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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
 Posted - 01/31/2009 : 09:15:45 AM
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...and that is why I was waiting for you to chime in, Peter.
Once again, you have presented us with a model of clarity and information.
quote:
Why am I doing this?
For the money, why else? I've made hundreds in the music business.
In my case, I'm too old to get a job with City and County and too ugly to become a star.
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 09:35:51 AM
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| Need to work for Wal-Mart like Springsteen. Oh, you mean he is not going to hand me my buggy and tell me good worning and welcome to Wal-Mart? Dad-blame it! |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 09:41:07 AM
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quote:
The tuning Duke is referring too is a ho‘ku‘u tuning an open tuning — like open C (Atta Isaacs anyone?) with the bass strings inverted.
I think Peter got me 'n' Duke confused.  The Bb Maj tuning I mentioned (F-Bb-D-F-Bb-D) is indeed the same as Atta's C with the basses inverted. The top interval (Bb-D) is a major third.
The funny thing is I'd fooled around with an open C tuning (C-G-E-G-C-E) years back before I tried to learn slack key--of course, like every other guitar hacker I just twisted the strings until I got something I liked. So I also play in G6, D maj, G maj, D 6/9 and quite a few others. (Never got DADGAD, tho')
In fact it was due to comments I got when I was playing my own compositions like "Good Old Dog" in that C tuning that I decided to try to learn slack. Enough people asked me "are you playing slack key?" that I thought maybe I should learn how, if only so I would know the difference.
Remember, this was years before the Dancing Cat explosion; few people outside of Hawaii had heard much slack key, save for those two Ry Cooder LPs that featured Gabby and Flaco.
(As an aside, where would we all be if George Winston had fallen in love with Norteno accordion instead?)
Getting back to that Bb tuning-- it is also very much a steel guitar tuning. Standard dobro tuning has two stacked major chords (G-B-D-G-B-D) and at least one of the standard C tunings does the same thing, only with the third on top, like the Bb tuning.
Of course, that makes sense considering who invented steel guitar...
Another of life's little "doi" moments.
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RJS
Ha`aha`a
1635 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 12:55:51 PM
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Mark,
Some of us old polka players would be pretty in right now. Every heard of AAS (Accordion acq. synd)? |
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Peter Medeiros
`Olu`olu
546 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 1:32:37 PM
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Thanks for the accolades you guys, but this will be the last essay I write on slack key until I publish this spring. I chose excerpts from my texts, which are copyrighted to provide you with an insight on the development, and nature of slack key as I have learned, analyzed and advocated it through my lifetime as a teacher.
As some of you may know I have learned from some of the very best slack key artists and have had the rare benefit of their mana‘o. It has been my responsibility to teach slack key the right way and pass on what I learned accurately. I do this so that this tradition can live on as long as it can before it becomes completely assimilated into the pop guitar culture. Although I have been at the UH Manoa campus for many years now, I am not from the ivory tower school of thought and isolated from reality. I still ask questions about music and I jam with students and am still very connected to the Hawaiian scene in some capacity.
I have a much different understanding and analysis of slack key than just about anybody else. But now that I have put this particular essay out there, others who want to use my views and ideas for their own benefit have already contacted me. This isn't a new situation for me, but the caveats is this, give credit where credit is due and remember that these ideas are included in my texts. This is just a teaser. I don’t worry so much about the guys who make an effort to contact me, it’s the guys who just aihue my ideas that bother me (that includes students). Although I do have some protection through copyright I still have to be careful about what I say or write. I have been instructed by my attorney not to give any more free advice.
Aloha
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Edited by - Peter Medeiros on 01/31/2009 1:35:10 PM |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 1:58:47 PM
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Peter - anybody tries to screw you over, you just let me know. Paul has relatives in Youngstown, Ohio, if you get my drift.
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Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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rendesvous1840
Ha`aha`a
USA
1055 Posts |
Posted - 01/31/2009 : 3:38:48 PM
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quote:
[i]Will I ever be a star or should I quit now and go work City and County?
I know where I stand, I stay working for the County since 1981. The writing musta been on the wall.
