I ran into Jim “Kimo” West at the SoCal Slack Key Festival in Redondo Beach on Sunday, and he turned me on to a great app for the iPhone and iPad (not sure if it’s available for Android phones as well – anyone know?). It’s called Guitar Toolkit, and if you’re a musician and you own an i-device, it’s a must have. Among other features, it can display chord shapes in any tuning, so when the manual isn’t handy…
Check it out on iTunes. It costs $10 and it’s worth it!
By all accounts, Sunday’s SoCal Slack Key Festival at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center was a great success. Major props to Mitch Chang, the show’s producer, for not only putting together a great show, but also for finding ways to continue to improve the production each year.
This year, crafty Mitch even slipped in a couple of non-slack key guitarists, an arguably risky move that ended up adding well-received variety to the show and showcasing two excellent finger-style acoustic musicians: Ed Gerhard and Jeff Linsky.
On the Hawaiian side, we enjoyed the music of Cyril Pahinui, Steve Espaniola, Sonny & Lorna Lim, Hi’ikua, Jim “Kimo West, Nathan Aweau, Shawn Ishimoto, and Kalyn Aolani. An amazing array of talent that we got to enjoy for nearly 5 hours!
A few years back, even before I had heard much about slack key guitar, I developed an interest in modal tunings for the five-string banjo. With a decent background in music theory, I could figure out chord positions at various positions along the neck for a given tuning, but it was a time-consuming process, and I’m not the most patient person in the world. Continue reading
