Listen & Learn: Keola Beamer Teaches - Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar

This instructional 40 page Tablature/Music Book plus CD from Keola Beamer and Homespun Tapes is a marvelous addition to the collection of guitarists of all levels.

Here's the perfect introduction to "slack key," a picking style in traditional alternate tunings that's a cross between country fingerpicking and classical guitar. The music, which can be played on any guitar, has a lush sound that is instantly evocative of the islands of the Pacific.

Keola Beamer, a member of one of Hawaii's most illustrious musical families and a master of slack key guitar, has chosen five traditional pieces -- "Isa Lei," "Mino'aka," "Moana's Laundry Basket," "Papa's Okolehau" and "I Ka Po Me Ke Ao" -- and teaches them in depth in this marvelous CD/book package. His tunes employ a variety of techniques, including the use of vibrato, harmonics, slurs, harmonies in thirds and sixths, legato playing and other musical ideas that help create a distinctive and beautiful guitar sound.

From Keola:

One of my first insights into the world of ki ho'alu - the Hawaiian slack key guitar - occurred when I was quite young. It taught me to see the art form not so much as a skill or technique, but rather as the gentle unfolding of life.

Many years ago, I sat on the porch with my grandfather. In the growing afternoon shadows, we listened to me sound of the wind and watched as it moved upon the open fields. I was a young man then and I had many questions about life. My questions were not very important and to this day I have absolutely no recollection of what they concerned. Still, I chattered on incessantly, looking to my grandfather for empathy and guidance. On that day, the old man didn't feel like speaking, so I slowly ceased talking and as the shadows of the clouds tumbled across the pasture, I sat quietly with my grandfather on those old wooden steps listening to the beautiful, soft sound of the wind.

It went on like that for quite a while, neither of us speaking, until my grandfather took out the guitar. Then, from the chords shimmering and deep, a melody began to appear. Soon there was a stirring bass line, with the melody framed in a sort of halo. The music seemed to grow more radiant and more evocative as the old man played on. It was as if the individual notes of his guitar had suddenly taken on a life of their own, luminescent in the evening air.

I wondered if my grandfather was trying to tell me something. Something that I couldn't quite get. "What's really happening here?" I asked myself. So I looked into my grandfather's eyes and for the first time in my life I saw him really reaching out to me.

I quieted the foolish questions in my mind. I opened my heart.

It was a beautiful story. I heard of his love for the world, for his family, for my grandmother, for me. I heard of his conquests and disappointments. As he continued to play, this singing strings beneath his hands spoke of the qualities of life that fulfilled him and the little things he yearned for still.

Today, the strings of that old guitar still sing in the deepest part of me. It seems a wonderful irony that my grandfather could have revealed so much of himself to me, yet had not spoken a single word. In that brief period of time I learned a great deal about the man of whose flesh and blood I was.

When Happy Traum of Homespun Tapes first spoke to me about the project, he mentioned the series title "Listen and Learn". I smiled and flew back across the years. In an instant I was there on that old porch, "listening and learning." The series title, is for me, an appropriate distillation of that experience of so many years ago.

Hawaiians have a similar concept of learning:

Pa'a ka waha - close the mouth (remember my questions on the porch?)

Ho'olohe - listen

Nana i ke kumu - look to the source and learn.

It is important to me that you understand that this book is not about me or my life's story. It is rather about yours. I will be your kumu (source), and together we will gather the tools you will need to help you form the skills to make this journey.

Perhaps someday, I will be fortunate enough to hear you play, for I believe that in the strings, your own story will unfold. Flying like the 'iwa bird and radiant in the cool evening air.

Keola Beamer
Kamuela, Hawai'i

Price $19.95 plus shipping