Paul |
"A master banjo player isn't the person who can pick the most notes.It's the person who can touch the most hearts." Patrick Costello |
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RJS
Ha`aha`a
1635 Posts |
Posted - 02/01/2009 : 12:33:38 PM
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Peter,
I think that situating slack key vis a vis the hula tradition is very important. Sometimes some misguided soul comes to me for lessons. Technique and chords are easy to teach, but it's usually the feel that's hard. I give people who don't yet "have it" two excercises. First of all, I have them go to the ocean at a place where there are nice waves and not much foot traffic. I ask them to sit and watch the waves a while and then to try to get the feel of the waves on their guitar just using ascending and descending parallel 6ths (open-close positions) with alternating bass. (You may remember when we spoke a few years ago at El Calderon I commented that, to me, slack key is island music, that it, it has the feel of the ocean in it.) The other excercise I suggest is to get them to watch as much hula as they can. We watch a few of my favorite auana hula together, then I suggest they catch live events and watch the Merrie Monarch recordings. Typically, those who have any musicality in them "get it," and their playing takes a huge leap. |
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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 09:09:16 AM
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quote:
Technique and chords are easy to teach, but it's usually the feel that's hard.
Which is the heart of the matter, innit?
I don't want to get into the slack key equivalent of "Can White Men Play the Blues?"-- but there is a real difference between Hawaiian players and us Mainland guys. As someone who did not grow up in Hawaii, I have found getting the right feel is elusive.
Last year sometime I was teaching a class in Seattle. At some point I noticed Al-- Noeau-- who was in the class, was helping someone with a difficult passage. I stopped the class and told them to listen to Al's playing, then mine, then Al's. I told them that even though we played the same notes, Al had the correct "accent." |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 10:10:41 AM
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I suppose it might be analogous to language acquisition--for most people, learning a second language after age seven or so (especially if it's not learned from native speakers) results in having an "accent" that native speakers can always spot. Of course, there are gifted people who can learn multiple languages with minimal interlanguage interference (which is what an accent is), but they are in the minority. I suspect that music acquisition works in a similar way--the gifted can enter a musical tradition and blend right in, but most of us will always have at least a slight accent. Which is OK. (A side note: when I lived in Italy for a while, long ago, my accent was much better than my grammar and vocabulary. Different sets of circuits, and I suspect that one could find similar disjunctions in musical performance.)
I've noticed that white guys can play the blues--especially if they grew up close enough to black culture (and especially black churches) to absorb the nuances. And I've always been color-blind in jazz, never being able to tell ethnicity from just listening--because, I suspect, jazz demands that high and statistically rare degree of musical ability that allows one to play in the idiom without any accent. Idiomatic musical performance is where culture/environment and individual ability meet.
I wonder--how idiomatic and un-accented would be the slack key playing of someone from Hawai`i but not raised with Hawaiian music? Or someone raised on the mainland but in a setting where Hawaiian music was present? Part of the answer will depend on the musical giftedness (and persistence) of the individual.
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 11:22:49 AM
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No, cause listen to Bill Wynne's music. Sounds as Hawaiian as it can get, instrumentally as well as his singing. How else you think he won the Fasetto contest.
But for the most part, white guys Cannot play the blues. I grew up in Cleveland since age 3 living in the pooor neighborhoods and the primary inhabitants of those neighborhoods were hillbillies, mostly from W. Va.; black people from Alabama, Mississippi & Georgia and Hungarians. I wenet to plenty black churches with my friends when I was a kid. I have listened to plenty of blues. It cannot be done. Even not Eric Clapton. Even not Paul Certo. And for some reason, even young black people. They cannot sing/play the blues.
Except maybe local guy Frankie Starr. He's as close as a white guy can get. Gotta go to the crossroads and sell your soul to the devil. Az y hahd. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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Russell Letson
`Olu`olu
USA
504 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 12:17:44 PM
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Wanda, you do realize that your positions on Hawaiian music and the blues contradict each other, right? If a guy from New Joisey can "do" Hawaiian falsetto, why can't, say, Duane Allman sing the blues as convincingly as his African-American neighbor? You know the stories about black listeners who were sure, from the records, that Jimmie Rodgers was black? (Clapton is far from the best example of a white blues musician, particularly as a singer.) There are complicated issues that might affect whether a given white musician delivers a performance that can't be distinguished from that of a black musician--including not wanting to sound "too black." (There seem to be corresponding attitudes among black musicians.) I know white middle-class singers who make a point of not putting on rural black dialect, but that's a matters of personal authenticity or a political decision rather than inability.
These are interestingly complex questions, but I'm always skeptical of propositions that locate specific artistic capabilities in specific groups.
