What ever happened to singing?

When I look at older dulcimer instruction books, or watch older recordings of dulcimer players such as Jean Ritchie or Richard Farina for example, I notice something different from so many of the dulcimer method books and recordings offered today. There seems to be less singing going on these days with dulcimer players.
Instead, there is now more emphasis on playing embellished arrangements of tunes, and people seem to play in larger jamming groups and clubs where very little singing is going on.

Why has there been less and less singing with the dulcimer as time goes on?
I feel this is due to various factors combined...

One factor might be because so many players now remain in the key of D almost all the time. D happens to be a difficult key for many people to sing in, especially women. I have been in dulcimer jam sessions where people play beloved songs like Amazing Grace or Shady grove, etc, and I've wanted to sing out with them...but then I found it was simply impossible for me to sing the song in D, so I gave up after a line or two. I wonder if this happens a lot more than one might guess. I can usually sing more comfortably in the keys F, G, A, B, and C. The keys of D and E are the most difficult for my range. I just can't do it, either in its higher or lower octave.
Older dulcimer instructional materials from the 1960's and 70's frequently taught dulcimer playing based in the key of C, not D. People learned in and tuned to CGC or CGG more often then than today. Nowadays DAd and DAA have become the norm. Did this switch from C to D make it harder to sing along with our playing? All I know is that it sure makes it harder for me to sing.

And when we do sing, we are more self-conscious and embarrassed about singing in front of others these days. Have we succumbed to the commercial recording industry's agenda that only professional musicians should be singing and playing? Our natural self consciousness makes us feel that we should keep quiet and buy our music to listen to rather than make our own. Sadly, we're deathly afraid to sound like 'amateurs'.

Volume, usually hand and hand with faster speed, can be another factor in the falling from favor of singing with the dulcimer. In the old-time music scene, I've seen a tendency towards more volume and speed in jam sessions where people don't sing much. (see my posts on "A Race to the Finish", parts one and two) When I play in instrumental fiddle tune sessions and somebody suddenly starts singing, there are unfortunately times when few in the session know or remember that they need to immediately tone their volume down to let the voice be heard. In contrast, bluegrass musicians (who tend to sing a lot more) seem more aware of instrument volume competing with voice or with others playing their solo break. Bluegrass musicians are skilled at lowering their volume to accommodate a singer. It's not easy for dulcimer players to play in bluegrass sessions, however, because of the very frequent key changes in bluegrass songs.
I think jamming music in general has become a little faster as well over the past 20 years or so, and again there have been times I've tried to sing some of the verses in an old-time song being played in an oldtime fiddle session, but was unable to sing at the rate of speed being played.

The trend towards larger and larger jam sessions and circles has created additional problems with volume. It's almost impossible to have ten or fifteen mountain dulcimers all playing the same thing together without it sounding quite loud. Everyone is trying to be heard over everyone else, or even just trying to hear themselves, so it quickly spirals out of control. Singing can be a good volume 'regulator', just as it is in bluegrass jams. But when singing is absent we must find other volume 'regulators'...even if it's simply someone gently reminding everyone that we need to listen more and play as an ensemble rather than competing.

Another factor in the subtle decline of dulcimer singing might be the change of repertoire that is commonly played on the dulcimer. Quite naturally, people like to play the music that is familiar to them, music they either heard growing up or like to listen to today. In Jean Ritchie's childhood home, ballads and folksongs were sung, and fiddle tunes were played by fiddles. Nowadays, dulcimers are just as often likely to be playing fiddle and dance tunes, Celtic /Irish tunes, or modern pop and rock music. Such music is generally faster and more complex than the old ballads, hymns, and simple folk songs, so the player is naturally less able to sing at the same time while playing. Much of it (like the fiddle tunes) is instrumental to begin with, and has no lyrics at all.
The skilled professional style playing showcased at dulcimer festival concerts is of course very impressive- it is something that many new players aspire to. The typical dulcimer repertoire being taught today in workshops and festivals reflects this aspiration and arrangements have become more complex. Instrumental playing is now favored over singing. All this is perfectly fine, but let's not allow singing with the dulcimer to become a lost art!

The dulcimer has a gentle lovely sound- perfect for singing with! In previous generations, everyday folksongs were learned first by singing, and then an instrumental accompaniment might be added to compliment it. In contrast, now we generally learn to play song arrangements first from TAB, as instrumental pieces, and later we can struggle mightily to sing the words along with it. For most of us, singing has become the less essential aspect to playing, when singing used to be the main event and playing was used more to accompany singing. Playing the instrument has now taken center stage, with singing becoming secondary.

I feel a combination of factors such as a move towards staying in the key of D, an embarrassment about singing in public, an increase in both volume and speed, the larger size of group jams, and a trend towards a more complex modern dulcimer repertoire of instrumental  tune arrangements... all these things have contributed to a general decline in average dulcimer players who sing.

I tend to play in fiddle tune sessions with other instruments. Usually there is not a lot of singing going on. I confess that I have not spent enough time developing my own skills to sing and play dulcimer at the same time. I wish I had more hours in the day to work on all aspects of my music! But on my blog and in the tabs I offer, I do try to present songs with lyrics so that anyone who is inclined to do so can practice singing with their dulcimer playing. Most of my tabs are for songs, not instrumental tunes. The tab I write is rather spare, which allows for singing as well. You may notice that I often suggest a tuning for each tabbed song in a key that may be a little more 'singing friendly'. I do this after trying to sing it myself. I try to encourage people to lose both their fear of re-tuning and their fear of singing.Keep in mind that you can re-tune or capo into a more singing-friendly key.
There are dulcimer books out there with wonderful songs and ballads for dulcimer players that include not only the simple tab but the words to sing as well. Look for them! Meanwhile, don't be afraid to fool around on your dulcimer and try to play and sing a very simple song on your own. Why not give it a try with the simplest of songs, Go Tell Aunt Rhody?

For tips on singing with the dulcimer, please watch my four videos on the beginner song Go Tell Aunt Rhody.
And if you feel your voice is 'not good enough' to sing, please read this post.

Let's all bring singing with the dulcimer back into favor!

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the Music Police

This is a difficult blog post for me to write. In fact, I have put it off ever since I began this blog over a year ago. It's a subject that people often feel strongly about, and unfortunately it tends to make people angry no matter what their views are.
All I can do is write about my own thoughts and feelings on it, and hope that whoever reads this will be able to read it with an open mind and heart, at least consider what they read for a moment or two before dismissing it.
This post is about the concept of the Music Police.

I first heard the term "Music Police" when I was just starting to play music in groups. I was an insecure beginner player, and I would bring my little 1910 Wurlitzer mandolin to a local folk jam. There were lots of very friendly welcoming people there, and many were singer-songwriter guitar players eager to sing well known folk songs or their own compositions enthusiastically. This was fine by me, since I could plink along in the background and make my numerous mistakes without attracting too much attention. It was a nurturing beginning for me, and everyone there was happy to help and encourage me. Sometimes one person or another would make a comment like "I don't think the Music Police would approve of this version, but I like to play it this way..." , or "The Music Police would have you arrested if they heard you play that chord.". Comments like this always made me wonder, but I figured the Answer would reveal itself to me one day when I was ready. I didn't want to appear stupid by asking about it.

