Steel guitars were originally developed and popularized in Hawaii. Legend has it that Joseph Kekuku, a Hawaiian schoolboy, discovered the sound while walking along a railroad track strumming his guitar. He picked up a bolt lying by the track and slid the metal along the strings of his guitar. Intrigued by the sound, he taught himself to play using the back of a knife blade.

The steel guitar differs from a regular guitar in the way that it is played. The lap steel guitar is held in your lap facing toward you. The strings are raised above the fret board; rather than pressing them to the fret board, a steel bar is pressed against the strings. Typically the lap steel guitar is tuned in one of several "open" tunings rather than standard guitar tuning. Here are 3 other common steel guitar tunings.

*Suggested string gauges in brackets.

Below is one of the tunings as suggested by ABM  for the Slider 6 string Lap Steel.