Joel Offers Steel Guitar Lessons at Maui College and Online
Akaka Falls
This is my new format for steel guitar lessons in my college class. I show melody, notation, and the bottom line is a tablature for an accompaniment idea.
Here’s an example of the lovely Akaka Falls:
My Yellow Ginger Lei C6 High G Lap Steel
Here is my revised version of My Yellow Ginger Lei. This is a beginner chart for a simple introduction to Hawaiian Steel Guitar. Note my High G Tuning. If you use standard C6 you could just shift all notes over one string. Email me if you need help. I also have a practice track, accompaniment ideas, and Hawaiian Style chord shapes.
White Sandy Beach Ukulele
This is the Iz version of this song. We were working on it in my ukulele class today at Maui college. There are a few variations in timing that Iz does that seem to throw people off when it is played. My song charts have measure lines that show you how many beats chords are played. There are 4 beats between measure lines. A low G string will give you the correct sound and a repetitive picking pattern of strings 4321 will get you fairly close to the feel.
Miloli’i
Here’s tablature and a Demo of my lesson for Miloli’i for lap steel. Contact me for chord shapes for vocal accompaniment.
Keanae
This is a Fun and fairly simple song I did in my Hawaiian Steel Guitar class this semester. I show the melody in tablature and also some positions to accompany the vocal. We use a C6 tuning with a High G string, a very versatile tuning for Hawaiian music. High to low it is G E C A G E. Just shift things over by one string if you are in standard C6. I recommend Dennis Pavao’s version as a reference.
Puamana
I’ll be doing quite a bit more work on my steel guitar lessons. I am going to teach in a C6 tuning with a High G string. This tuning has an advantage over the standard C6 tuning, in my opinion, for accompaniment and chord solos for Hawaiian style. You can adapt this to a standard C6 tuning by moving everything over one string. Pairs of notes played on strings 1 and 2 can be found seven frets higher on strings 2 and 3 in standard C6. Herein lies the advantage of the High G tuning. We sacrifice the low C for the higher notes we need 95% more of the time, and we get them without having to jump up 7 frets.