make it possible to play more interesting music than earlier steel guitars and to avoid the need for extra necks on console steels.
Steels and slides
A "steel" is a hard, smooth object that is pushed against guitar strings. This object is why the instrument is called a "steel guitar." It can be called by many names, such as "steel," "tone bar," "slide," "bottleneck," and others. A steel used in console steel and pedal steel playing is often shaped like a cylinder with a pointed end on one side. Lap steel and Dobro guitar players usually use a steel bar with square-shaped ends and a deep groove to help hold it better. The cross section of this bar looks like a railroad track. Another type of steel is a tube-shaped object worn around a finger, called a "slide." When this style of playing is used, it is known as "slide guitar."