Why is it taking so LONG for me to strum well?!

When I was just beginning to play the banjo, a girlfriend and I attended a three day banjo workshop taught by Dwight Diller of West Virginia- a master clawhammer banjo player. We were both rank beginners. After the first day, I said to my friend “I just HATE that I sound like such an amateur, I HATE sounding like a total beginner. I wish I could play like Dwight!”. My wise friend said “Well but don’t we sound like we are supposed to sound for having played just a few weeks? -We probably sound just like Dwight did when he had been playing for three weeks.” A simple concept, but it hit home for me... I saw that I should appreciate each stage of playing I am in at the moment, no matter how humble my beginner skills.

Strumming confidently on your dulcimer typically will takes months of playing. Strumming really well takes years. Don't give it a second thought when you still feel awkward after a few weeks. That's totally normal. Beginners are supposed to sound like beginners. I've been a beginner many times on various instruments or whenever I try to learn a new style. Embrace your beginnerdom...it's like the beginning phase of a great romance! Don't bang your head in frustration and feel inadequate ...rather enjoy the sweet rosy flush of new discovery.

I used to play mountain dulcimer in chord/flatpicking style, and I was pretty good at it- sounded very nice and I felt comfortable picking that way. I also had a little experience playing both mandolin and banjo.
But when I decided I wanted to start playing in traditional noter and drone style, I had to start right back at Square One again. It was a totally new thing for my right hand, and suddenly I was a brand new beginner all over again. Ackk!! The strumming was a whole different thing from all my other experiences, and I sounded very awkward, rhythm-wise. I stumbled constantly, felt embarrassed, and could not keep up or keep steady. All this while I was able to play banjo rhythm confidently!

It took me about 3 months to even get 'comfortable' on a basic level with my dulcimer strumming rhythm. Another several months to actually get decent and to be able to play at a fairly normal speed. About 3 years from starting that endeavor, I was able to sound 'good' -with a solid bounce and crisp syncopation, and I could play fairly fast. There are still some fiddle sessions these days that are simply too fast for me to keep up with. That's ok with me though, I don't feel driven to do everything well.

Now I have been learning to play the bowed psaltery for the past 10 months...and I'm starting from Square One as an awkward beginner all over again! But now I figure that learning is where much of the fun really lies. It's the journey, not the destination. It's the present moment that is most precious.

I have taught myself to enjoy the journey and the struggle more, so that I don't have to worry about the destination as much. The funny thing is, no matter how 'good' we get, our destination or ultimate goals seem to always remain just out of reach anyway, like a carrot on a stick. Meanwhile the journey, the moment, is right here in our hand to bring us delight if we only allow it to. Enjoy the romance of being a beginner, always learning and discovering ...and yes struggling too. Everything else will follow naturally in its proper time.

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." -John Lennon

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Muted strumming rhythm practice

Many new players understandably concentrate so hard on not making wrong notes that they tend to overlook trying to improve their strumming rhythms.
I remember well when I was just starting out playing banjo- West Virginia clawhammer banjo player Dwight Diller first taught me in his workshop, and he said "The right hand is the meat and potatoes, the left hand is just the gravy."- I always loved that!

So here is a way to really IMPROVE your strumming rhythm without driving others crazy! Try muted rhythm strums, it's actually fun! Includes some varied strum rhythms to practice.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Tips for beginners- Where to add the extra strums?

Here is a little explanation to help you figure out where to add those extra 'ditty' strums in a tune. It's especially hard for beginners to know where to add those little extras. Where do you strum 'bump-ditty' instead of just 'bump'?

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Tips for beginners- Sugar Hill -part two

You can find the TAB to this old-time song earlier in this blog, HERE.
Beginner video #5. Starting to play the song Sugar Hill and incorporating some strum patterns and a slide.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Tips for beginners- Sugar Hill -part one

You can find the TAB to this old-time song earlier in this blog, HERE.
Beginner video #4. Starting to play the song Sugar Hill and incorporating some strum patterns and a hammer-on.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Tips for Beginners- more on strumming motions

Here is a second video on basic strumming which goes over some of the motions you want for smooth strumming and some of the things to avoid:

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Video: Tips for beginners- STRUMMING

Here's a very quick video I recorded so beginners could practice a basic starting strum rhythm and strumming directions. I hope it's helpful to some folks.