I began to play clawhammer banjo and I did a lot of reading on Banjo-L where the old-time banjo players and the Bluegrass banjo players were regularly seeing things from two different vantage points. I noticed that the two terms 'Music police' AND 'the Banjo Police' got thrown about on occasion, when the two sides were not in agreement about...whatever. I also noticed that it was usually the folks who liked older styles of playing that got called 'the Music Police' when discussions got testy.

Later, I was drawn towards old-time music and old fiddle tunes, and I met my wonderful fiddler husband. My playing and my enthusiasm really took off and I just couldn't get enough of that old style music. I began going to old-time fiddle tune gatherings, where I heard more references to the elusive and ominous "Music Police", also sometimes called the "Tradition Police". I began to understand that the term referred to anyone who thought their way of playing a tune was the right way/traditional way, and anyone else's ways of playing it was the wrong way. The other seemingly essential part of the definition of Music Police was that usually this term was applied to someone who liked to play in a traditional style.

I heard stories about obnoxious 'music police' musicians who insisted that tunes should only be played a certain way (their way or the traditional way) and who went around telling others how WRONG they were, saying rude things like "THAT'S NOT HOW IT GOES!". Interestingly, the villains in these stories invariably had no name... they were always about 'some guy' (usually from parts unknown) who joined a session and was never seen again after that. It never seemed to be about someone who anyone actually knew by name. And it wasn't unique to dulcimer circles, it was the same among banjo circles, fiddlers, guitar players, you name it.
Mind you, it is usual in old-time fiddle gatherings for folks to discuss how the various versions of a tune differ or are the same, and where the tunes came from. It's not uncommon to hear some fiddler saying "Well Rayna got that tune from the old Salyer recording but Salyer didn't play that part like she does, he played the high part more like this..." followed by a demonstration. Now a statement such as this might be overheard by a novice musician and they might easily interpret and retell this incident as the fiddler having told someone they played something THE WRONG WAY. In reality, experienced musicians with a passion for their music usually enjoy discussing different versions and talking about the old sources of tunes and how they were played, how they changed as they got passed along from one person to the next. But that sort of material never makes for interesting stories.

I am not saying I have never heard anyone say anything actually rude or obnoxious to someone else about their version of playing something...I have! There are rude people in all types and genres and levels of music, young and old, both experienced and beginner alike. But the few instances of rudeness I have observed over the years had more to do with someone just being plain rude and ego-inflated overall than with any purist quest they might have been engaged in to 'preserve tradition'. The fact is that person would just as likely be rude when ordering coffee in a diner if they were having a bad hair day. They tend to think they are right about everything and that everyone else is misguided...but their superior notions apply to things far beyond just their music. I don't really think of them as the "Music anything", much less as the 'Music Police'. They are just impolite or thoughtless people. Well enough about rude people, this post is not about them.

There is another interesting factor at work here that I think reinforces the idea that the infamous Music Police mostly consist of traditional players.
Imagine two people who love to eat ice cream. They both eat ice cream with a passion. Margaret loves any and all flavors of ice cream. Jenny only likes chocolate ice cream. One week they go to the ice cream parlor and they both get the flavors they ask for and both go home happy. The next week the parlor is out of chocolate ice cream and Margaret thinks Jenny is a difficult snob because she doesn't want to eat some other flavor. When they leave, Margaret is happily full and Jenny is disappointed. The next week, the parlor only has chocolate ice cream. They both go home happy. The last week, the parlor is out of all ice cream, and they both go home unhappy.
Maybe this sounds silly, but I think that musicians who like to play a wide variety of music are often seen as being more reasonable, more good natured, more open minded, more accepting, and just generally 'nicer', while musicians who like to focus on and play one type of music are often automatically seen as being closed minded, snobby, anal, curmudgeonly, difficult, and egoistic. Jenny is perhaps labeled a difficult snob because she only likes chocolate ice cream, while Margaret is seen as more reasonable person because she likes any flavor of ice cream. Margaret proclaims that "It's all good!" and suspects that Jenny looks down her nose at her and feels superior. Meanwhile, Jenny agrees that 'it's all good'...but she doesn't actually want to have to eat it all. lol!

I think it's kind of natural human nature to see someone who likes many flavors as a positive person, and conversely it's human nature to see someone who only likes one or two flavors as a negative person. But I happen to believe that both people are perfectly justified in liking everything, nothing, or anything in between. Some people don't like ice cream at all! Human beings are all different, we all have different likes and preferences, and no one's preferences are better than someone else's. Neither Jenny nor Margaret are better. It takes Jennys and Magarets and Lucys and Emilys and everyone else to make this world a wonderful, diverse, and positive place.

Do people who behave like actual Music police even exist at all? I believe they do. But such people are so few and far between as to be insignificant. The problem is that the term is thrown about all too frequently to include just about anyone who talks about how they like a certain way of playing something. It's being applied to those who enjoy playing music in a traditional way, always accompanied by the implication that they think their way of playing is the only 'right' way and everyone else's ways of playing is the 'wrong' way. In reality, very few people ever declare themselves right and others wrong. Such people are as rare as hens' teeth. Yet the concept of Music Police lurking in every alleyway, bullying and pouncing self-righteously on other players persists.
Using the term 'music police' at someone is an easy and thoughtless way to dismiss and demean them in a musical discussion or disagreement. It's a cheap shot that almost never has any actual basis in fact. Yet it hurts people and does damage. For me at least, it's time to take a stand against characterizing people unfairly.

My own way of dealing with this unpleasant conversational cop-out is this: every time I or anyone else gets called the 'music police', 'tradition police', 'dulcimer police', or whatever... instead of feeling annoyed or frustrated and letting the term slip by without comment, I'm just going to ask the person who used it why they used it used in that instance? I'm going to ask for a clear explanation about why that person thinks this. I believe that being open and straightforward about this will go a long way to make everyone aware of their choices of words and it will foster better understanding in discussions between music-minded people. If we understand why we all feel as we do about such issues, it will serve to bring people together rather than pushing them further apart.

It's time to blow the whistle on the overused and hurtful term "music police".

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Beginner tips on using a NOTER

Many beginners are unsure of how to hold and use a noter stick when playing the mountain dulcimer in traditional noter/drone style.
I put together a very basic short beginner tutorial on different types and shapes of noters, and on holding, angling and placing the noter to obtain a clear sound. I hope it's helpful.

Oh, and
HERE is a very cool little video of luthier Michael King in the UK using a petite noter to play one the gorgeous 'epinette des Vosges' instruments that he makes. He will be making a little epinette for me in the Spring, which I am very excited about- I can hardly wait to put a noter to it!
And CLICK HERE to view another helpful video clip with noter tips, made by player Robin Clark (as seen on the Friends of the Mountain Dulcimer site).  Great stuff!

Lastly, to give you a view of how the noter is used in sliding up and down from note to note, here is a video of me playing noter style, with my index finger on top, at normal fiddle tune speed. You can also see a bit of how I myself like to strum. My husband is playing fiddle:

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Limber Jack - Part One

I purchased a marvelous 'Limber Jack'.

