Despite the pedal steel’s manual demands, this rush of applications and ideas is a result, in many ways, of digital accessibility. The Danish guitarist Maggie Björklund, 57, stowed her pedal steel in a closet for two years when she first tried to learn around 2000 because its mechanics proved too difficult and she knew maybe three men in Denmark who played it. She ultimately flew to Nashville to study with Jeff Newman, a beloved instructor who informed her she’d been doing it all wrong.
“I thought I knew a little bit about pedal steel, but he said, ‘You sound like a German hausfrau,’” she recalled by phone from north of Copenhagen, laughing. “He ripped all that away from me and gave me the basis I still play.”