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So, the Hawaiians created their own tuning.”
#Slack key guitar how to
“When they left, they left their guitars, but forgot to teach the Hawaiians how to tune them.
![slack key guitar slack key guitar](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OLmhCgXgq1k/maxresdefault.jpg)
“When the Mexican cowboys came to the Big Island to help the Hawaiians upgrade their cattle, they brought their guitars,” he said. Why did the Hawaiians create this unique tuning? As Kaapana explains, it was out of necessity. Prominent rock groups such as Creed and Alter Bridge are well known for using this tuning, but I had no idea it was originally developed by native Hawaiians. When Kaapana explained this tuning structure, I recalled that I had played with the same tuning before. The guitar is tuned from standard (E, A, D, G, B, E) to essentially an open G chord (D, G, D, G, B, D). I learned that the term slack-key is both a style of playing and a unique tuning. In 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts had awarded him the country’s highest honor for excellence in the traditional arts, the National Heritage Fellowship, and I was responsible for partnering with ethnomusicologist Mark Puryear to interview him for an upcoming project with the NEA. As a guitar player myself, I was curious to hear him perform in the Story Circle at the Folklife Festival.Īs it turned out, that day’s performance wasn’t the only time I would encounter Kaapana. Ledward “Led” Kaapana is a ukulele virtuoso, but to my ear, he shines brightest when playing slack-key guitar. When I think of Hawaiian music, I first think of the ukulele, but slack-key guitar is just as uniquely Hawaiian. Camera: Sean Baker, Alexis Ligon, Emma Cregan