The Steel Guitar Forum

Barney Isaacs Hawaii Calls solos

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 1

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 2

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 3

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 4

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 15-17

Dick McIntire Harmony Isle shows 9 & 10

First Steel Guitar Ho'olaule'a 1982

Hawaii Calls 12-29-1949

Hawaii Calls show ca 1959

Pua Almeida Hawaii Calls shows

Tapa Room Tapes

six 1947 Hawaii Calls shows featuring David Keli'i

Mike, thanks for upgrading to the new service! I was having a frustrating time getting access on the other file sharing site. I've now downloaded all the files, and can't thank you enough for hosting all this great material. Mahalo to everyone involved!

You're welcome, guys. I didn't even know the downloads would start immediately on clicking the links - that's a nice bonus for being a premium member I guess.

Thanks, Mike...Great stuff!!

Mike,

You have contributed immensely to our education in Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Hawaiian music.

Thanks for your time and effort!

I want to put about a 1000 Long Play Albums on C.D.'s as back ups or into the hard drive of the computer. Do you have any suggestions on the best way to do this?

Aloha,
Don

There are several items on today's market wherein doing what you suggest......becomes an easy to do task.

I purchased a 'Nostalgic' radio, 3=speed record player, cassette tape and CD player for under $300 and all you do is plug it into the computer with an RCA plug and away you go.

I've done a lot of stuff that way.

Many Thanks!

You're all entirely welcome, honestly it's a pleasure and I was honored to be trusted with this material and very happy to have been given permission to share it.

For cassettes, I have gone straight from the headphone jack on my cassette deck into the mic jack on my computer. For LPs I have used both a USB turntable and more frequently, a really nice vintage Dual direct drive using an adapter cord from Rat Shack that is stereo RCA from the turntable to stereo mini-plug, again into the mic jack. You need to watch those levels! I always record some of the input first and have a listen (and eyeball the waveform for clipping) before committing anything permanently. You should never let your input peaks stray much above -12dB when recording; when rendering out to WAV or MP3 it can go to -6dB. I always render to WAV, then convert to MP3, since I want to burn audio CDs before I back stuff up to long-term storage as 320 Kbps MP3s.

All digitization has been done using REAPER, which is completely free to try indefinitely (amazing in this day and age), and $60 for a single-user license. It has excellent EQ if needed, and to slice up a waveform into individual tracks you just position the cursor and hit the "S" key. I then export the slices to individual files. This is a lot of work when there are no obvious cutpoints in the waveform - you just have to go by ear.

Liner notes have been either photos of the original cassette notes as you've seen, or in a lot of cases I have just had to listen and give titles to the songs I know - which is why as a newbie there are quite a few blanks, e.g. in the Steel Guitar Ho'olaule'a tape! If anyone feels inspired to fill in those "?" titles, please feel free!

To Ray and Mike,

Your comments are very helpful in getting me started as a newbie.

I will be moving forward with this in a short time.

Thanks again.

Aloha,
Don

Now we just need to get some Andy Iona up there

You mean like this?

Andy Iona collection

These were found on a blog, and the blogger gave assurances the tracks were from ripped 78s and LPs, not current material like Cumquat. Please, if anyone knows otherwise, let me know and I'll take the file offline.

Enjoy!

Mike - Thank you for making this Andy Iona material available. As with Dick McIntire, there's very little of his music to be found anywhere. These recordings are 60-70 years old and I doubt there are actionable copyrights to be concerned with. After all, when Bruce Clarke created Cumquat Records and issued CD's by Sol Ho'opi'i, McIntire, Iona and others, what right did he have to do that? And he was making money from the use of those orginal recordings. Don't get me wrong: I happily purchased some CD's from Cumquat, but I'm sure that, at this point, nobody has exclusive rights to what you've posted.

You're very welcome Ralph, and thanks for the thoughts re: copyright.

There are 2 CDs worth with title notes. Enjoy!

oh man, that is christmas in jan!

the way i see it, is archival / historical, whatever term - but who is going to save these recordings, this lost style of steel guitar? i often hear its up to the next generation to carry on a tradition, but look what happens when a generation or two is skipped along the way - the chain is broken and there is nobody left to "go to".
IMO, thats what happened with the hawaiian steel guitar. i am just glad to see it appreciated and hopefully revived. its so impressive to have many on the forum who were there and knew the players - i hope they realize how important it is to "tell the stories" - its gonna be sad when this stuff is lost forever in time.

I'm just glad we've seemed to dodge hip-hop steel.

Ron Whitfield wrote:I'm just glad we've seemed to dodge hip-hop steel.

...so far.

Actually, I seem to remember somebody doing it, but I'm trying to force that foggy memory into the permanently deleted bin.

I hate to be the boy running around and asking big favours on the Forum today, but can anyone send me any of these taped sets, or reupload them for the public to share? I'm ecstatic at the thought of catching the live Dick McIntire and David Keli'i!!!

When I attempt to download these files from the UK, I get a message "Invalid or Deleted File".

Could anyone please explain what is happening?

I'm sure all members enjoying these files will understand my frustration at not being able to access them.

Roger - Those files were posted in November 2012 by Mike Anderson. Mike was a prolific contributor to SGF for a while, but he hasn't posted in four years.

Many thanks, Ralph. That would certainly explain it.