Talk:Slack-key guitar

The Roots of Slack Key Guitar

There are now anonymous editors who are rewriting this article. The influence of missionaries and church singing/music in Hawaii has been immense. The "imported cowboys" or "Paniolos" all were catholic by upbringing but frequented the local churches and sang the hymns and so were generation of Hawaiians taught. Missing that influence as key to the evolution of the slack key guitar and Hawaiian music is unfortunate and inaccurate.

BTW, once again, Wahine is essentially a minor tuning as the open strings up the neck all sound a B6 minor chord if guitar was tuned with a D bass in the Taro Patch before the 3rd G string was detuned to F#. That's a D on the bass and F# B D, a simple inversion of B minor and the minor 3rd on bass....HuskyMoon 08:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

What it is

I think that it is important to show how slack key is really a way to tune the guitar in a major or minor mode as opposed to the traditional guitar tuning in 4th.

This is the essence of the difference HuskyMoon 05:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

External links

More than once now I've removed links that do not contribute to an understanding of slack key's nature and history. As I understand Wiki culture, the External Links section is not the place for a directory of slack key players but for outside sources of authoritative information--thus the Dancing Cat and Keola Beamer sites are there for the background information they provide, not as promotions for their owners. Similarly, I've modified the Mike McClellan link to point to his page of slack key tunings (he was one of the first to codify/categorize them). See [[1]] on Wiki propriety. RLetson 05:33, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion/ Merger

I believe that Slack tuning should be deleted, or possibly merged with Slack-key guitar. Slack tuning is normally used as an alternate term for slack key guitar, but the article on slack tuning is about drop tunings used in rock and metal. It cites no sources whatsoever, and either needs sourdes or should be deleted/ merged into Slack-key Guitar. Caoilte 3 August 2006

Slack key guitar as treated here is a Hawaiian tradition and style of playing named for the practice of retuning the guitar. I've never heard of tuning down one or more steps called "slack tuning" in the rock/pop worlds (though I'm no rocker)--the rock players I know might say "I'm tuned down a step" or some such. Blues players will refer to their tunings by their traditional names (e.g., Vestapol, open D, drop-D), but again I've never heard a bluesman call a tuning "slacked." Hawaiians, on the other hand, will refer to, say, taropatch tuning, "slacked down" to F# or F or whatever. Whatever is going on with the "Slack tunings" entry, it has nothing to do with Hawaiian slack key guitar beyond a perhaps mistaken or idiosyncratic use of the word "slack." RLetson 05:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

That's basically what I was trying to say, only put more eloquently. I've never heard "slack tuning" except in reference to hawaiian guitar. I just thought it would be better to get rid of the slack tuning article, and have slack tuning queries redirected to slack key guitar. What the author seems to be on about I'd normally hear called drop(ped) tuning/ tuning down. Never sack tuning though, even if the strings are "slack". Personally, I have heard "slack tuning" reffered to in a blues context-But only in reference to some open tunings being used in both hawaiian style, and by blues lap steel players. In summary: "slack tuning" in metal/rock- Seems to be made up, and is another term for slack key guitar. Caoilte 4 August 2006

Pictures?

Re: the "Reqphoto" box above--Does anyone have public-domain photos that would work here? I'd favor one of the bust of Gabby, but the ones I know of are from the Honolulu newspapers or part of a site like Bla Pahinui's. Another possibility would be a concert photo of prominent older-generation players--the Gabby Band would be the obvious choice for me. Same problem here--I have access to all kinds of pix that belong to somebody else (record labels, newspapers, whathaveyou). RLetson 18:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

Huskymoon: Do you have a source for that material on tunings and church music? I've read everything I can find on the history and musicology of slack key and haven't come across that particular explanation before. If it's not source-able, I suspect it qualifies as the dreaded original research--and if it does have a source, I'd love to have the reference.

