Lei Ko`ele - A song for the island of Lana`i

The Reverend Dennis Kamakahi wrote love songs, rascal songs, songs honoring Hawaiian royalty. But many of his most beloved songs are a continuation of the Hawaiian tradition of "mele pana" - songs honoring a particular place. The little island of Lana`i is honored in this song that names a number of locations there.

We got up with the dawn and headed to He`eia State Park to take advantage of the early morning light. We found a lovely spot overlooking Kane`ohe Bay near the hula mound and fire pits. While Ledward and I played for the main cameras Lynn roamed the area capturing the scenery on her iPhone.

Led is playing his vintage long scale Martin 000-16, I'm using my recently restored Composite Acoustics OX. We're both tuned to taropatch open G, spelled D G D G B D from low pitch to high.

I set up two Shure KSM141 mics in omni-directional mode. Using omni mode is a big help in reducing the impact of wind noise. The mics are plugged into the Zoom F6 recorder. The main cameras are a BlackMagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and a Panasonic Lumix GH5. These cameras have been on the market for a number of years now but they deliver very high quality video when I get all the settings right (grin). I used REAPER to tweak the audio a bit then pulled the audio and video into DaVinci Resolve to create the final clip.