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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu
USA
783 Posts |
 Posted - 07/22/2003 : 4:16:28 PM
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I want to learn how to do this. I love to hear slack key solos, I'm trying to learn it myself, but I got so frustrated I took off a long time from guitar to concentrate on ukulele which is a wonderful instrument to accompany singing, to play in groups, lots of fun without months and years of training.
In a post on another thread, Mark Nelson pointed out that there is a lot more to slack key than what we hear on Dancing Cat CD's, that it is more than solo virtuoso performances. I grumped that that's all we get from method books, you can work like a dog to learn two songs and when you're done you have... two songs! Whoopee. Nice songs, but what a limited repertoire.
Then Sarah gave some valuable pointers about how to start small, just playing some slack key chords to accompany your voice, join in with a group, play with your CD, or whatever. It deserves its own thread. I don't think Sarah will mind if I duplicate it here.
I'd love to pick up more pointers from the rest of you, if you can give any. I know all about jus' press, but press where??? When???
Another thing - how many of you are interested in a method book or a video on such basic material. If there is a market, maybe we will convince Mark Nelson or Patrick Landeza or ... to provide the product! So please post if you would buy a book or video like this.
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Pauline |
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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 07/22/2003 : 4:26:49 PM
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Here is Sarah's kind response to my rant and her good pointers:
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Aloha e Pauline,
Sounds to me like you are describing what one learns over years, usually as a kid, in true kanikapila situations – something that is unavailable to us isolated mainlanders! It *is* frustrating, I sympathize. You might already have thought of what I have, below, but for what it's worth, eia ku'u wahi mana'o [here's my own (modest) thought]:
What I understand about playing along at the most basic level is that you can do a simple picking pattern while fretting the chord that belongs in that part of the song. Uncle Sol taught us a 5-2-4-1 pattern for the G chords, and a 6-2-4-1 pattern for the D7 chords, and a 4-2-3-1 pattern for the C chord. This basic pattern, with its 4/4 time and the alternating bass, will get you thru many, many Taropatch-tuned songs.
From there, you prepare yourself by learning the chords positions in their different locations on the fretboard, so you know how to do at least two of each. This gives you some variety.
By the way, it is really, really helpful if you know how the song goes, so you can predict which chord comes next and get there in time. The melody, most basically of all. This again is where us folks far away have trouble, because our exposure to songs is limited. Listening and learning from recordings is the only way I know to do, way over here.
Ornamenting from there on, you can vary your chord positions; discover that a D7 vamp could be a harmony to D7-ish phrase of the song; substitute chimes for their more ordinary fretted cousins; etc.
Another common approach to playing along in a colorful way, is to play "up high" when the lead is playing "down low", and vice-versa.
How to practice all this alone??? Good question. Practicing moving around (alone) with these fundamentals in mind is one thing to do. Another thing to do is find a recording of a song that you like and can deal with, and try playing along with the CD. You can go over and over until you've had enough. It's real hard at first, but keep trying. It does get better.
Hope this helps you begin somewhere....
aloha,
Sarah
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Admin
Pupule
USA
4551 Posts |
Posted - 07/22/2003 : 4:46:30 PM
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Thanks Pauline for starting a new topic.
When I was in Maui last month, Carlos Andrade stressed the importance of finding and knowing the root chord, IV, V, etc. This sound obvious but if you're learning a solo guitar arrangement from a book, you may easily neglect this. Moreover, this will help you "discover" and navigate through ANY tuning. If you're in taro patch, figure out where various G chords are... then C chords, then D7 chords...
Pick a song. (It doesn't have to be Hawaiian. In our workshop, Carlos chose the Big Bopper's Chantilly Lace.) Now try playing the underlying chords while humming or singing the melody. After that, try playing the melody with a traditional slack key alternating bass. I found this workshop and exercise to be very helpful in developing skills to play in a group. It's good practice for your ear too.