Originally from Europe, limberjack dancing toys were made in Appalachia and the Ozark mountains. they are a very fun percussion 'instrument', and are easy to learn to work.
Here is a wonderful clip of Jean Ritchie playing her limberjack.
Here's John Kirk and Trish Miller and 'Jack' playing with their little friend Jack too. ;)

I better get practicing on it! I know the littlest children who come to the farmer's market in town (where we play fiddle and banjo) will just love it. They are always clapping their hands and dancing to the music when we play.

You can get your very own wonderful walnut wood hand-carved Limberjack from Keith Young, mountain dulcimer maker of Virginia: Keith's Limberjacks. Keith also made a beautiful curly maple mountain dulcimer for me 12 years ago.

Time for 'Jack' to get clogging!....

Here is a little video clip of "Cloggin' Clyde" from the the other day when we were playing music at our local farmer's market. Clyde is slowly getting his 'moves' together. ;D


Ok these English guys really know how to have fun!:


Here are my other two limberjacks- a Frenchman, and Mr. Pig...

UPDATE, March 2010-

I've now had some experience playing my limberjacks at farmers' markets and such.
There are some small children who barely look at them and seem jaded and uninterested, but then you get the other children who make it all worth while. Last summer, a group of four children, ranging from age 4 to 7 or so, stopped dead in their tracks at our local farmer's market and came running over to watch my limberjack dance. You wouldn't believe how HUGE their eyes got, like dinner plates!, and then they all started laughing and pointing in delight, and the more he danced the more they laughed. I swear the little wooden man was inspired to dance his very best! Then they started trying to dance like the limberjack, and they laughed even MORE, finally collapsing right there on the ground in a heap of child glee and belly laughs. It made me so happy! I think that was the very best audience I ever had. :)
I love playing my limberjacks. I have five of them now, all different. I may wind up with more eventually, I love them so. Plus, they are way cheaper than banjos or dulcimers!

Also- see my latest "Limberjack Part Two" post from 2010 HERE.

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Why I ditched my 'bass' and 'middle' strings

This is going to be a little tricky to explain, but to really understand the logic and background behind my particular tuning methods and my personal old-time playing style, this issue must be elaborated upon a bit and clarified.


First, I must remind those who have not read my blog from the beginning, that years ago when I first started playing the mountain dulcimer, I learned to play it in the manner that is currently so pervasive and popular - playing flatpick/chord-based style and tuned mostly in DAD. Seems everyone I observed back then was playing that way, most of the learning materials, dulcimer clubs, and workshops were geared towards it, and honestly it didn't even occur to me to learn any other way. Nobody mentioned there was any other way to play the dulcimer. I actually became pretty good at playing the dulcimer chord/melody style, with a flatpick. It sounded very pretty to me, and I enjoyed it.

However, when I fell in love with old-time ballads and old-time fiddle tunes and began trying to play those, my chord based dulcimer playing just didn't sound right with it.
I thought my dulcimer playing sounded too modern and 'folk guitar-ish'. To my ear, it did not blend well at all with the more archaic ballads and fiddle tunes. Something sounded wrong to me, but I just assumed it was just the nature of the dulcimer's sound and was something that couldn't be changed.

Thus it was that I hung my dulcimer on the wall and let it gather dust for seven long years...
I took up old-time clawhammer banjo and was thrilled by how perfectly it blended with the old-time music I was growing to love so well. I became a passably decent old-time banjo player and slowly forgot my old dulcimer playing skills.

After 'seven years of ringing the banjo', mostly accompanying fiddlers (primarily my husband who is an excellent old-time fiddler), more and more I explored the older Southern Appalachian ballads, avidly listening to field recordings of singers such as Almeda Riddle, Texas Gladden, Nimrod Workman, Dillard Chandler, Dellie Norton, Jean Ritchie, and many others.
At some point it registered in my mind that Jean Ritchie's dulcimer playing didn't sound so modern, that it blended perfectly with the very old ballads she was singing. This got me to thinking (finally! DUH!) about how perhaps playing the dulcimer a different way might produce the older sound I was looking for- a sound that would stand on its own but would also sound right with fiddles and banjos or with traditional sung ballads.

This revelation triggered me to learn more about the older more traditional styles of playing the Appalachian dulcimer. By this time, I was quite familiar with the concepts, beauty, and use of drones and open or modal tunings on my banjo. As I read, listened, and learned more, it dawned on me that I must start over with my dulcimer from square one and re-learn how to play it in a more traditional drone based manner. I learned about noter playing, I listened to many recordings, and I fell hard under the spell of the quicksilver liquid sliding noter dancing alongside the steady open powerful drones. What an intoxicating sound it was! I was totally hooked, and I felt the door to a whole new world had been suddenly flung open before me.

I began to play with a noter and open drones. I felt so awkward and hopelessly lame! I had to start all over again! The results were embarrassingly bad, but I kept at it relentlessly. The noter hand and the strumming hand were both equally difficult! I practiced s-l-o-w-l-y and repeated the same babyish moves over and over for weeks, and eventually I began to improve. I realized just how vastly different this playing method was from my old DAD chording/picking style.
I quickly found that when playing melody notes only on the melody string, I often needed several notes that were lower than the tonic '1' note- so I began to tune more often to DAA (ionian mode) instead of DAD (mixolydian mode), which then made those lower notes available on my melody string.

As I listened to more recordings of fiddle tunes played on mountain dulcimers, I then discovered the playing of Bonnie Russell, Phyllis Gaskins, and Jacob Ray Melton, all of whom played 'Galax Style'. This style originated in the area of Galax, Virginia, and the dulcimers they used from that area were of a certain build and were strung all in the same gauge strings, usually tuned dddd. They played them with long flexible whip-like picks, in a sort of egg-scrambling motion. The sound was described by others as a 'swarm of angry bees'. The intense droning sound all in the same octave really appealed to me, and I imagined this was a good way for me to bring my fiddle tune accompaniment style up to speed!

By this time it had been been around nine years since I had first picked up a dulcimer, and I still had just my one very beautiful curly maple teardrop dulcimer. I felt it was time to get myself a Galax style dulcimer and really cut loose. I had Ben Seymour of North Carolina make me a beautiful cherry Galax dulcimer:


What a lovely inspiration this cherry dulcimer was!
It was strung all in .010 strings, all in the same high octave. No heavier low bass string, no heavier low middle string. It had a 26" scale length, so I was planning to use it mostly for playing in the keys of A and G in ionian tunings. the 26" scale would allow me to tune up to ionian aeee (or eaee) without breaking strings, as had been happening sometimes on my 28" scale teardrop dulcimer.

As I played it over the first few weeks, I realized that the sound of having all the strings in the same high octave was very appealing to me. It dawned on me that part of the reason I found my old chording style to be more modern and guitar-like sounding was in fact that lower bass string/middle sound, combined with playing full chords...the low strings did indeed remind me of guitar playing! Not only that, but the low bass octave sound also reminded me of the sound of a bass fiddle thumping along in bluegrass string bands. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it was not jiving with the older drone based feeling I was seeking for my own music. I found the all-high-octave sound meshed very nicely with both old-time southern Appalachian fiddle tunes and ballads...it sounded 'right' to me somehow.

