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"Tuning
Your World To Aloha!" Photo
Courtesy of Steve Alterman Doug & Sandy McMaster's Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar & Ukulele |
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Menehune magic in play! The Scott Cao Guitar & Stephen Woodcock About two years ago now, a lovely couple from Canada came to a concert. Stephen and Hannah Woodcock. Stephen and Doug hit it off right away. As a luthier of violins with a music store, they had lots to talk about. Especially intonation and tone of guitars. Stephen did special setup and work on all the guitars coming into his shop to ensure accurate intonation. If a guitar is made and setup correctly... and has good strings on it, it should hold the exact same tuning as the player moves up the fretboard. Even humidity changes can affect intonation. When intonation is 'off' and the strings are not quite accurate in tuning as the string is fretted up and down the neck, people with finely tuned hearing will be bothered by the discrepancies.Stephen asked Doug about using classical style nylong stringed guitars with slack key. Of course Doug explained how much he loves playing slack key on nylon string guitars. He'd play them more at concerts except he likes to demonstrate multiple tunings and the nylon strings complicate it. Nylon strings have 'memory' and so if you change tunings it will take awhile for the strings to remember the new tuning. After retuning, while playing the next song, the nylon strings will try to return to the original tuning... and be out of tune in the middle of the song... a nightmare for particular performers. Stephen told Doug he had the perfect guitar for him back in his shop. It had just come in recently, had perfect intonation, and the warm tone we like. After returning home, Stephen called Doug and they talked about the guitar. Stephen offered a great price because he wanted Doug to have the guitar. We were on a shoestring budget at the time and had to wait a few months before we could commit to buy the guitar. Well a few months passed. A couple came to the show with the wife's dad. Very nice people. Turned out to be Meg and Bob Woodcock. Yep, you guessed it... Bob is Stephen's brother. They had just come back from Canada. Bob and Meg came bearing sad news as Stephen had just passed away. Stephen had wanted Doug to have the guitar and we worked it out for Hannah to ship it to Kauai. It's a beautiful instrument with a wonderful voice. It's the guitar used in Menehune Night Prelude and Menehune Night on the Hanalei Tradition CD. These two songs are very special as they were given to Doug late one night when the Menehune were about and their special magic was in the air. Perhaps Stephen was even there. Now this guitar's voice will bring you messages from the ancestors and the Menehune through these special songs. Recorded in the night, "live", you'll hear the wind in the trees, crickets, feel the moon rise, and hear the ocean in the distance. Enjoy! Ho'olohe no pepeiao... Listen carefully and pay attention.  |
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