Do you like how Hawaiian music sounds? Do you feel frustrated that you can’t capture that sound yourself? Your tuning effects how the guitar sounds. Read more to learn how to tune C wahine like a Hawaiian.
In Tune Your Guitar Like a Hawaiian we discussed how Hawaiian slack key guitar draws its sound from the player’s tuning. Specifically, slack key players will get into alternate tunings by strumming the open strings while turning the pegs. However, they don’t compare fretted unison notes with the open strings as they adjust the machine heads.
When you get into standard tuning using unison notes, the frets push the guitar into equal temperament (ET). This means that C wahine will have a different sound than standard tuning, because the notes fall outside ET. For full details, you can review these posts:
In today’s post, we’ll look at tuning up C wahine.
(This article uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.)