Kaleponi

I must admit that my enjoyment of audio and video technology is right up there with my enthusiasm for Hawaiian music – well, close anyway. Here are a couple of videos I’ve done recently that were explorations of tech as well as slack key.

Back in July I my iPhone 6 died of screen ghosts, taking over the typing for me but rarely saying anything useful. The repair cost was absurd so I started shopping around and discovered the wonderful world of refurb! It seems that Gazelle is a widely recommended site for refurbished phones and the like and sure enough they had some tempting stuff to offer. I wound up with an iPhone XS Max loaded with memory for less than the repair of my old phone.

One of the big benefits of the XS generation is a nice camera upgrade and I decided it was time to try shooting a slack key video using my “new”-ish phone. I went a little further and used my iRig Pro Duo audio interface to capture the audio in the phone along with the video. Since I was on an “oldies but goodies” track with the phone I pulled out one of my oldie but goodie guitars, a Composite Acoustics OX from the early days of the company. And to complete the package I dug around in the mic collection and came up with some vintage and now discontinued Audio Technica AT3035 microphones.

The musical selection I chose was Yellow Bird, a song associated with Hawai`i by the Arthur Lyman Group instrumental recording in 1961. The popularity of the song helped it cross over into slack key with a version by Leonard Kwan. It turns out that the song was originally composed with French lyrics and called Choucoune so I added that title to my instrumental version.

My next tech exploration was earlier this week, going back to my usual Panasonic Lumix mirrorless cameras. This time I was interested in trying to record audio along with video using my Lumix GH5. Over the years I’ve usually recorded audio using a separate recorder and joining the audio and video in post production because the cameras I was using delivered relatively poor audio quality. But the latest generations seem to have upgraded their audio system and I happened to have some mics that were perfect for connecting straight into camera.

Back in the 1990s the Schoeps microphone company created a modular mic amp they called the CMBI, designed to connect to the DAT recorders of the day. These are battery powered and can be cabled to connect through a mini TRS stereo plug. The great advantage of the CMBI is its compatibility with the Schoeps Colette system of capsules which include omni, cardioid, wide cardioid, hypercardioid, bidirectional, and even multi-pattern capsules. With the CMBI mic amps I could connect a pair of MK41 hypercardioid capsules to my Lumix GH5 and deliver very high quality audio straight into the camera. I chose my very first original slack key composition for the clip, Waialua Slack Key.

This time I put new strings on my beloved Kathy Wingert Model EC, tuned to taropatch open G, and tried to capture some of the sweet nahenahe that makes slack key so compelling.

On one level it’s a bit odd to blather about technology in a slack key blog, but without modern tech I probably would never have discovered this wonderful music. And without the tech I would not be able to share the music with people around the globe. So I’m going to continue doing both – playing slack key and exploring technology in order to add a little sweetness to our world.