#Hawaiian slack key guitar full#
#Hawaiian slack key guitar plus#

That's what you get when you listen to slack key.'įor example, Manoa said when he jams with other slack key players, 'I always have good fun.' He also enjoys teaching BYUH students the Hawaiian art form. But Manoa feels you can still feel that 'cowboy influence, that kind of tap-your-foot music. Subsequent artists - such as Ledward Kaapana, the late Sonny Chillingsworth, Cyril Pahinui (Gabby's son), the Beamer Brothers (as a duet and individually) and others have added their own variations to the slack key genre and even morphed it into other styles. He also pointed out that lots of slack key information can be found online at Dancing Cat Record's web site. 'People all over the world were affected by the recording, and since then slack key has opened up to people other than family,' said Manoa, who teaches ki hoalu and regular guitar classes at BYU-Hawaii. Slack key wasn't affected much by western culture,' he continued, noting that it wasn't until the 1950s when an unlikely artist, the late Gabby Pahinui, recorded Hi'ilawe, when people wondered, 'What is that? They knew that sounded different than standard tuning.' This helped keep the stylings and tunings pure. 'Often, tunings were kept within a family, and stayed within that family for generations. Returning to slack key's history, Manoa noted early Hawaiian guitar players 'were idolized,' and as others subsequently learned the 'new technology,' they often tried to keep would-be mimics from learning their moves by turning the instrument away from the audience 'so they wouldn't be able to see or if they laid the guitar down, they would tune it differently first.' For example, there's one called 'Drop-C tuning'.and another called 'G- wahine'.perhaps because it was often used by females they could use one finger to play two different chords.' 'There are also many different tunings, kind of to fit the vocal range. 'So, in ki hoalu with one finger and four chords, you can play hundreds of Hawaiian songs,' Manoa said. To make the lower bass tones, they needed to slack the ki or loosen the strings until they came into 'open tuning.'' He explained that occurs when strumming the guitar strings without pressing any of them down on the fret board produces a chord. 'They figured out they could use their thumbs to play a very simple, constant bass line, while the other fingers provided the melody and accompaniment. 'We tried to duplicate what we heard them playing,' he continued, noting that over time the Hawaiians started to tune the guitar 'to whatever sounded good and they started to mimic what they heard before, playing the melody, bass and the strumming of chords - all on one guitar at the same time.' 'Whatever it was, when our Mexican and Spanish friends left, they gave the guitars to the Hawaiians.' He also speculated that the Spanish style of using a bass guitar for rhythm and another for melody lines was a critical element in the development of the new art form. The Latin cattlemen, who also started the Hawaiian paniolo or cowboy tradition, brought guitars, 'which just blew away the Hawaiians, because they had never seen an instrument like that before,' Manoa said.

More on the styles and tunings below, but first, Manoa - who graduated from BYU-Hawaii in 1994 with a degree in instrumental music and went to work fulltime for the Polynesian Cultural Center - explained the history of ki hoalu or Hawaiian slack key guitar goes back to the 1830s when the king of Hawaii imported Spanish and Mexican cowboys to begin rounding up wild cattle descended from a gift Captain George Vancouver gave to King Kamehameha a generation earlier in 1793. Note: “Slack Key Guitar” refers to the native Hawaiian guitar style of using a variety of tunings that are lower in pitch than standard tuning.BYUH Hawaiian Studies instructor Kaipo Manoa traced the evolution of Hawaiian slack key guitar music during the Honors colloquium on March 18 and demonstrated his skill in the distinctive island art form by playing a number of selections in various styles and tunings.

#Hawaiian slack key guitar full#

“It’s maika’I nui… most excellent!” – Read full review at Aloha Plenty Standard notation and tablature are included.

#Hawaiian slack key guitar plus#

The CD includes performance-speed excerpts of each tune, plus the entire tune played at a slow speed for ease in learning. Highlighting this title are explanations of five “slack key” tunings with musical examples, descriptions of each tune and its techniques, and an instructional CD. Included are note-for-note transcriptions from Ray Kane, Sonny Chillingworth, Leonard Kwan, Cyril Pahinui, Ledward Kaapana, and more. In this book/CD combination, Mark Hanson explains the fingerstyle playing of many of the greatest acoustic guitar “slack key” artists.