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:

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Fun with Feathers

People often ask about the old tradition of using feather quills in playing mountain dulcimers, so I thought I'd do a post about it. I also thought it would be helpful to consolidate into one place some of the useful quill pick information that is currently scattered about in various places online.

Feather quills can be used in several ways, and it's a wonderful old tradition to try out.
You need large heavy feathers, such as flight feathers or tail feathers from a turkey or a goose or eagle.
There are two very different ways of using a feather quill for a pick...

One way is using the long thin flexible end in a 'scrambling eggs' motion, parallel to the strings.
See Kimberly Burnett-Dean demonstrate it here in playing: "Galax style"
Here also is Don Graves demonstrating this same method, and showing how to prepare a quill for this kind of playing: Don Graves preparing a quill. This whisking strumming technique is often associated with the playing style from Galax, Virginia.

The other method is to use the thicker end of the quill and cut the tip at an angle like a quill pen (the thinner you whittle it the more flexible it becomes), and hold it more upright- no scrambling/whipping eggs motion at all, but striking the strings straight across vertically in a very strong way with the stiff part of the quill.
Here: Jean Ritchie demonstrates the technique in playing the ballad Shady Grove, recorded about 50 years ago on the Pete Seeger tv show.

Incidentally, some 50 years later, Jean would play Shady Grove with a very similar strum stroke, but this time using a flexible piece of plastic instead of a feather- in this particular case a plastic hotel key card. Jean has said that she now sometimes uses a large triangular pick cut from the lid of a Cool-Whip container instead of a quill because it it easier to hold due to arthritis. Adventurous experimentation in using various materials at hand to make picks from is a very traditional practice!
Jean recently wrote:

"On the frontier (of my Youth) we didn't have plastic containers yet,nor any other materials mentioned here, so that's why my Dad used goose or turkey wingfeathers, whittled down as explained in my old, THE DULCIMER BOOK (published in 1952 and still going strong). They still work, but I'm often explaining to audiences as to why I'm using a coffee-can-lid pick, "Well, they don't make turkey-wings like they used to."

For myself, I tend to use a strum motion that is similar to Jean Ritchie's strum technique but with a touch of Galax side-whipping motion thrown in, and I use a medium-long narrow very flexible plastic pick, not a stiff pick.
In this article, Jim Baldwin gives some more helpful information about using feather quills in traditional Appalachian dulcimer playing.

An additional use for heavy feather quills is to cut off the heavy end and use it not for strumming or picking, but as a noter. I hear it slides up and down the strings quite nicely.
Turkey and goose quills can also be utilized in making old fashioned quill pens, arrow shafts, and even fashion apparel!

...Don't miss reading the post
"Fun With Feathers- Part 2!"

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Take your pick

Picks are a funny thing. One day you find what you think is the perfect pick, and then a few months later it just doesn't seem to be so great after all, and you suddenly find a different perfect pick. This simply means that the way we play is changing and evolving over time. This is a good thing, even though it means we may have to repeat our hunt for the right pick over and over. Funny how we seem to grow out of this ongoing search for perfection when it comes to searching for a mate...but not for a pick...


