Neal - RE: Taro Patch

[Idunno]

Check this slack-key inquiry I made into the Hawaiian music after listening to a member on another forum put up an example of a piece I thought interesting. Is this Taro patch a direct reference to the ukelele tuning you use in the vein of the genre, or is it just a name for a particular type of uke? Also, is it simply a detuning of a guitar to an open tuning that begets the name slack-key? IOW, slackening the tuners to obtain a new tuning? That's what it appears to be defining but it doesn't seem to be rigid in declaring a particular tuning to qualify as such. While it defines taro patch as an open G, it names additional tunings as wahine. Do you get into much of this with the guitar or just with the uke?

 

 

Wiki-snip -

 

"Techniques and tunings Kī hōʻalu is often characterized by the use of an alternating-bass pattern, usually played by the thumb on the lower two or three strings of the guitar, while the melody is played on the three or four highest strings, using any number of fingers. Many kī hōʻalu players incorporate various embellishments such as harmonics (chimes), the hammer-on, the pull-off, slides, and damping. Slack key compositions exhibit characteristics from indigenous Hawaiian and imported musical traditions. The vamp or turnaround (a repeated figure, usually at the end of a verse) is descended from the hula tradition, and other harmonic and structural features are descended from hīmeni and from the hula kuʻi encouraged by King David Kalakaua.^[6]

Nearly all slack key requires retuning the guitar strings from the standard EADGBE, and this usually means lowering or "slacking" several strings. The result is most often a major chord, although it can also be a major-seventh chord, a sixth, or (rarely) a minor. There are examples of slack key played in standard tuning, but the overwhelming majority of recorded examples use altered tunings. The most common slack key tuning, called "taro patch," makes a G major chord. Starting from the standard EADGBE, the high and low E strings are lowered or "slacked" to D and the fifth string from A down to G, so the notes become DGDGBD. As the chart below shows, there are also major-chord tunings based on C, F, and D.

Another important group of tunings, based on major-seventh chords, is called "wahine". G wahine, for example, starts with taro patch and lowers the third string from G to F♯, making DGDF♯BD. Wahine tunings have their own characteristic vamps (as in, for example, Raymond Kāne's "Punahele" or Gabby Pahinui's 1946 "Hula Medley") and require fretting one or two strings to form a major chord. A third significant group is Mauna Loa tunings, in which the highest pair of strings are a fifth apart: Gabby Pahinui often played in C Mauna Loa, CGEGAE.

George Winston has identified fifty slack key tunings^[7] Some are only commonly used for a single song, or by particular players. Mike McClellan and George Winston have developed similar schemes that organize the tunings by key and type. The chart below follows their categories and naming conventions."

 

[Neal]

Those wacky Hawaiians, remember to use your pidgin accent when pronouncing things, kinda like a cross between northern Minnesota and Hollywood's idea of American Indian. And say mahalo a lot. Anyway, there's the tuning and the type of uke, which has come to mean any uke with 8 strings, the original Taropatch uke having a 15" (concert) scale, normally tuned standard, gcea, sometimes with a few octave strings. I have a nice example of a '20s Martin tuned a step down, fa#dg, or "fat dog" tuning (I just made that name up, just like those crazy islanders). It is in unisons.

[Idunno]

This is good, then, because I can now simply use the term Slack-Key for any alternate tuning.