Blahedo: There's no single source for the assertion about which account most traditional Hawaiian players prefer--just read the interviews or the liner notes or listen and compare the stories offered in them with, say, Elizabeth Tatar's article on slack key in Hawaiian Music and Musicians. I take this to be one of those situations where an apparently unsourced comment is rooted in what anyone can see by looking at the field in question. RLetson 05:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Good points. You see Slack-Key is an *oral Tradition* and is transmitted from player to player. I don't think that this is original research. As Blahedo says it is found with most players today and in the liner notes. This is not classical Western music where everything is sourced. It is a hard fact that the "Taro Patch" which is the most used tuning is a major G tuning in 5th and 3rds. It is a fact that the classical guitar is tuned in 4th. It is also a fact that Western harmony came with the missionaries on a day to day use and had more influence than the others on Hawaiian music. It is a also a fact that the missionaries sang Church hymns and that those are mostly in major keys etc...The missionaries and their message as well as hymns created that melting pot, and the slack key guitar is part of it. All these elements are found in pieces. All are facts. HuskyMoon 09:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think we may have a difference of opinion about what constitutes original research here. The problem with the point being made is that it amounts to a conclusion based on a number of source-able facts. The fact that slack key is historically (and to some extent remains) an oral tradition makes dealing with some issues difficult--it is not a very well-researched area. As far as I can tell, though, the particular point presented in the revised lead paragraph has not been made in that form by any musicologist or other commentator--and that requirement is, frustrating as it is, one of the bases for a Wikipedia article. If Elizabeth Tatar or Amy Stillman or some other authority made this point, it would be fair game for inclusion here. But if it is a conclusion one of us has reached (however reasonably) after considering other already-established facts and ideas, then it amounts to original research. (In fact, it is exactly the kind of thing that many academics spend their careers doing.) Note the number of times the passage includes "because"--this is one sign of a line of argument being presented. In fact, I would suggest that there are other hypotheses that can account for the dominance of major and wahine tunings, but this article is not the place to put them forward--unless they are already part of a published historical/musicological discussion of the matter. I strongly suggest that we limit the contents of this paragraph to what is source-able. RLetson 18:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Slack key, harmonic theory, and terminology

HuskyMoon 18:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC) I tried to take a middle ground and refocus the first paragraph so that someone who has strummed a standard tuned guitar can rapidly get a handle of what slack key guitar is without talking about harmony. I left out the bit about the Wahine tuning being essentially a minor mode ( B minor 6th) as opposed to Taro Patch ( G Major). I hope that this helps.

I suspect that the harmonic-theory material added to the lead paragraph is erroneous--a major-seventh isn't the same as a minor; nor do I know of any slack key minor tunings. I don't see any reason to depart from the categories, terms, and explanations established by McClellan, Tatar, and Winston--they are certainly the ones that most readers will encounter in other writing about slack key, and I don't encounter the kind of scale-modes language common in rock discussions in descriptions or explanations of slack key. For this reason (and because the material really is not source-able) I would suggest removing those four sentences from the lead paragraph. RLetson 22:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that you may not be correct. Please consider the following. Let me me clarify how M7 and minor have a relationship. It has to do with inversions of minor chords. So a Wahine tuning, which is obtained by lowering the 3rd string G, half a step to F#, (in the Taro patch) is therefore D G D F# B D. To keep things simple, the way to slack-key tune is to take a classical guitar E A D G B E and detune the Es to D and the A to G. Taro Patch is a Major G chord with the Dominant as the root. Now If you started with a B minor chord you'd start with B D F#, invert it once, you get D F# B and a second time you get F# B D. Bingo... These are the exact three high notes of the Wahine tuning. So if you play those anywhere on the neck then you are playing "minor". It sounds nice with a metal slide... That is why Major 7th chords sound minor to many ears. The Wahine tuning has as its bass bottom note the D which is the "mode defining note" in the key of B (the one that says whether we are in a Major or minor mode) and that makes it even more clearly minor reinforcing the inverted B minor chord found in the three top notes. A Jazz player would call the Wahine tuning open chord: Bm6, or B minor with a 6th. Rameau would have written it 3 6 as a continuo chord (Let's remember that Rameau codified modern functional harmony and the notion of inversions as "variations" of core chords). How interesting.....So yes, a Major 7th chord is related the minor 6th chord built on it 3rd degree. These are some of the keys to the beauty and the "modernity/eternity" of Hawaiian music. Other famous musicians to exploit those connections besides Hawaiians: Debussy, Coltrane and all their later imitators. But you also do find this in many greats such as JS Bach (Art of the Fugue, Musical offering etc...). Sorry if that was a bit long. My point is that the piece about harmony in this article is more than correct and very simple. You won't find it in slack key tutorials because the challenge is that the books on slack key guitar are designed for people who usually have little formal music background and "just want to play". They mostly are tablature books and a whole discussion on harmony would make little sense. Nothing wrong with that. But as encyclopedists we are supposed to propose "All there is to know about". This is how the musicians in Hawaii speak of the music and this is why so many of the Hawaiian musicians make a living by crossing over back and forth between slack-key and jazz. That's the "alive" part of the Hawaiian musical scene. If we simply plagiarize what is in trivial tablature books of simplified slack key guitar books, or websites put up by record companies, we will have lost a lot of what is the essence of Hawaiian music: Fusion, sophistication and beauty through the most elegant simplicity. HuskyMoon 06:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

