Salomila - Slack Key Backyard Style

"Salomila" was one of the first slack key songs I wanted to learn, the lilting melody was so inviting it really helped me put up with the frustration of making my thumb and fingers do their jobs. But that was the relatively simple "taropatch" open G tuning version of the song, a great beginner's piece.

There's another way to play "Salomila" - the way Ledward Kaapana learned from his Uncle Fred Punahoa and his mom's brothers in the Konanui family. I along with many others was captivated by the chiming sound of "Salomila" as recorded on the groundbreaking "Young Hawai`i Plays Old Hawai`i" album by Hui Ohana, the family band made up of Ledward, his twin brother Nedward, and their cousing Dennis Pavao.

On that recording Ledward used a family tuning that we would today call a C Mauna Loa tuning, one with a 5th interval between the top two strings. This tuning has the bottom two strings inverted from the Pahinui family version, so it's spelled G C E G A E from lowest pitch to highest. Notice that this tunings is "slacked" only on one string while the bottom three strings are raised in pitch compared to standard tuning, so it stretches the conventional idea of slack key to the limit. Because this tuning is so tight it is hard on the guitar and on the strings, so Ledward and his family often tuned all the strings one whole step lower, giving a B Flat version of the same relative tuning. I'm playing in good old drop C tuning, spelled C G D G B D from low to high.

Ledward is playing his Martin DCPA4. I'm using an Epiphone Masterbilt EF-500RCCE.

This video was shot at Ledward's home in Kane`ohe, HI, while friends gathered in the garage for a typical Friday night get together. Because those rascals were having so much fun talking story and cracking jokes, we plugged the guitars into the Zoom H6 and recorded direct.

Pat La`a is once again operating one camera, the Lumix GH3 in this case. We're using a GX7 for the static two shot and I pointed the GM1 at the sky for a cutaway shot. All editing done in Edius.