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Auntie Maria
Ha`aha`a
USA
1918 Posts |
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Bruddah Chrispy
Lokahi
USA
164 Posts |
 Posted - 03/09/2002 : 9:45:49 PM
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Hooootah! He's comin' to Washington!
Aloha a hui hou,
Chris P. |
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Pauline Leland
`Olu`olu
USA
783 Posts |
Posted - 03/09/2002 : 9:51:46 PM
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Thank you Auntie Maria.
I was begining to think he was just going spend the year jumping between California and Alaska, but I see he'll be at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop in early August. I wonder if I can swing that?
Chris, I see you just posted, too!
Pauline |
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Bruddah Chrispy
Lokahi
USA
164 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2002 : 10:52:46 AM
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Derek and I attended one of George's workshops last November when he was in town. Here's the review I sent out back then to some friends:
Yesterday George and Keoki Kahumoku and Bob Brosman were in town for a concert. As part of this tour they are also holding workshops, with George teaching slack key, Keoki on Ukulele, and Bob on lapsteel guitar. Derek and I attended the Slack Key workshop and the concert and here's the review:
We actually arrived about an hour early, having allowed for getting lost on the way to University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, as well as wanting to warm up beforehand. We wandered the very attractive campus before showing up in the practice hall in the music building. There were about four people present and another four or five arrived by the start of the class. While playing bits and pieces of tunes from the major instructional books, people discussed Keola Beamer's Slack Key Camp which one of the students had attended. $1300 for the week, which included hotel and meals. Not bad.
A repeated conversation, which occurred whenever someone came into the room went something like this: "What tuning are we using?" "Taro Patch I assume". (Taro patch is an Open G tuning - DGDGBD). At about 3 (the scheduled start time), George poked his head into the room and said "We gonna play in Taro Patch but wit da 3rd string an F. I hope dats not gonna jam you up too much." and then left to get his guitar. We all chuckled.
When he returned we found out he was serious. So we all tuned our third string to an F. Which sounded really bad until we proceeded to drop all the strings down one note. Ah! This may have been obvious to some of the folks there but we were three strings into it before it clicked for me that we were just dropping the whole tuning. I think a few other folks were just as confused initially.
The workshop started with a Hawaiian chant, which George uses for all his classes and concerts. Clay, I'll send you the words so you can sound plenny akamai when you take the workshop down in California.
George's approach to teaching Ki Ho`alu is different than the instructional books that are available. The books tend to present the tabs, so you can learn the songs, with the idea that the more songs you learn the better you'll be. George stresses the chord forms and the associated bass lines. So the majority of the class was spent playing songs as a series of chord changes. The nice thing was that he had provided handouts with different shapings for the common chords in Taro Patch. So you could just barre your way around and practice the bass-strum-bass-strum-bass-strum pattern, or venture out with different fingerings. Personally, I can't strum to save my life but I can finger pick until the proverbial cows come home, I just put the right hand on auto-pilot and tried to learn the chords. I recognized most of the fingerings but I had never put a name to them, so there was a lot of "Oh, that's an A" going on in my head.
The workshop was supposed to be one hour of beginner and one hour of advanced, but in reality we just played straight through for two hours. (Following the workshop, Derek and I got some dinner and then snuck back into the rehearsal hall and played for another hour).
On the one hand, the workshop wasn't what I expected. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't that. On the other hand it was a great experience. Derek and I spent the drive back to Redmond talking about how we can put so much of what we learned into practice when we play together again.
I was also planning on putting in a concert review here, but this email has really gone on long enough. Short synopsis: We bought tickets at the door and sat down second-row center. The show was wonderful. Keoki is developing great showmanship (much improved since I saw him last year) and Bob Brosman is a phenominal lapsteel guitarist! Good fun. I dreamt about being back home all last night and woke up to a Seattle Grey morning.
Aloha a hui hou,
Chris P. |
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kihoalu
Aloha
USA
14 Posts |
Posted - 03/13/2002 : 12:49:18 PM
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Aloha Bruddah Crispy,
I really enjoy George's slack key. I also agree with George that hold chords and move about the fretboard will help in learning the slack key well enough to just jam with others. Learning tab is probably a good way for beginners to get familiar with initially getting around the fretboard, however, once a person learns a song from tab I would recommend just leaving some of that behind and exploring. I learn the old way from the old folks... watch, listen and press!
Well, it sounds like you and your friend really enjoy jamming together and playing slack key. I live in O'ahu and believe it or not, I really don't have anyone to play slack key with. The people that I personally know that play slack key are way busy. I usually go to Moloka'i once a month where I jam with family and friends.
Maybe you can share your story on our site too as a lot our members are slack key fans. You can sign up for our forum or even write it as an article. Okay, I know, shameless plug, but you may notice that I often participate here at TaroPatch.net and have even plugged this site in my forum because I see a great relationship between our two site.
Anyway, if you have time go to http://www.hawaiimusicians.com!
Kepa
Come visit us at HawaiiMusicians.com |
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2002 : 8:24:29 PM
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aloha braddah chrispy,
george jr. is coming to do a workshop within a drive from me, so i just signed up. i'll give a report too...
anyone - i'm off to maui in a week. can anyone recommend a person there who might be willing to play or give a lesson? keoki kahumoku is away then, auwe...
aloha,
keith
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marzullo
`Olu`olu
USA
923 Posts |
Posted - 04/17/2002 : 7:35:03 PM
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hello all,
george k. jr. was in town last weekend, and i took his 2 1/2 hour workshop. braddah c's review is so close to my experience, i won't say much here. the main difference was that our group contained very few people who had much experience with slack key, and so a lot of time was spent going over some simple turnarounds. i learned some valuable ideas, like some easy ways to play minor chords in taro patch and how he does his version of "hawaiian war chant" (which i love; it's really simple. he said that he wrote it because he got tired of playing to people in restaurants who were busy stuffing their faces with crab legs, and so he wanted a song that would shake 'em up).
at one point he stopped and went around the room encouraging people to play something. four of the 16 of us were willing to do so (i played a version of "moana chimes"). there were a couple of really excellent pickers in our group...
george's next project (outside of a cookbook!) is to find a way to fuse slack key with techno/house. he's an amazing person.
aloha,
keith
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Bruddah Chrispy
Lokahi
USA
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2002 : 10:21:31 AM
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Aloha kakou,
Derek, Pauline, an' I were talking about this at our Tuesday session. In retrospect I think that one of da things that George is trying to do, is not to enlighten us in 2 hours (in the Zen sense), but rather to plant seeds in what is, hopefully, fertile soil. I've had a number of experiences since the workshop where one of these seeds will sprout. I'll be playing along and suddenly see the pattern and how it fits in with what George was teaching. It's a real ah-ha moment.
You're right, Keith, he really is an amazing person!
Aloha a hui hou,
Chris P. |
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Kahumoku slack key workshops