HuskyMoon 06:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC) We were having the following conversation I thought that it would be useful to quote it here:

Thought it might be useful to add a bit here about the slack key article rather than clutter up its Talk page with too much detail and discussion. The problem with your major/minor characterization of slack key tunings is not that it's wrong but that it really is original. I've spent more than ten years researching and writing about the music, and I don't recall anyone describing it in those terms. I'm not questioning the validity of this way of thinking about slack key, only pointing out that it really does appear to be an original way of doing so. The musicologists and musicians I have depended on talk about major, wahine, and sometimes Maunaloa tunings--never about modal tunings or scales. That's why I asked for your source--I have researched this for a long time, looking for the most authoritative technical accounts of the music and its background and never come across that particular way of explaining it. So--it's an interesting and maybe useful idea, but I don't think it's part of the field yet. RLetson 18:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. I wished that I was that smart and that original. Slack Key is really a Hawaiian form that later was exported to Tahiti and some of the rest of Polynesia. I don't think that there is great mystery about the fact that the Taro Patch is on open G Major chord and therefore the guitar is now playing and resonating major chords. Most Hawaiian music is made of I IV, I V I, etc progressions that are mostly Major progressions and are identical to the ones found in the Hymns that Hawaiians were corralled into churches to sing for the missionaries. The Wahine tuning lowers the G tonic to a Major 7th (That's the F#) and now creates harmonic motion that sounds a bit more Jazzy in particular in a II-V-IM7 cadence. Major7th feel minor to most ears as inversions of minor chords essentially. And Hawaiian slack key players referred to the Wahine tuning as minor in many cases. All the other modes of the Slack-Key guitar have their differences rooted in a harmonic touch that is related to setting the guitar in a mode where simple fingerings will "be in the mode". That is the fundamental difference with the classically tuned guitar in 4th, mode-less. This is an observation of the facts, not some revealed reality. It does involve understanding harmony and modes a bit. Nothing fancy though. HuskyMoon 20:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this explanation is that it isn't source-able--that is, I can't find any other account of the harmonic workings of slack key that puts it this way (I own every slack key instruction book except Ron Loo's), nor have I ever heard a player talk about it this way (including trained players like Dennis Kamakahi or Peter Medeiros). And that does present a problem in the Wiki context, since inevitably somebody is going to come along and stick a what's-the-source tag on that part of the paragraph. And as far as I can determine, they would be justified. RLetson 21:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand your point perfectly. There is a very good reason why every instruction book won't talk about harmony: They are written for people who are very inexperienced and in general know nothing about harmony, counterpoint, composition etc... In fact many of them don't have classical musical notation but use tablature instead. There is nothing wrong with that, but you can't hope peak their interest with formal discussion on harmony. The would not buy the tutor. It would be like giving a book to a blind person and telling them to read it. Not fair and not a useful exercise. I was noticing that in the present article you start with the Open D tuning and that is very are in Hawaii. Most of the playing is grounded in the Taro Patch and people tune and detune strings from there. Now how did all that happen? Well it's an oral tradition, but it goes with the fact that the fingerings on a guitar tuned in 4th are complex and challenging. By contrast, by retuning a few strings suddenly you had a nice major chord and the sub-dominant and dominant chords with trivial fingerings (you could even use a slide....) and you could accompany about every hymn without difficulty. Even the missionaries started encouraging it, it made Hawaiians sing more hymns. And Hawaiians started playing their own music... I am moving this discussion back to the slack key guitar page, I think that it is an important discussion if you don't mind. The Hawaiian people deserve their due for their cleverness in figuring out classical Western harmony and counterpoint.

Sorry--that chart isn't mine but the descendant of a list that was in the very first version of the article back in 2004. (I would have laid them out differently--probably following the McClellan-Winston classification system from the start.) Let me be as direct as I know how to be: The account of the development of slack key tunings suggested by the sentences added to the older lead paragraph do not match any published account I have seen. Nor do they use terminology used by any published commentator or scholar. I do not recall reading any discussions of either "modal" tunings (which elsewhere are often described as harmonically indeterminate rather than as major or minor) or minor tunings (I know of none in slack key). Such discussion and description appear nowhere in the instructional literature--and, in my experience, not in live instruction, either.

