Hawaiian Stress Reduction

Our friend, Brandy, recently asked which music "refills your well". I may have missed the point a little in the comments. I included "feel good" types of music in addition to the inspiring, soul-filling kinds. But sometimes I have to work up on inspiring, "fill the well" music with less lofty or contemplative, but still recuperative, music.

When Sister Lee was here, we became more familiar with Hawaian music and instruments. Just being around Hawaiians can help you take on a more relaxed attitude. . The music also tends to reflect this. We bought some IZ, ukulele and slack key guitar CDs. We even bought some ukuleles.

Here are some examples of music from, or with some tenuous connection to, Hawaii or Hawaiian instruments. All are good for taking the edge off the stresses in your life. Here's some slack-string guitar, where even the strings are tuned to low-stress. For fun, some ukulele background. Heavy metal from Hawaii. Slack key taropatch ukulele if you don't want your ukulele strings to be uptight. Baritone uke in slack key. Arthur Godfrey sometimes played a baritone ukulele with Ukulele Ike. Here, Ike does a little ukulele, plus the complete version of "When you wish upon a star", which he performed for Disney.

The Baritone ukulele is tuned like the four highest strings of a guitar when not in one of the slack keys. I figured that four strings would be easier to handle than 5 if I wanted to learn to play. I already have enough trouble with guitars because they seem backward from a piano. The strings on a baritone uke are spaced about as far apart as guitar strings, so guitar players can transfer a lot of their knowledge directly to this instrument.

And of course for real feel-good music, there's that Hawaiian institution, IZ (Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole) performing Over the Rainbow, some beach party music, and a couple of my favorite hulas.