Pedals : A revelation or the bleeding obvious?!

Since getting my universal pedal steel one of the things I’ve had to struggle with is accurately getting my foot onto one or two of seven pedals, instead of three on my E9 guitar.

I knew this was going to be tricky from the start but my reckoning as always is ‘other people can learn to do it so hopefully I can’! Rarely proven true but I stick by it.

I knew it was going to be something I would have to develop in isolation, that it wouldn’t just happen automatically by using the pedals, so I diligently practised being in various useful pedal positions:

over the A and B pedals (E9 home)

over pedals 4 and pedal 5 (B6 home)

over pedals 3 and 4

and then moving between these positions.

Over time this started improving my ability to move between the pedals but it was still proving slow progress.

Then I started thinking I needed visual markers on the pedal steel neck to show me where I needed to get my feet. At this point it dawned on my that I had fret markers already, I just needed to figure out which frets the pedals were at! Simples!

Or not! I think it is helping but it’s still taking time to match up where it *feels* like my left foot is, and where the fret directly above the pedal I’m going for is..

One day I’ll get there..