The issue is not whether these particular explanations are apt or accurate but whether they represent "verifiable content from reliable sources without further analysis." If I understand Wiki protocols correctly, information, theories, models, assertions, and so on that lack recognized and reliable published sources are not to be included in articles--it's a rule that, as an original researcher in a couple of fields, I often find confining, but it does seem to be one of the central rules. Here's the page, which I have had pointed out to me a couple times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

I really hope this doesn't come across as argumentative or contrary, but I am pretty familiar with what's been written about slack key, so I can spot a new interpretation or way talking about it very quickly. I hope we can work this out and develop an article that does justice to the music we both care about. RLetson 06:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I did take a stab at it. It's nice to make it simple for people. What I mean, with all the people who play guitar nowadays, it's nice if they can detune/tune to the Taro Patch (and we say how) and experiment. I tried that with kids and the results were surprising: They immediately were able to "sound Hawaiian". Usually the first that they do, they figure out what Hawaiians call turnarounds, which classical musicians call a dominant cadence or resolution. It's very nice to watch. So maybe through this article we'll get people to listen to Ray Kane and others and maybe more importantly to slack-key tune and try it out for themselves. Thank you for your help and guidance. HuskyMoon 12:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

More revisions

I have revised and expanded the material in the "Overview" section on how to tune to taro patch and integrated it with the "Techniques and Tunings" section lower down--this has the effect of eliminating the section but preserving some of the content. I also cut some material from there as not immediately relevant (for example, the historical roots of standard tuning) or not source-able (the proposition that slack key tunings, particularly taro patch, had a strong connection to church music). The musical-technical material really needs to be in one section and to strike a balance between too little and too much technical stuff. I also tweaked a few sentences in the History section. RLetson 06:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I need your help, i added a tuning in the "common tuning" table, i know for a fact that this tuning is used but i don't know what it's called so i just simply put ???, if anyone knows, please edit in the name —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rockr80 (talk • contribs) 03:31, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Other players

I removed a recent mention of Jim West, not because he does not deserve mention but because the insertion was abrupt and gives the impression of a promotional effort. Here's the edited-out section:

Canadian Jim "Kimo" West, perhaps better known as guitarist with "Weird Al" Yankovic, has released 3 slack-key albums, making him one of few well-known non-Hawaiian slack-key guitarists.

I suspect the intent was to show the spread of slack key outside of Hawai`i, and if that's the case, a connecting/transitional phrase would be in order, for example: "The tradition has gained followers beyond ethnic Hawaiians and residents of the Islands: for example, players X, Y, and Z have released albums." Among the players I would include in such a list would be Yuki Yamauchi (a student of Ray Kane's and big advocate of Hawaiian music in Japan). In fact, this point probably deserves its own paragraph, with some context-setting that includes the early attentions of Dave Guard (Hawaiian raised), Chet Atkins, and other players better known for their non-slack-key efforts. In such a context, the Jim West material would seem less intrusive. RLetson 16:20, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

A bit of reworking

Partly in response to players being inserted in the text without enough setup, I've done a little reworking to provide a context/framework for such additions. I don't know why I didn't include the three women earlier--they're all noteworthy as musicians and in Haunani Apoliona's case also important in general cultural matters. Non-Hawaiian players are also becoming enough of a part of the story to get some attention, and while I do not think this article should turn into an endless list of everybody who plays slack key everywhere, there may be room for another representative or two to show how the tradition is spreading. A third category that might be added is the newest generation of players: George Kahumoku's 30-something son Keoki, 20-something Makana (who studied with Sonny Chillingworth); and teenaged Danny Carvalho (a student of Ozzie Kotani's) and Brittni Pavia. There are probably others I haven't thought of as well. RLetson 17:55, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Earliest recorded slack key

Editor Phutchi12 inserted a "disputed" comment into the body of the entry after the assertion that slack key "was not even recorded until 1946-47": "DISPUTED - SEE SOL HOOPII." If this means "see the WP entry on Sol Ho`opi`i for evidence to the contrary," there is no mention of slack key there. If it means "there are sources that indicate that Sol Ho`opi`i recorded slack key earlier than 1946-47," then those sources need to be cited. Pending that, I removed the comment. RLetson (talk) 23:27, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous issues

Been a while since I last visited this article, and I notice a number of problems, a couple of which I've fixed. 1) All the accounts I can find identify the cowboys imported to manage Kamehameha's cattle as Mexican or Californian (at the time not really a distinction), not Portuguese; 2) they arrived in the early 19th century; and 3) the Hawaiian music craze of the early 20th century is distinct from "Tiki culture," and I removed that Wikilink. When I have the time, I'll restore the sources for those. (They're actually already present in the references and need only update-checks and links.) RLetson (talk) 19:09, 3 May 2023 (UTC)