Maurice Anderson Bb6th

[Joshua Yarbrough]

I have a few questions for the Bb6th players out there. I have been transitioning to the Bb6th copedent of Maurice Anderson's and had a question about pedal 3: are there many players out there who have moved this pedal elsewhere? I find the voicing of his pedal 4 more useful next to pedal 2 in much the same vein as its usage with pedal 5 for dim. I can imagine Mo' left pedal 3 where he did not only to gain some real estate for double footing such as P2 + P5, P2 + BooWah + E+lever, etc. I have found that pedal 3 works best with P6 in resolution from the 4 cord but in making this pedal not have the 5 string lower in the style of am I missing something? Half stop of this same pedal with a half stop of the RKR string 4 full tone lower (resulting in a semi tone) does give a second opportunity to locate P5 for speed purposes... It feels like Mo's P3 would be better placed adjacent to P6. Any thought?

[Joshua Yarbrough]

P3 half stop + P4 with half stop of RKR repeat P4+P5... which probably is the main point in Mo's thinking. But this isn't quite as possible with the fourth string lower which I have taken off as well as the G - - F lower but moved it to the LKV. Instead I have a low F on bottom. This tuning is just so interesting for the movement it entices and huge chords.

[Joshua Yarbrough]

Who am I kidding... It might be the perfect copedent... B flat is where its at!

[Joshua Yarbrough]

Any recommendations for the X pedal?

[Joshua Yarbrough]

P2 + P7 + RKL is such a beautiful chord; it needs to +1/2 pull on top though on P7 added

[Marco Coblenz]

Hi Joshua,
I’m by no means an expert on Maurice Anderson or his tuning, and I haven’t played it myself. As I understand it, it’s a universal tuning that combines Bb6 and Eb9, with more emphasis on the 6th side.

To switch into “9th mode,” you raise the D strings to Eb with RKL (which Reece used—a change you’re missing). With that in place, the pedal layout is fairly typical: P1 and P2 function like the A and B pedals on the 9th side, and P4–P7 correspond to P5–P8 on the 6th side.

P3 is the interesting one. There’s no C pedal, so it effectively takes that position—and there’s no F lever either. On Reece’s setup, P3 produces the same sonority as the important A+F combination, just two frets higher. That’s also its main purpose. If I remember correctly, Reece himself explained this in an old forum thread. Seen that way, it makes complete sense to place it right next to the A and B pedals, keeping the E9-related functions grouped together.

[David Wright]

I'm no expert but, have been playing Bb for over 50 years. Maurice put the first set of picks on me in 1970...and I studied with him up until he passed.....He was my Steel Hero...My set up is 9 pedals and 7 knees ...I added on more E9 changes to the turning...heres a clip on how I use both tunings...after all these years of playing I'm still am learning...and miss him......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFy44f2qzI

[Bill McCloskey]

I would also suggest listening to David Wright's fantastic record: On the Bandstand

[Dale Rottacker]

I'm no expert but, have been playing Bb for over 50 years. Maurice put the first set of picks on me in 1970...and I studied with him up until he passed.....He was my Steel Hero...My set up is 9 pedals and 7 knees ...I added on more E9 changes to the turning...heres a clip on how I use both tunings...after all these years of playing I'm still am learning...and miss him......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFy44f2qzI

I'm glad you posted this David ... Gonna miss seeing play it live in Dallas

[David Wright]

This is from a show Maurice and I did some years ago...some great music ...Bb night you might say....

Miss seeing you in Dallas this year Dale....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4_jnMDvIDE

[J D Sauser]

Hi Joshua,
I’m by no means an expert on Maurice Anderson or his tuning, and I haven’t played it myself. As I understand it, it’s a universal tuning that combines Bb6 and Eb9, with more emphasis on the 6th side.

To switch into “9th mode,” you raise the D strings to Eb with RKL (which Reece used—a change you’re missing). With that in place, the pedal layout is fairly typical: P1 and P2 function like the A and B pedals on the 9th side, and P4–P7 correspond to P5–P8 on the 6th side.

P3 is the interesting one. There’s no C pedal, so it effectively takes that position—and there’s no F lever either. On Reece’s setup, P3 produces the same sonority as the important A+F combination, just two frets higher. That’s also its main purpose. If I remember correctly, Reece himself explained this in an old forum thread. Seen that way, it makes complete sense to place it right next to the A and B pedals, keeping the E9-related functions grouped together.

