Hawaiian Guitar

It's important to note that there's more to "Hawaiian Guitar" than just your run-of-the-mill Nashville lap steel guitar. Due to its popularization in Hawaiian music during the mid-century, and the fact that Hawaiians may well be responsible for inventing it, the steel guitar is often referred to as the "Hawaiian guitar". However, the term can also mean Hawaii's distinctive "slack-key" guitar tradition.

Hawaiian slack-key guitar uses a variety of alternate tunings on a steel-strung acoustic guitar (not to be confused with a steel guitar), usually with one or more strings significantly lowered, giving it the "slack" in the name.

It also incorporates a fingerpicking style that shares a kinship with country&western fingerpicking style, but is by no means synonymous.

I'm not aware of any loop libraries with slack-key riffs, zibba, but if I spot one I'll pop back over here and let you know.

Meanwhile, this list of popular slack-key tunings might help you to get something closely approximating the Hawaiian slack-key sound out of some EXS24 steel-string acoustic guitar samples.

http://www.dancingcat.com/skbook4a-tuningchart.php

May I suggest you do a web search (maybe wikipedia) and learn about the mechanics of the guitar, i.e., how the pedals function. This might help you simulate the sound more accurately.

Or if you don't want to get that deep into it, use pitch bend to simulate slides, but limit the number of notes you play to 2 or 3 max.

Actually, there's not much bending in slack-key technique. The bendy slide sound is more of a steel-guitar tehnique.

Slack key does have some slides in it, but they're "finger slides", where the player slides a note or chord up the fingerboard to another fret position. Because of the frets, this doesn't make as much of a bending sound.

Search for "Slack-Key Guitar Masters" on the iTunes music store...that album will give you a good reference for the slack-key sound.

And if you really want to pile on the Hawaiian sound, blend some slack key sounds with steel guitar bends and some ukulele. Big Fish Audio's Liquid Guitar has some content that might help you on the slide steel guitar aspect. http://www.bigfishaudio.com/4DCGI/detail.html?185

Actually, there's not much bending in slack-key
technique. The bendy slide sound is more of a
steel-guitar tehnique.

Slack key does have some slides in it, but they're
"finger slides", where the player slides a note or
chord up the fingerboard to another fret position.
Because of the frets, this doesn't make as much of a
bending sound.

Right. I know it's not the same as sliding a finger on strings over frets, but the closest you can come to simulting this effect is using pitch bend. Sometimes... 🙂

Do a search in apple loop browser for "nashville"

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