User talk:HuskyMoon

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[edit] Please Leave Messages here

75.208.254.38 13:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC) Husky, I really liked your note about market caps. So I sense that you must be really aware of corporate finance. Are you a finance person? Maybe an investment banker? Then I read your page. The color doesn't suggest a strong male presence. Maybe more a feminine one? Hawaii. Humm.... Who are you?

Thank you. I am a person that is a great fan of the Encyclopedie. Hawaii is a big part of my heart. Honolulu is my favorite city in the world. Thanks for asking. HuskyMoon 01:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

HuskyMoon 11:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC) On a different subject, I am new at the Wiki project as a "participant". I am working on a couple of proposed entries focused on the arts and sports but need to find the time. I do participate in things that interest me such as camera phones, iphones etc... Mostly in the discussion.

[edit] My Contributions

Flute: Work with the team

Debussy: Work with the team

slack key: Work with the team and small consensus-based edits

Smartphone: Work with the team and small consensus-based edits

sailing canoe: Write and document Polynesian sailing canoes

iPhone: Work with the team and small consensus-based edits

camera phone: Clean up self-promoting patent cataloging help keep a civil protocol

[edit] About slack key

Thought it might be useful to add a bit here about the slack key article rather than clutter up its Talk page with too much detail and discussion. The problem with your major/minor characterization of slack key tunings is not that it's wrong but that it really is original. I've spent more than ten years researching and writing about the music, and I don't recall anyone describing it in those terms. I'm not questioning the validity of this way of thinking about slack key, only pointing out that it really does appear to be an original way of doing so. The musicologists and musicians I have depended on talk about major, wahine, and sometimes Maunaloa tunings--never about modal tunings or scales. That's why I asked for your source--I have researched this for a long time, looking for the most authoritative technical accounts of the music and its background and never come across that particular way of explaining it. So--it's an interesting and maybe useful idea, but I don't think it's part of the field yet. RLetson 18:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. I wished that I was that smart and that original. Slack Key is really a Hawaiian form that later was exported to Tahiti and some of the rest of Polynesia. I don't think that there is great mystery about the fact that the Taro Patch is on open G Major chord and therefore the guitar is now playing and resonating major chords. Most Hawaiian music is made of I IV, I V I, etc progressions that are mostly Major progressions and are identical to the ones found in the Hymns that Hawaiians were corralled into churches to sing for the missionaries. The Wahine tuning lowers the G tonic to a Major 7th (That's the F#) and now creates harmonic motion that sounds a bit more Jazzy in particular in a II-V-IM7 cadence. Major7th feel minor to most ears as inversions of minor chords essentially. And Hawaiian slack key players referred to the Wahine tuning as minor in many cases. All the other modes of the Slack-Key guitar have their differences rooted in a harmonic touch that is related to setting the guitar in a mode where simple fingerings will "be in the mode". That is the fundamental difference with the classically tuned guitar in 4th, mode-less. This is an observation of the facts, not some revealed reality. It does involve understanding harmony and modes a bit. Nothing fancy though. HuskyMoon 20:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem with this explanation is that it isn't source-able--that is, I can't find any other account of the harmonic workings of slack key that puts it this way (I own every slack key instruction book except Ron Loo's), nor have I ever heard a player talk about it this way (including trained players like Dennis Kamakahi or Peter Medeiros). And that does present a problem in the Wiki context, since inevitably somebody is going to come along and stick a what's-the-source tag on that part of the paragraph. And as far as I can determine, they would be justified. RLetson 21:49, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand your point perfectly. There is a very good reason why every instruction book won't talk about harmony: They are written for people who are very inexperienced and in general know nothing about harmony, counterpoint, composition etc... In fact many of them don't have classical musical notation but use tablature instead. There is nothing wrong with that, but you can't hope peak their interest with formal discussion on harmony. The would not buy the tutor. It would be like giving a book to a blind person and telling them to read it. Not fair and not a useful exercise. I was noticing that in the present article you start with the Open D tuning and that is very are in Hawaii. Most of the playing is grounded in the Taro Patch and people tune and detune strings from there. Now how did all that happen? Well it's an oral tradition, but it goes with the fact that the fingerings on a guitar tuned in 4th are complex and challenging. By contrast, by retuning a few strings suddenly you had a nice major chord and the sub-dominant and dominant chords with trivial fingerings (you could even use a slide....) and you could accompany about every hymn without difficulty. Even the missionaries started encouraging it, it made Hawaiians sing more hymns. And Hawaiians started playing their own music... I am moving this discussion back to the slack key guitar page, I think that it is an important discussion if you don't mind. The Hawaiian people deserve their due for their cleverness in figuring out classical Western harmony and counterpoint. HuskyMoon 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)