So there I was, playing my Galax dulcimer but not exactly playing it in strict Galax style: I was tuning it mostly in ionian rather than bagpipe/mixolydian, I was using various modes and retuning to them as opposed to capoing. I was not using the usual Galax long quill style pick or that egg scrambling picking technique either. What's more, I was using my own unique brand of percussive picking in a sort of syncopated flatfooting rhythm, sort of what a banjo player uses in their 'cluck/chuck' strum. This I believe evolved from my banjo playing. I have never seen or heard anyone else use this strumming technique on the dulcimer, so I like to think of this as the one thing I can proudly say I have actually invented for myself. :)
But though it is not strictly Galax, the style and method I developed for myself is working for me, and it is working very well for me. I eventually changed my teardrop dulcimer over to the same all-high-octave stringing as well. Once recently I strung a wound bass string back on it again to try it and I hated it and went back to all .010's again immediately.

If you want to hear a more 'pure' Galax style in action, listen to the amazing clip here of Phyllis Gaskins playing full speed on the DulcimerSessions.com website. Also, listen to the two lovely clips of Kimberly playing true Galax style that I have linked on the right column of the home page of this blog.

Now, I have posted often enough about the importance or retuning into different modes if you want to play in various keys when playing the dulcimer noter/drone style. Please go back through this blog and read about some of the reverse tunings I have recommend that would make your life easier when tuning into different keys and modes. Now I must explain something- many people do not like to use 'reverse tunings' (such as GCG instead of CGG for ionian mode in the key of C) for a perfectly good reason: they don't like the bass string to be sounding a fifth interval note instead of the tonic "1" note. Yes!-Now it all becomes quite obvious why this doesn't make a bit of difference to me at all....because I have no lower 'bass string' or 'middle string'!
All my strings are the same gauge and the same octave! Thus, I don't give a rat's ass whether I tune my drones GC or CG! Ha ha ha ha hah!! I have freed myself to use whatever tuning will be easier to get to from the tuning I am already in, one that requires the least amount of distance to travel for each string. I can't emphasize enough how convenient this is! It not only enables me to retune much more quickly and easily, but I also wind up hardly ever breaking strings.

Now ye who still maintain their heavy wound bass string and heavy middle string and don't wish to make the 'bizarre' transition to all high-octave bee swarm stringing- you can STILL use the 'reverse tunings' I describe throughout this blog. You just have to get a little used to the sound of having your tonic drone be on your middle string and your 'fifth' interval drone being on your low bass string. I actually did this for a while before I was willing to give up my heavy strings altogether, and I got used to it just fine. But some people strongly dislike the sound of the bass string being a fifth instead of a tonic note, so you'll just have to try it for yourself and see!

Then again, lots of people are repelled by the unison/bagpipe/Galax type 'angry bee swarm' sound altogether. Hey, there's no accounting for people's taste! I can assure you there was a time when I would have found it simply awful to listen to as well.
A few years ago I played a recording of the late great Jacob Ray Melton playing Galax dulcimer for a musician friend of mine. He was such a good musician that I figured surely he would be impressed and would, like me, find Melton's playing entrancing. He listened for a minute or so, then said simply "That's incredibly annoying." =8-o

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Cluck Old Hen

Cluck Old Hen is one of the most enduring and endearing old-time songs around. Everyone loves it and everyone wants to play it. It has a wonderful quirky bluesy sound to it, and it has great lyrics.

But because of its bluesy notes, Cluck Old Hen simply cannot be played on the melody string only (noter style) on a typical diatonically fretted dulcimer in the modes of mixolydian, ionian, or even in lonesome sounding aeolian mode. You just won't have all the notes you need on the fingerboard.
Here is where the DORIAN mode comes to the rescue!
Now, before you FREAK OUT and go back to aimlessly twittering on your computer lest you might have to {{{shudder}}} go into some scary tuning Devil's Triangle of No Return, just listen for second and give me a chance!...
Does DAG sound like an 'impossible' tuning to you? I thought not...it's not that alien from DAD or DAA. DAG is Dorian tuning, where the song ends and is centered around the fourth fret. You can quickly review my easy beginner helper notes for Dorian mode tuning here in my previous post: "Little Sadie and the Dorian mode"

Now... I tried playing and singing Cluck Old Hen in dorian DAG, which would be the key of D, and it was a bit too low for me to sing the low B part chorus. So I simply raised everything up one step to make it the key of E instead of D, and found I could sing it better. BUT- you can try D first (DAG) and see if D suits you before going up to E (EBA). I tabbed it in EBA (dorian tuning key of E). The tab numbers would all be the SAME in DAG since you are in the same dorian mode.

Here is how you can easily tune to DAG from DAA:
Tune your melody string(s) DOWN one step from A to G. That's it!

Here is how you can easily tune to DAG from DAD:
Tune your melody string(s) DOWN to G (not UP, or you'll break your string). That's it!

Wasn't that scary?? ha ha ha

Now that you are in DAG, you can try playing and singing Cluck Old Hen in DAG dorian mode key of D. If you have trouble singing the low B part, try tuning all your strings UP more more whole step from DAG to EBA. Try singing it there in the key of E. You'll notice the B chorus part is sung much lower than the verses. For my voice, singing it in EBA key of E makes the high part not too high to sing and the low part not too low to sing.

Here is a short MP3 clip of Cluck Old Hen just to give you an idea of how it goes: Cluck Old Hen. I usually like mine a bit slower and more relaxed and bluesy, but this clip just gives you a quicky example to hear.

And here is a wonderful Youtube clip made by Terry, he actually learned it from my TAB right here in this post, and sent me a link to show me how his version came out. Click here to see it: Cluck Old Hen played by Terry. This is a great sample because he plays it just like the tab here. I love how he uses a quill for his pick too, and the charming box dulcimer- what a great traditional sound Terry has going!

Remember to not tune any string higher than an E on a typical 28" scale dulcimer or you might break a string ...but E should be perfectly do-able on most dulcimers, which usually fall between 26"-28 1/2" scale lengths. Scale length is the length in inches between the nut and the bridge.

I think if Cluck Old Hen were the only song in Dorian mode, it would still be worth going in and out of Dorian mode just to play that one single fabulous old-time song.
See if you can make up your very own new funny verse for Cluck Old Hen- it's not too hard if you let yourself be silly!

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Keep My Skillet Good and Greasy

Recorded by Uncle Dave Macon in 1924, and again by Woodie Guthrie, listen to a clip here, this fun song can be played and sung in various ways because it's so basic you can fool around with your own version. Here is another simple sound clip of it in a very simplified version. Try making up a new silly verse to it!...

I worked up a simple tab that blends in well with typical dulcimer strum rhythm and skips a bit of the blues effect some versions have. It was a little too low for me to sing in G, so I put it in the key of A. I chose the reverse ionian tuning of EAE to make it way easier to tune to if you are starting from DAD. (the 'normal' ionian tuning for the key of A would be AEE). To get to EAE from DAD all you have to do is tune both your melody string(s) and your bass string UP ONE STEP from D to E...and leave your middle string at A.
Be sure to get a nice greasy slide from the 4-5 frets when you're playing "time, time, time...".

The photo is actually of my own two greasy skillets, when I made a skillet bread filled with fruit last week called "Dutch Baby"...they came out pretty good!