As I mentioned previously, when I started out playing the mountain dulcimer years ago I didn't really have any teachers and I wound up getting instruction books that taught flat-picking chord style playing, mostly in DAD mixolydian tuning. I first bought large thin flexible triangular picks made by Fender and Jean Schilling. I was strumming across all my strings and picking out melodies on the various strings as well. I kept breaking corners off these picks in my strumming enthusiasm, so I ordered a whole slew of them! Then I joined a dulcimer club where most of the tunes were played in that style as well. I quickly picked up on the fact that a lot of these people preferred much harder and smaller triangular Herdim picks with pointy corners. This seemed to be the way to go, and they were unbreakable, so I began to use them instead of my large thin triangles.
I found the small hard guitar-like Herdim pick to be practical for what we were doing- flatpicking melodies and chords on the various strings, often picking one string at a time and alternating quickly between strings. I remember it occurred to me at the time that we were all using flat picking patterns much like folk guitar players do, and indeed we were using similar picks as well. Bluegrass mandolin players also use such picks for picking out melodies over the various alternating strings. It just works well for this kind of playing. I played for about two years this way, and I became pretty good if I do say so myself.

That's when I discovered the banjo and my life changed.

My dulcimer hung on the wall unloved while I fell under the spell of the banjo's ancient untamed drones. I was tired of all the elaborate picking and chording I had been doing on the dulcimer. It had become ever more difficult to play without reading a complex tab 'code map' on a stand in front of me. It all suddenly seemed to me to be a fruitless march towards ever more tediously elaborate ornamentation. I wanted out.

I wanted to sweep the table clean of all the prettiness and instead connect with some mysterious raw inner resonance inside me. I imagined what it would be like to retreat to some mountaintop and blow on a grass reed, contemplating its single pure note for a few months. I abandoned my beautiful maple dulcimer and happily immersed myself in drones on my banjo for about seven years. I learned to play banjo with fiddlers who cross-tuned and played the drones I craved, I learned to sing old unaccompanied ballads and it was all wonderful and intoxicating. I became drunk on drones and archaic intervals.

As you may already know, eventually it occurred to me (duh) that I could play the dulcimer in a different way than I used to...in an older drone-based way that did not require flat picking melodies and fingering full chord changes across all the strings.
It was very hard for me to make this switch, but I was determined. I felt like a baby just learning to walk. I couldn't get the strumming rhythm right. I couldn't get the noter to work right or sound right. I was awful, and my misery lasted through weeks of trying. I truly hated sounding so awful and clumsy, but I kept at it. The key to my success was that I kept it simple. I played baby tunes like Go Tell Aunt Rhody and Hot Cross Buns. I didn't try to rush ahead of myself.
There came a day when I realized I was starting to enjoy sliding the noter up and down, my notes were beginning to ring clearer, and my rhythm had begun to improve. I asked my fiddler husband to play a simple fiddle tune (one that I could play well on banjo) and to play it v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y so I could try to play along with him. It was really hard for him to play THAT slowly, but he did and was extremely patient with my musical fumblings. We played more, and I got better little by little. As the weeks went by, I became faster. Still not able to keep up with most old-time sessions, mind you, but faster than I was before. I discovered recordings of Galax style dulcimer playing, and this inspired me greatly! I too wanted to sound like 'a swarm of bees'...how incredibly exciting! They played so fast that their drones never stopped ringing! I too could fill the universe with my eternal/infernal drones!

The funny thing was that as I became faster, I found that my familiar little hard triangle guitar-ish pick was proving to be problematic for fast noter/drone strumming. It created a lot of resistance and held my speed back. Whenever it hit the strings it wanted to go flying across the room and resulted in my having to keep a tight grip on it. This would obviously cause hand cramping problems. But the problem with the hard little pick is that I didn't like the sound it was producing. It sounded too harsh, too loud, and too guitar-like... not delicately graceful like Jean Ritchie and her goose feather quill, and not bee-ish like the Galax players with their long flexible quill 'dominatrix eggwhippers'. Clearly I had to ditch the little guitar pick and go longer and more flexible.