On another note, I suggest Keoki Kahumoku's DVD which provides lots of tools that I think would help any beginner. He covers strumming and various finger-picking patterns. The video is basically exercises to develop slack key skills which makes it different from anything else out there (which tends to teach within the context of songs.)
Hopefully, these comments will help you figure out where to jus' press. |
Andy |
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 02:23:52 AM
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hi pauline,
i wanted to underscore some of the advice you've gotten. you probably know much of this, but what the heck.
choose a tuning, like taropatch. choose some recordings you like in that tuning - sonny played a lot in taro patch, for example. taro patch is a G tuning, and so the chords you should know are G, C, D7, and A7. in general, the most important chords are I, IV, V7 and II7, and so in G you should know G, C, D7 and A7 (eg, a G scale is G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G, so the first note is G, the fourth note is C, the fifth note is D, and the second note is A).
for each of these chords, become familiar with two or three different ways to play the chord. for example, G can be played with all strings open (000000), or 000005, or 000435, or 000789 (i think; i'm in a hotel room away from my guitar, sob). andy has a cool guitar applet listed that can help you find these chords.
now, using these chords, try strumming along with the song, to get the chords. after some time you'll find figuring out the chords is pretty easy, but in the beginning it can be hard.
this will get you pretty far. you can then start picking the chords. the bass line is, i think, really important to get. in fact, if you're lazy, just picking a bass line is nice.
next comes fitting in turnarounds, but you can ignore that at first.
aloha,
keith
(who, despite being on a business trip, the trip is in honolulu so it isn't all bad. i just got back from hearing some great live music at kapono's).
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Keith |
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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 03:29:51 AM
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Thanks Andy, thanks Keith. Keep those comments coming, please. Yes, I may know some of this stuff, but so what. Please, write as if I were a total novice. You may well tell me something I didn't know, or someone else reading this didn't know, or...
If the pro method book writers don't publish this stuff, I'd like to see the resource here on Taropatch.net. And even if one of the pros were inspired to start writing tonight it would still be at least a year before the book hits the shelves, so lets build our own resource. If we get enough, then someone could take a stab at organizing the material, it could be saved somewhere, ... First, we need more good brain dumps.
Maybe tomorrow, you all could talk about turnarounds and how to fit them in. What is a super simple turnaround. I've seen some in the books, but I think they could be simplified. How many beats or even bars for a turnaround? What is the minimal TA from G to C, C to D7, D7 to G, C to A7 (?), do they all get TA's or do just some chord shifts get TA's, etc., etc., etc.
Oh, TA = vamp or is that something different? If different, please explain vamps. The list goes on...
Thanks all, |
Pauline |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 08:41:53 AM
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I think of "turnaround" as a blues term, referring to a sequence of chords going from the V to the I then back to the V, leading up to the next verse - turning around from the end to the beginning. It's part of the verse itself.
I IV I I7
IV IV I I
V IV I V <- the turnaround
A vamp is the equivalent in Hawaiian, but it ends on the I, doesn't bounce back to the V, and is often added on in addition to being part of the verse.
I I I I7
IV I V V
V I <- vamp
V I <- vamp
In many ukulele arrangements, the vamp is II V I, but in slack key it's much more commonly V I.
Fran
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E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
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Sarah
`Olu`olu
571 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 09:49:52 AM
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Aloha e Pauline,
A vamp (in my understanding, vamp=turnaround, the way ki ho'alu people use the term) is often used as 1) an intro to a song 2) the final phrase in the melody of the verse (so you're back to "do" -- as in do, re, mi -- again), and 3) played once (or twice but be consistent) between sung verses.
If you have any of these resources, they're worth looking at (I'm sure there are more, but this is off the top of my head):
Keola and Mark's book www.taropatch.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=15 has some discussion of vamps, and a page-long piece of vamps strung together, creating piece of its own.