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Jamming Etiquette- part three

My last post talked about good manners and thoughfulness when joining or starting up jam sessions.
If you already read the lists of jamming etiquette I posted in Part One of this subject, then you get the general idea.
I want to briefly reiterate a few of the items that I personally encounter frequently during gatherings and festivals. I speak mostly as an old-time banjo and dulcimer player. I happen to be married to an excellent old-time fiddler, so that in itself brings up additional 'etiquette situations' for both of us during jamming or session situations.

We're going on the assumption that you have already been welcomed to join the jam session, and let's assume there are maybe 5 players playing already, including a fiddler and a singer or two.

In no particular order then, some jam manners to practice...
---Please tune your instrument before joining the ongoing session especially if you are not in the same key as is currently being played. Stand way off to the side, use your electronic tuner if needed, and tune softly so as not to disturb those playing. Don't force them all to wait while you change keys or tune endlessly. Join in after you have gotten into tune with them.

---If you don't know the tune that's being played, please LISTEN to it once or twice through before playing along. This is especially important with old-time music, which has a goodly number of crooked or irregular tunes. Also if you are playing chords, old-time tunes often have unexpected chord changes that don't follow the usual folk pattern. LISTEN first! Play after! Old-time tunes typically get played many times through anyway, so there is plenty of time to listen once or twice through first. When in doubt, it is safest to stay on the tonic note or the tonic chord rather than take a chance with some other chord or note. Or better yet, stop playing and LISTEN until you 'get' it.

---If someone starts singing a verse- play VERY QUIETLY while they are singing.

---Do not doodle around on your instrument between songs! This is incredibly annoying to others, most of whom are trying to tune while you are cluelessly showing off all the tunes you know. This one really gets me steamed when I'm quietly trying to tune between songs and somebody starts strumming and doodling around. Another good reason not to doodle between tunes is that if there is a fiddler leading the session, they are likely trying to decide on what tune to play next and are trying to remember how it starts.

---Don't play louder than the other instruments (often a fault with bajo players, not so much with dulcimer players). If you are not sure whether you are playing too loudly or not, ASK the group! Just say between tunes "Hey, is my instrument too loud for anyone?" If you are too loud, someone will politely say "Yeah, it might be good to tone down your volume a little."...thank them! It's not always easy to gauge your own volume when you are not directly in front of, or 'on the receiving end' of your instrument's sound projection path. Especially true of banjos and guitars. Another solution to a volume problem is to change seats with someone in the circle- this often works well. Never be hurt by those who are trying to help you be more aware of what you are doing. They are trying to help you, and they have been in your shoes, they understand.

---It's considered very bad manners to go up to an ongoing jam and ask a particular person if they want to come and play in a session somewhere else. This is like kidnapping and is very impolite to the others already playing together.

---If the session is in someone's campsite, please be especially courteous about that and don't presume to ask for drinks and don't invite others over yourself. You are a guest in their camp.

---Be aware and sensitive to the fact that if there is already one or more of a particular instrument in a jam, they may not want additional instruments of the same type. It can get too overpowering to have three guitars, for example, or sometimes too much to have more than just one banjo! Be aware that there is a happy balance of instruments that will produce the most enjoyable results in a session. More and more is usually not better. Remember...it is seldom the goal of those present to have their session turn into a big mega-jam.

---Good steady rhythm is more important than playing all the right notes. A few wrong notes or a wrong chord once in a while are far less disruptive than bad rhythm. If you have trouble keeping a steady rhythm, then you'd best play softly and keep your eye on the fiddler's or the guitar player's right hand so you can see their rhythm. There is nothing worse while playing music than sitting near someone who drifts off the beat regularly. Far better to sit near someone who plays wrong notes! If you have trouble keeping to the beat then you need to seriously work on this before you continue to mess up other people's sessions. I can't emphasize this strongly enough. Playing off the beat is the ultimate crime.

---Lastly, when a session starts to become larger, consider moving on and giving up your seat to someone else for a while. Go have a snack, or go find some others to start a new jam! Mixing things up and shifting around are excellent ways of making new friends and of honing your music skills. You will learn some amazing new things just by playing with some people you might not have normally considered playing with before. There have been times when I've sat down to play with a beginner and had a fairly disastrous time musically speaking, but perhaps I have learned something truly wonderful about that person- something they shared with me that enriched my life in some way. I have met many surprising and amazing people this way. Music is more than a bunch of notes- music is about the connection with and celebration of the human spirit.

After making this 'mixing up' a habit for a while, you will be seen as a positive force and people will start to seek YOU out and want you to play with them! At that point you will seldom be at a loss for friends of various playing levels to play with.

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Jamming etiquette- part two

In continuing this subject, I'd like to suggest you first re-read my post titled "A Race to the Finish, Part Two" from April 9, 2009. That post gives the background on how the way in which we learn music has radically changed over the past several decades. Most of us now learn to play music in larger groups as opposed to learning from nearby family or community members in a one-on-one method. Now we pay money and travel to camps and workshops and clubs, or attend local jam sessions filled with others like ourselves, all striving to hone our playing skills and get better. We learn in big classroom type settings and in big beginner jam sessions.
When people are used to paying for music camps and workshops, they naturally expect to join in on the large group jam sessions these events usually offer. In these big sessions, all levels are welcome and everyone is expected to pull up a chair and join in the fun. There is a general agreement that the bigger the jam, the more fun it is and the more beginners can feel safe in playing along. This is a good and encouraging thing for beginners at these learning camps and workshops. it helps remove that initial fear of joining in and of having your first scary notes heard by others.
However- the consequence of this 'training' and removal of joining-in fear is that you wind up with legions of beginner players going out into the real world and attending festivals and gatherings who just naturally assume they are welcome in any ongoing session and that the more the merrier in jam sessions... This naive innocence is rudely dashed when the beginner begins to sense resentment from people in a small intense session when they walk up, plunk their folding chair down, and start to play along. They don't understand the negative vibes they are sensing, and they conclude that those people are simply a rude, arrogant, and non-welcoming bunch. If this happens several times they begin to think that most musicians who play better than they do are unfriendly snobs.

What they are failing to realize is that in those workshops, clubs, and music camps where they learned this automatic join-in behavior, they were PAYING for all those jam sessions as part of the overall music learning package they signed up for.
How can I clarify this further?- well, it's sort of like paying for a Caribbean cruise where you belly up to the buffet table several times a day and eat whatever and as much as you want ...and then going home, walking in the public park and going up to any family having a picnic, grabbing a chair and wordlessly helping yourself to a drumstick and a beer.

On the other side of the fence, the people who were having a nice jam session with a few friends have mixed feelings about this problem. You can rest assured that it comes up often these days. On one hand, they sincerely want to encourage new players and they want to help them have a positive experience with their early jamming attempts. On the other hand, they may well have arranged in advance to sit down and play with 2 or 3 favorite friends that they might see only perhaps once a year, and once they start playing first one, then two, then before you know it 6 or 7 beginner players have all set up their chairs around them, effectively completely changing the tone of the session and making it pretty impossible to hear well or have an intimate musical conversation with the people they had made special arrangements to play with.
They don't want to appear rude by saying anything to prevent the beginner from sitting down, so instead they just keep playing and secretly getting peeved as more and more jam joiners pull up chairs.
This scene occurs over and over at festivals I go to. It used to be that beginners would stand aside politely and listen to the session of more advanced players, and sometimes one of the players would invite them to sit and play to the side. If no invitation came, the beginner correctly assumed they wanted to keep their session small and moved on after a while or continued to learn by listening. But I have watched this standard change over the past ten years. Nowadays, the beginner is much more likely to simply set up their chair, listen for a while (fake-out move!), and then pull out their instrument during the middle of a tune and start playing along. I'm convinced the music camp/workshop environment has caused this change in behavior.

