When he’s not playing lead guitar touring and recording with “Weird Al” Yankovic, Grammy winning musician Jim “Kimo” West pursues his love for Hawaiian slack key guitar. Releasing ...

I learned that the term slack-key is both a style of playing and a unique tuning. The guitar is tuned from standard (E, A, D, G, B, E) to essentially an open G chord (D, G, D, G, B, D). When Kaapana ...

Tunings are the foundation of slack key, and no slack-key album is complete without them. West includes the tunings he used and also lists the changes he made in the basic tunings on individual songs.

Slack key, which gets its name from the unique tunings caused by “slacking” the guitar strings, is a soothing style full of relaxed beauty and is one Hawai’i’s most revered musical traditions.

Already a devotee of playing in altered, non- standard tunings, he quickly fell in lo ve with the gentle spirit of slack key and the great sense of discovery that comes with exploring new tunings.

Raised at his grandfather’s ranch in Waimea, legendary Hawaiian musician Keola Beamer and his wife kuma hula Moanalani returned home to kick off the Kahilu’s 2022-23 season in grand style.

“Slack-key was originally called ‘ki-ho’alu, which means to loosen the key, or put it in an open tuning, tuned to a single chord, which generally isn’t done in western music. Hawaii was ...

George Winston’s Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters series established a high standard for slack key recordings in the 1990s by making it standard procedure to list the slack key tunings used in ...

Eccentric and eclectic -- two words that have been used to describe George Winston. On Wednesday night Winston -- a solo guitar, piano and harmonic artist and producer of Hawaiian slack-key guitar ...

Express contributor Russell Carlson previews Wolf Trap’s two-day Slack Key Guitar showcase. PLEASE DON’T LET a few bad Elvis movies, Don Ho and/or those misspent nights at the local tiki bar ...