Ron Loo's books are really good at introducing vamp variations in the course learning the music, although he does not address vamps specifically. He has "super simple vamps", which are traditional. (I have one in my head that Reid and I call "The Vamp" because it is so ubiquitious, but I don't know how to tab it out for you here! Let me get back to you on that!) Ron clearly tries to expose the student to the slack key "vocabulary", and you can go thru and isolate the vamps quite clearly. www.taropatch.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=44
Ozzie's book labels the vamps quite clearly, in his tab. You can build a repertoire from that, too. www.taropatch.net/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=14
Uncle Ray's video tab has a page of Uncle Ray vamps as he does them....
Ledward's video tab also has a page of what he calls "Hawaiian Turnarounds" but they seem to me, of course, Ledward-style 
aloha,
Sarah
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Edited by - Sarah on 07/23/2003 09:54:04 AM |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 11:46:37 AM
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The irony is that we mainlanders are starting the slack key learning curve pretty far up the slope--I doubt that we'd start with solo/lead picking if we were growing up inside the tradition. Just strumming along with Hawaiian tunes, "Kumbaya"-style, is pretty easy, since so many songs are I-V or I-IV-V or I-V-IV-V-I patterns. What I noticed when I watched George Kahumoku teach a big, mixed-skill-level class at Augusta last year was that we spent most of the week just strumming rather than getting into picking. Plenty of kanikapila and dance accompaniment seems to consist of strumming rather than elaborate picking--and if you watch George play, you'll see a good bit of it there, too.
Anyhow, what I'd add to the advice from Sarah, Fran, and Keith is to really get the song *patterns* internalized, and then associate them with chord sequences. It's pretty easy to hear the I-V movement in a chant-based song like "He`iea" or the I-V-IV-I of "E Ku`u Morning Dew." Then when there's a II-V-I pattern (A-D7-G in taropatch) very common in mainland music, and found in Hawaiian either as part of the song's structure or as a turnaround (for example, in "Henehene Kou `Aka"). And so on.
It's not all that important to know the quasi-theoretical stuff like the chord numbers, though it does simplify communication with other musicians ("It's all I-V with a II-V-I turnaround") as well as pointing to the common structures that apply to all the tunings and keys. I think it *is* important to 1) hear the changes and 2) recognize which chord in a given key applies. One way to work on this association might be to hear the bass note that is also the root of each chord. (This is also important for slack key playing in general, so it's two birds here.) If you can reliably hit the right bass note, you've got the outline of the song's harmonic structure. And if you know your chord shapes, you're ready to strum along, bass-brush, bass-brush.
As for turnarounds vs. vamps: As Sarah points out, it's really and/or, depending on context. Usually a turnaround marks the end of a structure, a signal that we're back at the beginning. That's why they're basically elaborations of the V-I movement. A vamp is a repeated sequence of chords (also generally built on the V-I harmonic movement) that in Hawaiian music often serves as the basic accompaniment--you can get a long way with a V-I vamp in chant-rooted songs like "Hi`ilawe." Vamps also serve to fill the spaces between verses but where dancers need to keep moving ("Hi`ilawe" again).
Timing and how many beats to play: just count it out, mostly 4/4, though there are waltzes as well. Again, your intuitive senses of tempo and meter are as important as any theoretical recognition of time signature or bar structure. Foot-tapping can externalize the beat--toe-up on 1 and 3, toe-down on 2 and 4, or (for finer divisions and to nail down syncopations), toe-down for 1-2-3-4 and toe-up for the "ands" in between main beats: 1-and 2-and 3-and 4-and.
If you can hum a melody, hear the changes, and foot-tap along, you can figure out where turnarounds come, where vamps go, and all that stuff. I've been using "Hi`ilawe" to try out these techniques as I've been writing, and I know that I could hum and foot-tap and bass-note-pick it well enough to write a chart that would indicate how many bars of what chords to play and where the vamps and turnarounds are, as well as the fact that the strumming pattern is bass-brush with the bass on the 1 and 3.