I don't wish to make it seem like beginners are inconsiderate- usually they are simply clueless....or else willing to bet that no one will be rude enough to ask them to stop playing if they just pull out their instruments rather than ask. And most of the more experienced players choose to secretly put up with this 'jam busting' rather than have to say anything that might hurt someone's feelings. In that case once 4 or 5 beginners start crowding in, the original friends may feel compelled to just slowly leave their own session (!), to reform elsewhere in order to try again. This is particularly annoying when you are in your own campsite and your own session gets 'taken over' by total strangers! I have actually had to be politely frank with some people who start setting themselves up in my campsite to play in my session without asking- one guy even had the nerve to ask for a beer! A campsite is like someone's 'house' at a festival and you really shouldn't just walk in and plop yourself on their couch without a word or help yourself to their fridge.

Sometimes beginners will actually ask first if they might join in the session. This presents another interesting etiquette 'situation'. Then the original session playing friends can either welcome them in (which does happen frequently) or one of them might say something like "Well actually we are practicing for a gig right now, but maybe later we can get together and play." or...."Well please don't take it the wrong way, but we've been looking forward to just us four old friends getting to play together for a whole year now, so we'd rather keep it with just us playing for now- but maybe catch one of us later and we could play a couple of tunes with you!"
It is important for the beginner to not allow their feelings to be hurt by these responses, and it's important for them to show the courtesy of asking before joining in a smallish session.

So are there any other choices for beginners when they are wandering about a festival looking to play with others? The answer is YES! There are two excellent ways of getting jamming experience without 'hijacking' someone else's intimate music session.
First- look for a mega-jam that's already going on. A mega, or monster jam will have 10 or more people already playing- they tend to be playing rather boisterously as well, and there can be seen several hesitant beginners already playing around the fringe of the center. If people all look like they are having a great time and are playing exuberantly, then you can bet this is a perfect mixed level jam to join up with. People will join in or wander away freely without necessarily needing to ask, and nobody thinks anything of it. It's sort of similar to a music camp jam in tone.
The second choice is for the beginner to take the initiative and seek out one or two other players who are on a somewhat similar musical level as themselves and just ASK them if they'd like to sit down together and play a tune or two. Wow, what a concept! I can't tell you how often I have seen beginner or hesitant intermediate players just standing around forlornly with their instrument cases, obviously yearning to play but too afraid to ask...when they could easily and successfully start their own little session together if they simply asked!
Unfortunately many beginners feel they can only learn to play well if they are following along with a group of skilled players. This is simply not true. Players of any level can learn all kinds of things from playing together! Again, this idea that advanced players should be deliriously happy to lead a group of beginners is a result of the abundance of music camps and workshops churning out beginners at a high rate. Though it certainly IS true on occasion that advanced players enjoy playing with beginners, it is not the standard norm. People tend to want to play with others they can best interact with musically.
I remember when I was starting out, forcing myself to ask other beginners if they wanted to play with me. It was scary, but OH WELL. Asking strangers if they would like to play with you opens up the possibility of rejection, and it brings up all our old childhood playground hurts and fears. Oh, the HORROR!
But you know what?- we must get over that and take responsibility for ourselves. We can't expect others to always humor and baby us. If we want to play music with strangers of any level, we have to be open and honest and thoughtful. Learning the consideration/thoughtfulness part of playing with others is just as important as the 'getting' of musical experience under our belts.
As an intermediate player now, I make it a point to sit down and play with at least a couple of beginners at some point during any festival I attend. We all need to help educate each other, pass around the good vibes, not feel hurt or overly sensitive about hearing a 'No thanks' once in a while, and think more about others', not only about ourselves. That applies to everyone on every level, from beginners to advanced.

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Jamming etiquette- part one

I want to write a couple of posts about jamming etiquette- guidelines that help us smoothly navigate through the often intimidating world of playing with groups of other people at gatherings of one sort or another. This is an important subject, and is more often than not a significant source of doubt and even fear among beginners. It can be a terrible barrier to get past... Jamming etiquette and learning to play well in groups without offending others deserves some in depth discussion and clarifications.

So I am going to suggest that anyone reading this blog who is interested in this subject first read through this brief collection of jamming etiquette lists I have collected below, and in my next post I will attempt to explain the reasoning behind some of the things on these lists, why I might either agree with each suggestion or disagree, and how it all effects us mountain dulcimers players. Keep in mind as you are reading that my own experience is mostly in old-time jam sessions, not bluegrass- but in the end I don't think that will matter too much.

Some worthwhile lists of jamming etiquette as compiled by various authors:

Jam etiquette List 1

Jam etiquette List 2

Jam etiquette List 3

Jam etiquette List 4

Jam etiquette List 5

Jam etiquette List 6

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Oh, Groundhog!

Now here is a song I first used to hear from time to time in folk music jam sessions. You know, the sessions with seemingly too many guys playing guitars and singing about gold watches and trains and hobos? That's how I first heard Groundhog- with lots of full and cheerful guitar backup. So much backup and chords in fact that it made Groundhog sound kinda like a number from an old tv rerun of Up, Up With People...
I decided early on that it was a dopey song that maybe only children would like 'cause it had animals in it.

All that changed when I finally heard Groundhog played by some old-time clawhammer banjo player. WOW. Groundhog was no wimpy kiddy song- NO SIR, ...it was spooky, quirky, and just plain wonderful!
Without the army of folky guitars miring it in gooey treacle, the minor tone of the song and the drones on the banjo sounded powerful and untamed. And what truly twisted lyrics! Granny shuffling up to scarf down the brains?!? HAH!

I think you will agree that this simpler older version of Groundhog sounds fabulous. Heck, it even sounds great without any singing at all!

Try it first without singing, and notice how I indicated good places to s-l-i-d-e from one note to the next right before the beat. I do this often to try to get you sliding instead of just playing one clean note after another. Part of the beauty of noter playing is this very liquid sliding between notes. The slides I put in Groundhog here are little one-step 'baby slides', like the ones going from 6-7 and from 10-11. But if you put them in, they really 'make' the tune...they add the spice!
If the beginning of the second line of tab seems too difficult for you as yet, then instead of playing it "9 7-8 8 6-7, 7 6 4 4"- try a simpler version instead for that part: "9 9 8 8, 7 6 4 4". But do come back to it later and try getting those little slides!
You wouldn't want to slide all the time- that would sound a little weird- but sliding once every few notes is a big juicy part of the traditional Appalachian dulcimer sound.
Do you know how I began to slide with my noter? I just kept playing very SIMPLE and lovely tunes, at a moderate pace, over and over and over. After months of this, the sliding just sort of starts to happen naturally. It feels like when you are a kid and you're having fun sliding across a smooth wood floor in your socks. You can't slide on every step- it's far better when you take a few little running steps like a pitcher's windup, and then s-l-i-d-e. So cool. But despite what one might guess, sliding doesn't happen when you speed up and rush through tunes and load the song up with fancy moves everywhere. The magic of the slide happens when you take your sweet time and really let the music flow through you. I'll be writing more about slides later on. Meanwhile...pass the woodchuck brains!

