Slack Key: Tears On The Moon (C Wahine)by Neil Hogan

Tears On The Moon is a slack key guitar piece I wrote a few years ago, shortly after my wife’s grandmother passed away unexpectedly. We were in Hawaii at the time and I was playing a few songs in C Wahine Tuning (C G D G B E). This is a tuning commonly used by Keola Beamer, sometimes referred to as Keola’s C. It is a short piece consisting of a couple of 8-measure phrases arranged in an A-A-B-A form, with a 4-measure intro and outro. There are a few subtle, but difficult techniques as well as some big stretches required to turn these easy notes into music and it is very challenging, in spite of the fact that it is played pretty slowly.