I sat at Maurice’s Bb6th only once, and at the time I didn’t quite find my way around it. My thinking was simply “a whole step lower than C,” which, in hindsight, is not really what’s going on at all.

Today, I see the differences between C6th (and E9th–B6th) and Maurice’s Bb6th as far deeper than a simple transposition.
Maurice developed his Bb6th before “going universal,” and his thinking around Bb was rooted in something entirely different—something that took me quite some time to understand.

A bit of history: It's all about TONE and INTERVALS available on key string groups:

Jerry Byrd famously recommended not going above a high E. Relative to a C tuning, that E is the major third. With the introduction of E9th, pitches up to G♯–A (the infamous E9th third string) became an option, but JB still maintained that a high G (the fifth degree in C6th) didn’t sound fitting relative to the rest of the strings. He also never went as low as 10-string pedal steel players eventually did.
For Jerry, the goal was a homogeneous, balanced tone across up to eight strings. To achieve that, he used .018p strings for his top three strings—E, C, and A. On his 22" scale steels, that resulted in a weakly tensioned third string and a very stiff top E, but it also gave him the warmth of an E string with nearly twice the cross-section of the .014 or .015 gauges typically used.

Back in the E13th and A6th days, there were no “inside-out” setups like those later developed on E9th’s top two strings, or the now-common high D on C6th. But high Gs—the fifth on a C tuning—were becoming increasingly popular.

INTERVALS:
Maurice’s truly brilliant idea was not what we tend to think of today as tuning C6th down a whole step. Instead, he effectively tuned up from A to Bb, placing a high G on top and thus putting the sixth degree on the highest string. This created a whole-tone interval on top—similar to having E and D on C6th, but in-line rather than inverted.

TONE:
Some A6th players already had that linear relationship, but Maurice felt that A6th on 24" scales sounded too muddy, and that he could comfortably push everything up the extra half step. That’s exactly how he explained it to me.

On early recordings from the late ’60s and ’70s, you can hear Maurice single-note soloing wildly in very high registers. That capability came directly from having the intricacies of a whole-step interval on top at a comparatively high pitch—roughly a fourth higher than C6th’s high D, or a minor third higher than E.
When we listen to E13th players like Speedy West—and later Zane Beck—we hear that, much like modern E9th, there’s simply more going on on the higher-pitched strings, even on the more “jazzy” ends of those tunings. Maurice achieved something very similar with Bb6th.

So in a way, what appears to be a “lower” tuning than C6th actually places more emphasis on the higher strings.
And despite being called Bb6th, Maurice’s 12th (bottom) string was still a C—which would correspond to a D on the bottom of a C6th tuning. This is something he also carried over to his non-pedal S12. Curly Chalker and John Hughey did this at times as well, and I use it myself today.
Maurice once pointed at the bottom D on his non-pedal C6th and told me:

“I wouldn’t be without that D here.”

While this was initially a change for me, I now fully share his conviction.
That bottom string isn’t so much a “9th” to the tuning’s namesake as it is the relative sixth of the major chord rooted on the ninth string—following the same logic as the eighth-string A relative to the seventh-string C (numbers given in 10-string terminology, since most players don’t use 12-string C6th).


MAURICE:
Like David Wright, I miss Maurice dearly—and I know I’m far from alone. I understand that most people who knew him called him “Reece.” I always called him Maurice, and quite often, “Sir.”
He may have been the only pedal steel teacher I ever encountered who truly taught his students how to play their own music, their own way—not his tunes, not his licks.
Being able to call him up and simply ask, “What’s going on there?” and get a real answer—

“JD, you may want to think about it like this”

—is something I’ve never found a replacement for.

Beyond steel guitar and music, he taught me about America-the USA, and even about investing in real estate. Had it not been for his words at the end of our very first lesson day—

“I think you should move here to the U.S.
We’d love to hav’ya, and you’d do much better here.
If someone wants to do it and does it right, it can be done.
I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to.”

—I might never have made it to the United States.

A year later, I was a legal resident. My first call was to him:

“Made it, Sir.”

To which he replied:

“Well… welcome, JD!”

... J-D.