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A Race to the Finish, Part Two

This is the second part to my previous post from April 5th titled A Race to the Finish, Part One. I ended that post by saying:

What does this all mean to the rest of us? To those of us who are not professional musicians, who do not put out CDs or book concerts or appear at festivals, who merely play at home for enjoyment and perhaps hope to find other kindred souls to learn from and to play with in pleasant settings? What does all this mean to those of us who seek in our music to find rejuvenation and intimacy, a life tonic to help balance the daily life onslaught of relentless racket and frantic rushing about?

Clearly this trend towards speed and volume is not something that only occurs in the world of mountain dulcimer players. How then has the average dulcimer player been affected by this musical movement towards faster speed, louder and 'bigger' playing?
Well, to find the answer we must look at the settings in which we learn and play traditional music nowadays...
In the 'old days' (say, before the folk revival of the 1940's) dulcimer players were mostly rural people living in close knit communities with extended family. It was not uncommon for various family members to play an instrument, and for people to go to community dances where local people played music to dance to. Anyone interested in learning music would seek out some local person whose music they admired and try to learn from them. Learning consisted of a lot of listening, and picking up tunes and songs bit by bit from those you listened to and watched. It was common for even good musicians to have a personal repertoire of only a few dozen tunes and songs that they liked to play and played well. Personal tunes they were known for.

If you read my post from February 25, 2009 entitled "What Happened?", you will understand some background of what I am getting at here.

Things have changed a great deal since the 'old days', and of course many of these musical changes are good and exciting. It's wonderful to be able to hear rare old field recordings of old-time musicians from long ago. It's great to be able to record something that you want to go home and learn later. And great to be able to learn about music in books and on the internet- a whole wonderful world of information is at our fingertips!
But how do we now learn to play our music? Well, we usually don't live in large extended families or close knit communities where many people play home made music in their daily lives anymore. Instead, we go to classes and workshops, and buy books and DVDs to learn our music. We listen to CDs, but find it hard to learn by ear from them since there is no live person playing it for us in person, slowly, knee to knee. Instead, we learn tunes and songs from TAB, sometimes without ever even hearing how a tune sounds. We learn the bones without the flesh.
We have no idea how to go about playing in various keys with other instruments such as fiddles, guitars, or banjos, yet we yearn to play music with others, such a very natural human desire.
So we form dulcimer-only clubs and meet at specific times to all play together. To prevent total pandemonium and enable the learning of more tunes, large books of TAB are distributed and that is what it played, in a large circle. Everyone plays the same notes from the book at the same time on the same instrument in the same key and the same tuning. It sort of has to be that way for such a large group of non-professionals to be able to play together successfully.
I notice that most tunes speed up a great deal while being played in large sessions- usually due to two or three 'lead' players who like to play fast and push the tunes ever faster. This tends to leave true beginners behind, feeling inadequate. Some people even say right out that they want to play the tunes fast and only twice through because that way many more tunes can be played during a session. They don't want to spend very much time on any one tune. Is this a goal, then, to play as many short fast tunes as possible? Where is there a chance then to learn from or savor a tune or song? Playing lots of tunes quickly is sort of like collecting vast reams of TAB- you can say you 'have' that song, or you 'did' that song....but can you really play the song with meaning and feeling? Is it coming from you or are you just playing fret numbers?

Naturally, there is a happy camaraderie involved with attending these large dulcimer jams or club meetings. A geographically isolated beginning dulcimer player would be lonely, bewildered, and discouraged without this club spirit of encouragement. I loved 'goin' to meetin' when I was starting out. It's a wonderful and supportive thing for when people live scattered about. Without dulcimer clubs and tab books I think maybe half the people now playing dulcimer would not have been able to start playing any music at all. In that sense it is very good.

Added to the clubs are dulcimer festivals and 'camps'- sort of like old-time music gatherings but mainly catering to dulcimer players wanting to be taught by professionals and wanting to meet new dulcimer friends. Some people go to the same camps and festivals over and over every year, like a vacation. Many festivals offer dulcimer workshops, and the camps can run from a day or a weekend to as long as a week or more, packed with classes and workshops. Both offer concerts as well, showcasing the exceptional talent of the hired instructors. In the evenings, there is usually plenty of feverish 'jamming' going on, where dulcimer players of all levels form large circles and play one tune after another. Most of the people leading these jams play pretty fast. The meek beginners usually remain on the outer fringes, content to gingerly pick out a few notes as they are able. They would be mortified if anyone heard them trying to play music or making a mistake. They've told me so many a time.
People go home loaded up with new books, CDs, recorded lessons, more TAB, and are happy.

Again, dulcimer clubs, festivals, camps, and workshops are a very good thing in that they now fill a terrible vacuum that was left behind when people stopped playing music as part of their daily lives with family and friends in their communities. When people scattered and moved away from families and home towns, and became Too Busy to play music. Now it takes a determined bit of planning and often some traveling to get together with anyone to play or learn music.

But the result of learning to play music in this type of setting is a double-edged sword. There is both good and not so good to it.

First, you have to spend money (sometimes hundreds of dollars) and travel long distances to attend these events. Naturally once you get there you want to try to cram in as much learning as you can in the very limited time you have. People rush from workshop to workshop (as I have done on numerous occasions) and by the end of the day their head is spinning. You stay up late to 'jam' and get up early to get to classes. I'm long past my twenties, and I don't know about you, but by the end of the week or weekend, I would often feel like it was an unreal dream.
Because of the investment of time and money and the limited time factor of the event, one can feel rushed and desperate to get it all in before it's time to go home. Something that long ago was a delight to absorb slowly and intimately from person to person now from necessity in our frantic schedules has become more of a product, something consumed rather than absorbed.

The end result is also a sort of packaging of dulcimer playing into something that promotes playing fast and fancy, and that encourages playing in BIG all-dulcimer groups, in unison, generally encouraging one key, one playing style, and one tuning over others. This inevitably isolates dulcimer players from other mixed musicians, makes them dependent on each other to provide 'dulcimer safe' playing environments, and it makes it more difficult for a dulcimer novice to play with people who play other kinds of instruments, in various keys. I feel a little sad when I see how isolated beginner dulcimer players can become from other music players who enjoy mixed sessions. I have heard some dulcimer players say that they feel the rest of the music playing world is just not open to them. And even though it's not really true, dulcimer players now have a reputation for not being able to play in anything but the key of D. Indeed, I know several who can't play in any key other than D even though they've been playing for many years more than I have. Yikes.

At first I never thought much about all this- about the modern ways of learning of our music from books and CDs and workshops and clubs and TAB and classes and internet forums (and blogs!). I'm still pretty busy learning the dulcimer myself, and often utilizing these very methods myself.

