Ledward Kaapana - Weeha Swing

One of the great joys of my life these days is hanging with the inimitable Mr. Ledward Kaapana when he tours Northern California. On his current visit he spent an afternoon and evening in my little home recording studio exploring a Tacoma Papoose. Needless to say I really enjoyed having a video subject of Ledward's talent and charm.

Led has played Sonny Chillingworth's "Weeha Swing" for many years, but I don't think his flying fingers have been captured in an HD closeup too often. On this occasion Led started hitting his stride before I got my lights and cameras fully deployed, but as I often say, "It's better to be lucky than good." The trusty Panasonic Lumix ZS3 was in just the right spot to capture the dancing digits and the smile.

The Papoose is a short scale six (or twelve) string guitar, now out of production I believe. This particular instrument was originally owned by Bay Area slack key master, Patrick Landeza. He selected it from the assembly line at Tacoma a number of years ago. He recently passed this rare and lovely P6K Papoose along to me. Led was charmed by it from the instant he picked it up and the result has been hours of gorgeous music. He's tried at least four different tunings on it so far, and it sings in all of them with Mr. Kaapana conducting. In this video he's playing a B-Flat version of G wahine. From low to high,

In G:

D / G / D / F Sharp / B / D

In B Flat (as played in the video) :

F / B Flat / F / A / D / F

In relative scale degrees:

V / I / V / VII / III / V (if that helps).

I eventually deployed four cameras for this shoot, and spent a couple of days on an elaborate "show-off" editing job with clips from three of them. Today I happened to remember the fourth clip and when Led and I looked at it we agreed instantly that this was the one. So the fancy edits went on the bit-pile and you get one straight camera shot, complete with a bit of my elbow.

The audio was recorded direct, from an unknown passive pickup through one of Led's favorite toys, the Boss DD-5 digital delay. I used an M-Audio DMP3 for a DI, and captured with an Echo Audiofire 8 into Reaper.

Stay in touch with Ledward's performance schedule at http://www.ledkaapana.com/concerts.htm

Please pay a visit to my slack key site, http://www.kaleponi.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• slack
• key
• guitar
• acoustic
• hawaiian
• music
• led
• ledward
• kaapana
• kaleponi
• tacoma
• papoose
• panasonic
• lumix
• zs3
• wahine
• tuning

[Uhmsters]

do you recommend the echo audiofire series?

[franguidry]

@Uhmsters Well, working with Firewire can be a pain, but aside from that I do prefer the Echo Audiofire over other audio interfaces I have tried.

Fran

[Uhmsters]

@franguidry why is Firewire a pain? 

[franguidry]

@Uhmsters Apparently some of the manufacturers of chipsets failed to implement the spec properly, and those parts are the most common on motherboard level FW interfaces. So even if you have FW on your motherboard, you still need an adapter with a "good" (ie: Texas Instruments) FW chipset. And you need a slot to put it in.

It should be simple and plug and play, but due to historical accident it is instead tricky and difficult.

Fran

[KAMANAOKEKAI808]

this is my grandmas brother

[franguidry]

@KAMANAOKEKAI808 That makes you the great-nephew of one of the world's great musicians. Do you play?

Fran

[Uhmsters]

@homebrewedmusic well, I think I probably won't need all the inputs on the audiofire interface since I am just a solo musician at the moment.

and thankyou for your compliment! It took me one day to finish everything for my Original song. I created the backing track using Garageband synths. it was quite simple.

[homebrewedmusic]

@Uhmsters I'm not sure a device as limited as the Apogee One is the correct response to problems with Firewire chipsets, but it's certainly up to you.

I checked your clips - kind of distant from the style of music I'm interested in, but I really enjoyed the video production on your original. Looks like a ton of work. Did you create the backing track note by note?

Fran

[Uhmsters]

@franguidry wow sounds complicated! I guess i'll end up buying the APOGEE ONE audio interface for the mac.

Hey by the way, do you mind if you check my videos out? I only have two right now, but one of them is my Original guitar instrumental.

[dylansk123]

wonderful played - I love this Tacoma papoose P6K - anyone who will sell one to me