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Slack-key guitar (from Hawaiian kī hōʻalu, which means "loosen the [tuning] key") is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaii. This style of guitar playing, which has been used for centuries, involves altering the standard tuning on a guitar from E-A-D-G-B-E, so that strumming across the open strings will then sound a ...
Among alternative tunings for the guitar, an open G tuning is an open tuning that features the G-major chord; its open notes are selected from the notes of a G-major chord, such as the G-major triad (G,B,D). For example, a popular open-G tuning is D–G–D–G–B–D (low to high).
The repertory is rooted in traditional, post-Contact Hawaiian song and dance, but since 1946 (when the first commercial slack key recordings were made) the style has expanded, and some contemporary compositions have a distinctly new-age sound. Slack key's older generation included Gabby Pahinui, Leonard Kwan, Sonny Chillingworth and Raymond Kāne.
The suspended fourth chord is often played inadvertently, or as an adornment, by barring an additional string from a power chord shape (e.g., E5 chord, playing the second fret of the G string with the same finger barring strings A and D); making it an easy and common extension in the context of power chords.
George Kahumoku Jr. is a Grammy Award-winning Hawaiian musician specializing in slack-key guitar. Born in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, he was labeled as "Hawaii's Renaissance Man" by Nona Beamer because of his far reaching talents: farmer, author, musician and composer, sculptor and artist, and Hawaiian cultural practitioner, particularly as it relates to the land or 'aina.
In 1975, Kotani enrolled in Peter Medeiros' slack key guitar class at the University of Hawaii Continuing Education program. In 1976, Kotani began to study privately with slack key legend Sonny Chillingworth. Kotani returned to the University of Hawai'i program in 1986 to teach and pass on his knowledge of the Hawaiian slack key style to others.
Alternative variants are easy from this tuning, but because several chords inherently omit the lowest string, it may leave some chords relatively thin or incomplete with the top string missing (the D chord, for instance, must be fretted 5-4-3-2-3 to include F♯, the tone a major third above D). Baroque guitar standard tuning – a–D–g–b–e
With the "slack-key" the Hawaiians found it easy to play a three-chord song by moving a piece of metal along the fretboard and began to play the instrument across the lap. Near the end of the nineteenth century, a Hawaiian named Joseph Kekuku became proficient in playing this way using a steel bar against the guitar strings.