Reinventing the wheel? Building a visualizer tool, looking for feedback

[Evan Goedde]

Hey all - long time lurker, first time poster here.

I've been learning pedal steel for a while now and one thing that's consistently tripped me up is visualizing what's actually available at any given bar position with different pedal/lever combinations. Staring at copedent charts works, but my brain wanted something more interactive.

So I started building a tool for myself. It's an interactive visualizer where you can toggle pedals and levers, move the bar position, and see the resulting pitches in real time. Click a chord from the available options and it highlights which strings to grab. The idea is to make the "what can I play here?" question instantly answerable.

I'm calling it PedalSteelPro and I've put up a landing page with a working concept demo: https://www.pedalsteelpro.com

Before I go too deep on this, I wanted to get a sanity check from people who actually know what they're doing. A few honest questions:

1. Is this actually useful, or is there something out there that already does this better?
2. Am I missing something fundamental about how experienced players think about the instrument that makes this kind of tool irrelevant?
3. What would make this genuinely valuable to you vs. just a novelty?

Being relatively new to the instrument is exactly why I felt I needed something like this (and it's helping me connect the dots), but that also means I might be solving a beginner problem that disappears with experience. Totally open to hearing "this already exists" or "that's not how anyone actually learns."

Appreciate any feedback. And if you sign up on the page, it's just for launch notification, no spam.

Thanks for having me.

[David J Moore]

I picked up my first steel last week and I find it incredibly useful. I'm working on learning different voicings and this'll show all the ways to play a IV chord (for example) up and down the neck.

I learn best by reverse engineering, and I think this will give me the answer, then I can find the pattern, then I can figure out the "why" with the theory.

[Evan Goedde]

Thanks for checking it out! I'm glad it's useful.

Your learning style is exactly why I built it. My day job is working on industrial manufacturing machines, bridging machine hardware and data with software. I've always learned by jumping in, finding the answer, reverse engineering the pattern, then figuring out the theory.

It popped in my head as I was sitting at the steel last week and thought it might be a useful and fun side quest to embark on.

Congrats on the new steel!

[Fred Treece]

I think a lot of new players wish for the same thing. I know I tried to invent my own wheel. Look up Steel Sidekick in the App Store. Forum member John Sohn created it in 2014. Not quite as elaborate as your design, but the fretboard graphic is the bomb. Somebody should advertise it in the Forum store. It’s a very helpful and intuitive app. I still use it after 10 years.

[Evan Goedde]

Wow. That fretboard visualization is absolutely brilliant. I'm on Android, so I'm not sure it's the exact same as iOS.

I remembered doing a few searches about a year ago on the app store for similar resources and not coming up with anything. It looks like Steel Sidekick was released on Android in February so I probably didn't do my due diligence before I started building. I had an idea in my head and just wanted to get it out and working.

It does seem they take slightly different angles. Steel Sidekick lets you pick a chord and find it everywhere. I foresee using it quite a bit as a learning tool (even when I'm not sitting at the steel). Mine just shows you everything available at a fret position given a pedal/lever configuration. More of a "what can I play here" tool than a "where do I play this" tool. I am working on a chord finder for PSP, but I doubt it can be visualized better than how John did it. Probably more complementary than anything.

I greatly appreciate you sharing it!

[Fred Treece]

You’re right; there is no droid version of Sidekick. There is a Windows app called “Guitar Map” that was developed by Forum member Karlis Abolins, but he stopped supporting it a few years ago. I used it when I was PC. It was very simple and easy to use, like a spreadsheet. I still have it on an old laptop.

Here is a screenshot of it with my 12-string copedent loaded. I can pm the .exe file to you if you want.

Guitar Map.jpg

[Daniel Morris]

Rodrigo de la Mora has released his PSG Compass, which is a very valuable tool. psgcompass.com
It seems that your visualizer is on that order, though I don't know if everything is the same.
Just an FYI.

[Evan Goedde]

Thanks for the heads up! I just checked out PSG Compass and that's a seriously comprehensive suite.

My aim with PedalSteelPro is functionally similar in ways, but my priority has been mobile-friendly and web-based from the start. I've got a tablet/phone holder I attach to a leg while practicing, so that's really been my motivation. How can I make something useful, configurable, and feature rich while maintaining a relatively simplified interface?

I've watched all the videos on PSG Compass and am really looking forward to sitting down with it. I should have a few hours on Tuesday to try it out.

If I've learned one thing, it's that this community definitely has some talented developers creating tools that are filling in the gaps!

[Robert Miller]

Mobile phone/pad functionality with that much information is spectacular. Your interface is intuitive, for me at least. Super teaching/learning tool.