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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 2:10:52 PM
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quote:
Gotta go to the crossroads and sell your soul to the devil. Az y hahd.
Another one of those enduring creation myths. Or spurious folklore, if you prefer.
Wanda, since I know you have a curious mind, read "Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues" by Elijah Wald. http://www.elijahwald.com/rjohnson.html
Might open your eyes to how folklorists, collectors & record producers created the whole "primitive juju bluesman" thing.
But getting back to the subject at hand: My point is that, yes anybody can play anything, providing one puts in the time and plays from the heart.
But you'd better believe music has an accent.
I can play the heck out of a Mississippi John Hurt song... but compare my playing to his and it's gonna sound different even tho' all the notes are in the right place.. ditto when I play one of Ray Kane's songs... or something I learned from the banjo player Ed Lowe.
It's not just music: Dancers are able to express amazing subtle nuance through movement. Yet, if you know what to look for, you can spot even very experienced folk dancers who did not grow up in the tradition. I have seen hula by non-Hawaiians from Europe, the US and Japan that didn't look right. And I've played zydeco dances that were pretty funny to watch... (and my zydeco probably sounded pretty funny, too.) How cares? We were having fun.
No one says you shouldn't try-- music is about communication. In my experience, every time I've played an "ethnic" song, however ineptly, for someone that grew up where the music originated I've always received a smile and made a new friend.
But can Duane Allman sing the blues...? um, not my first choice.
Del Rey sure as heck does. Dresses proper, too.
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 3:00:07 PM
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I always was crazy about Little Richard. Especially when he did Tutti Fruity. Then Pat Boone did it. The wop-bop-a-loo-bop thing was so very funny and seeing Pat Boone standing there in his white bucks singing ever so succintly and well enunciated. Ho da funny.
I know what I said about Bill Wynne contradicts, but he sure makes great Hawaiian music.
Maybe malihini can get the Hawaiian music down. I sure hope so since that is what Paul is striving to do. If you compared his video of Kahuku Slack Key with an audio file we went to a few friends about a year ago, what a difference. A year ago he sounded like a haole tring to play slack key. Now he sounds maybe a little more Hawaiian. Why is it different? Ahdunno. He is still an old hairy Italian guy. And I recorded myself singing some Hawaiian songs to see how my `olelo sounded. Obviously not so good since Paul and I have not recorded any duets to put on You Tube. Because it sure sounds funny to hear Hawaiian words with a hillbilly twang on some of the words. Same thing when I was in school learning German. I took 6 years of German lessons, taught three years by a teacher from South Carolina. I am sure I learned German with a hillbilly accent. I do not even know why I still have an accent, since I lived in Cleveland since I was 3 yers old. It must be the summers spent back in W. Va. Ahdunno. But in my opinion, a malihini trying to play Hawaiian music is still pretty darn swell. Especially when I hear Retro sing ..."Sshh, no make noise la" -- I love it!!!!
Now here is another question. Hacome when I try to sing an Hawaiian song with a recording that is ony instrumental, why can[t I do it? Seems like the same notes and stuff ain't there, just about no matter who plays, Cyril George Kahumoku, Ozzie, Paul Togioka, Uncle Raymond, whoever. When you play instrumental only is it the improvising thing going on that the normal melody is not played?
I found a wonderful anonymous quote that says: "Love is like playing slack key guitar. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart." Ha-ha. Don't be surprised if some of you get a Valentine with that quote tucked inside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfatiRpFMM - Pat Boone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XBOMSqv0ms - Little Richard
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Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
Edited by - wcerto on 02/02/2009 3:01:15 PM |
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hikabe
Lokahi
USA
358 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2009 : 4:11:13 PM
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I'm jumping in here after this thread has frayed a bit.
Wanda wrote:Could Duke play Slack Key Hula and then like for instance Carlos Santana duplicate the same thing, sound exactly the same, in regular tuning?
I wouldn't put it past Carlos. I can probably fake it enough to make you think it sounds alike. So can Ledward and Chino and anyone else who has spent enough time on standard guitar. Hendrix could have copied anything. But local people have an easier time at it because their ear is more atuned to the style. Give Carlos enough time and he could play anything just like Ledward, if he wanted to.
A standard guitar can be made to sound like slack key music. But altered and standard tunings are different and have their own unique aesthetics.
Something to note here. Not all slackers know how to play standard guitar. |
Stay Tuned... |
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