But as I look back now over my own limited experiences and see them from the standpoint of having myself been a total beginner not that very long ago, I realize that of all the musical learning experiences in my journey so far, the moments and realizations that were most intense and profound were not learned through those methods. Rather they were quiet slow small moments of personal musical sharing and realizations.
Perhaps I happened upon a beginner fiddler sitting alone under a tree scratching out a tune at some festival, and I stopped to play for just a minute with them- and wound up figuring out something amazing and simple in trying to play with them, something that I had never thought of before. In trying to solve a problem on my own, I learned in a meaningful way...even if I couldn't solve the problem! Perhaps I played a few tunes with someone who was just learning banjo, with a very old or very young player, and they gave me some fascinating story that forever effected the way I think about music for myself. Perhaps I heard some drones in a concertina being played by someone on a street corner, drones that I recognized in my own playing and thus learned to hear the interval of a particular tuning. Perhaps I made someone in a nursing home experience happy memories when I went to play for my mother there as she was failing, or perhaps I said something silly about music that really impressed my 9 year old banjo student. And perhaps it was just these small moments of wonder that made me feel like the best musician in the whole wide world.

When I think about it, all the most memorable and enriching learning experiences in my life, even aside from music, have been during quiet moments of listening or reflection or experimentation, or through non-rushed personal interaction with another person or with my surroundings. I think of music as a living thing- it needs to be lovingly nourished, and it needs to breathe.
How will you grow and nurture your music?

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A Race to the Finish, Part One

I'm not sure exactly how this feverish race began. It seems that life in general has become more and more frantic over the past several decades- people want instant gratification, instant results, instant endings. They talk faster, prepare food faster, eat faster, have relationships faster, drive faster, sleep less. People get impatient if you don't explain everything really quickly. They skip the middle parts of books and want to know the endings of movies. When you talk to kids these days, they look into your eyes for about half a sentence before the eyes start darting all over the room, looking for new stimulation. People walk around or drive while eating and yakking into their cell phones every minute, multi-tasking their brains out. They all seem to be constantly slurping water from plastic bottles with caps that snap and pop incessantly, and listening to music on their ipods no matter what else they are also doing. There is no quiet, no stillness. Sometimes it seems to me that life has become one long Road-runner cartoon...
I stopped watching TV altogether 11 years ago, but when I catch a glimpse of it at someone's house, I see how it has changed even in the short since when I used to watch it. Now on TV, images flash by at ever more alarming speed, music gets cut up into tiny indigestible snippets that come and go in a way that makes your head spin, and people talk LOUD on TV, practically hollering. People on TV seem way too excited. Are they on drugs? I don't think I would have even noticed this change if I had been steadily watching TV all along these past ten years.
This hyper-acceleration trend has infiltrated everyday life pretty thoroughly, and music is no exception. How we obtain music, how we learn it, dance to it, listen to it, and how we play it, all these processes have been speeded up and made louder.

Over the past dozen years or so I have observed a distinct increase in the speed at which old-time and traditional music is played. I'm sure this trend has been going on far longer than 12 years, but that's just how long I've been paying attention to it (maybe my attention span is only 12 years). Not only is old-time and traditional music being played FASTER, but it's being played BIGGER...meaning in larger jam sessions, more often amplified, more types of instruments being added, more mixing of styles, more harmonies...and much more often in a highly energized stringband setting.
New stringbands seem to form, name themselves, get a few festival gigs, churn out several CDs in rapid succession, then disband to form new combinations with new band names. Nothing seems to last long. One thing they all seem to have in common is to describe themselves as having a "hard driving" and "cutting edge" sound, and also throwing in pretty much any genre of music that is novel, sort of a New Age/Old-time Fusion. They like to use the terms traditional and archaic a lot when describing themselves, but hard driving seems to be the overriding goal. The term hard driving used to mean something else, something steady and powerful. Now hard driving seems to merely mean fast with a heavy beat.
CDs are raining down upon us all in frightening quantities to the point where some people are pretty much just taping their sessions with friends and throwing them onto cds to sell on their websites or post on the web. I don't even want people's new CDs so much anymore when they are offered to me during music gatherings. "Hey, our band just came out with a great new CD, check it out!"...um, thanks anyway! (as I move away trying to look busy). Because burning CDs is now so very easy and cheap to do, every Tom Dick and Harry is cranking out CDs to the point where they have become about as valuable to barter at music gatherings as yesterday's Mardi Gras beads. People have literally hundreds of tunes loaded on their ipods at any given time...some have thousands of tunes loaded on their hard drives. How can anyone even listen to thousands of tunes? 'CD release parties' have become so commonplace at old-time festivals that they've become meaningless. There is just no longer any way to keep up with it all. But- is there really a lot going on in this frantic music machine that is worth keeping up with?

In old-time music circles, there is a ravenous appetite for 'newly discovered' traditional music fodder- people scour archival field recordings of fiddlers and ballad singers in a race to see who can first score an obscure old tune or song to record on their new CD, or play at a session. Inevitably these old ballads and fiddle tunes which were originally recorded sung unaccompanied in a striking individual manner or being fiddled solo in a lonesome quirky way, are given the Full Monty hard driving/cutting edge treatment. What I often hear on new CDs and at festival jam sessions is a virtual frenzy of banging and sawing, executed with full bluegrass 3 and 4 part harmonies, thumping bass, popcorn style banjo, packed with new chords and chord changes, twin fiddling, etc., much of it played at the Speed of Light. After the first two or three tracks it becomes somehow exhausting, like walking in a crowded mall during the Christmas shopping season. The one good thing about it being so fast is that it's over with quicker.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy a healthy dose of real high energy music. I love to play a fast zingy dulcimer back up to a fiddler. High energy spirited music and dance can provide a happy and welcome release from daily stress and a fun connection between friends. Some of my fellow musician friends seem to like their music fast and upbeat all the time. Good for them! But fast is frequently more fun when there is slow to balance it out and provide a contrast. Spring gets boring if there is no Autumn. Over the years, average tempo seems to have been recalibrated. What is called slow today was a moderate speed long ago. Whenever I ask anyone to play something slowly, the response is always a briskly moderate speed, never what I'd consider slow, and never as slow or as full of nuances as many field recordings where I may have first heard that particular tune or song.
Old-time music is now played so that even in sessions among friends, when I know some wonderful verses to a song being played and could actually contribute something nice, I simply cannot sing at that speed. Nor would I want to even try, because I'd have to sing like Alvin and the Chipmunks, like playing a 33 1/2 rpm LP record at 45 rpms. I often have to cut out any pleasant instrumental variations as well. No time for subtleties, no breathing spaces.

Playing traditional music BIGGER and FASTER can be fun, but should not be the norm or the goal. Like those changes over time that I noticed in TV programming, people seem not to notice that music is being played faster and louder and bigger every year. I am positive this is not all a figment of my imagination, nor a matter of my becoming senile.
Is there to be a swing of the pendulum at some point back to smaller and more intimate music? Or will the world of traditional music eventually implode upon itself like a black hole, crushed by it's own frantic density, wildly churning itself into musical butter?

What does this all mean to the rest of us? To those of us who are not professional musicians, who do not put out CDs or book concerts or appear at festivals, who merely play at home for enjoyment and perhaps hope to find other kindred souls to learn from and to play with in pleasant settings? What does all this mean to those of us who seek in our music to find rejuvenation and intimacy, a life tonic to help balance the daily life onslaught of relentless racket and frantic rushing about?
More about that in a coming post: A Race to the Finish, Part Two.

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