Doing this in real time in a song circle comes with practice, but I think that anyone who can hum along and tap a foot in time after a couple of choruses has the basics already--it's just a matter of applying that intuitive understanding of melody and meter to the guitar.
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 07/23/2003 : 6:03:53 PM
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okay okay okay, one more idea...
a good song to try out russell's and sarah's ideas is sonny's version of "wai ulu". he's playing it on a 12 string and he does the needle trick at one point, but don't worry - it seems like a good song for practicing playing along. he's in taro patch. it's a waltz - 3/4 time - and it's mainly G and D7, with one C. he ends each verse with two sets of decending sixths, going from D7 down to G. try strumming along to get the chords, and then try picking a bass note before the strums (eg, pick, brush, brush). you'll pluck the low G string when it's a G or a C, and the low D string with it's a D7.
then, when he's doing the decending parallel sixths, try to do the same.
then, when he's doing the decending parallel sixths, do something else. pick a turnaround from any of the taropatch songs you already know and try to adapt it to the waltz tempo.
keith
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Keith |
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sdm
Aloha
USA
13 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 01:19:46 AM
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very cool thread, gives a beginner like me a lot to think about....
Is there a guide to chord fingerings in slack key tunings such as taro patch?
Ironically, like marzullo, I'm also in a hotel room far from my guitar. unfortunately, NOT hawaii.....  |
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Sarah
`Olu`olu
571 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 08:41:41 AM
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Aloha e sdm,
On a previous occasion, Rich posted the following about a book that is handy to have, although it does not include *everything* one can do in, say, Taropatch tuning. To its credit, it includes quite a few slack-key tunings.
quote:
The Mark Hansen book I'm using most right now is "The Complete Book of Alternate Tunings" which shows hundreds of guitar tunings, along with many scale, pattern, and chord fingerings in each tuning. http://www.accentonmusic.com Also available on Amazon. (Maybe Andy can put a link here for that)
George Kahumoku also has a handout that shows lots of positions, including chords and 6ths and so on. He gave that out at a workshop....
hope this helps,
aloha,
Sarah |
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BreezePlease
Akahai
Japan
86 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 08:51:04 AM
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Pauline,
Two quick questions:
1) What tuning(s) are you playing, or trying to play?
2) In what key do you usually sing?
-dean
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Reid
Ha`aha`a
Andorra
1526 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 11:41:20 AM
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About George's handout that Sarah mentioned: Ed Bigelow actually produced it and he is sometimes here (and lots of times on Maui - the lucky guy). So maybe he AND/OR George could be approached to allow people to acquire it. I use the word "acquire" because it is worth paying something for. I use it a *lot*, and it includes material on other tunings in addition to Taro Patch.
...Reid |
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bluzdulcimer
Aloha
USA
11 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 12:05:54 PM
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Marzullo mentioned that andy has an applet for helping to find
chords in alternate tunings. Where can we find this?
Finding all the chord positions and inversions seems to me the first step for accompanying others. This is an excellent thread for mainland beginners because we often overlook how the guitar fits into an ensemble situation, since most instruction books concentrate on solos. For practicing these techniques at home, you might find Band in a Box useful. Plug in the chords, set the tempo, and pick a style to fit the tune. |
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 12:57:22 PM
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good point, hollis... the chord applet (which is actually from brian quade, mea culpa) is at http://www.taropatch.net/tuning_applet.htm.
andy has collected a pile of great links, of which this is one. to see what he has, go to the top of this page and click on "links". then, near the top of the page click on "general" instead of "artists".
reid's right, and ed's notes are getting better and better. i think that they should start charging for them....
keith |
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chunky monkey
Ha`aha`a
USA
1022 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2003 : 4:07:00 PM
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Keith,
You included the trailing "." in the link. Anyone trying this link needs to delete it.
The link has been corrected. -Admin |
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