Being a fan of things old-fashioned and traditional, I attempted to use a turkey feather. I had a bunch of them to experiment on. I tried preparing them in various ways I had read about, and I tried using each end in the prescribed way. What I found was that for me, they were not up to any sustained usage, and they tended to shred rapidly. This was frustrating. I had read about the resourcefulness of early dulcimer players, and about how they often experimented with various "plectrum" (pick) materials...bundled electrical wires, collar stays, leather, felt, wood, bone...they tried whatever they found at hand around them. I tried some of these materials as well (hmmm...not easy to find collar stays these days) and I came to the conclusion that maybe plastic would be most like feather quill material, yet perhaps more flexible and more durable than quills. I had read where others had used cut up credit cards as picks, for example. Not a very picturesque solution, but certainly practical! And thrifty, in more ways than one.

I began to experiment with cutting my own picks from plastic items. Credit cards were first. I found them way too hard. My old stash of thin flexible triangle picks was dug up and tried, but again they kept breaking. I tried heavy felt and leather, but the sound was too muffled for my liking. I tried bundling various wires together, but it sounded to fuzzy. I finally got hold of a collar stay, but it was too flexible and limp, as were some plastic tops from supermarket deli containers.

I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks.

I tried cutting up plastic milk jugs, that was getting closer, as were yogurt containers.
In the end, I found that using a small range of different plastic materials was just fine. I could use a slightly heavier one in a big jam situation and be heard a bit better, and I could use a thinner one when in a singing jam so that my strumming wouldn't drown out anyone's voice (including my own). Effects could also be varied according to how long/narrow/wide/pointy/rounded I cut them. Hey, this was fun!
Again I had to try to fight my tendency to become too fixated on the idea of finding the elusive Holy Grail perfect pick. The important thing for me was that I realized that longer more flexible picks were what I needed to get the sound I wanted for myself. You will seek the sound that pleases you.
Don't be afraid to have fun and experiment with making your own picks from interesting materials. You just might like the resulting sound better than the sound you have been getting from the pick you've been used to for a long time. Or not. But it's fun to cut up credit cards anyway.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

A new player's first tune- Hot Cross Buns

A new dulcimer student came for her first lesson today.
She has virtually no musical experience, but felt very left out when all the other members of her family enjoy playing their various instruments at home. She wanted to play something too, very badly. The dulcimer in noter and drone style would be just right for her! This lovely lady had absolutely no idea where to start in terms of playing anything at all. The very idea of trying to coordinate strumming with one hand and fretting various notes with the other hand was completely alien and scary to her...

I have loaned her a spare dulcimer, which I tuned to DAA (the twin melody strings being tuned to 'A'). This puts her in the key of D, and in my favorite mode for noter playing, the Ionian mode. The Ionian mode means that the "Do" of the 'do re mi' scale starts at the third fret of the melody string(s). In the key of D that would be the D note played when pressing the third fret.

First we worked on playing some notes on the fretboard with the fingers, without strumming (by just plucking the string with the right hand any old way). I showed her that the open string was "0", and the first fret was "1", second fret was "2", etc. We practiced finding the frets from 1-7.

Later we worked on just strumming with the right hand without playing any notes with the left hand. She used a large thin flexible triangular pick. Her first strum rhythm was just down, down, down, down. Next we did down, down-up, down, down-up for a while, and some simple variations of this pattern.

Then we went back to playing a few notes with the noter, sliding it up and down between frets 1-7. Like most beginners, she at first tended to lift the noter up slightly when moving between notes. I showed her how doing that only made a funky rubber band sound, and that her notes would sound clearer if she just kept the noter down and made it slide like liquid, or like a trolley car along a track.
At last we began to put notes and strums together to play the very simplest of simple tunes I could think of: Hot Cross Buns. Hot Cross Buns is even simpler than Mary Had a Little Lamb or Go Tell Aunt Rhody. It doesn't get any simpler than this, folks.

I wrote out a TAB notation to help her begin. We will work on playing Hot Cross Buns without any paper next week, but she needed something to help her get started that she could work on at home without forgetting. I have found that beginner TAB found in some dulcimer tab books can be visually confusing to someone who has no prior knowledge of music at all. That is why I am creating my own version of simple noter played tune tabs in a format that I feel is visually a bit easier for an absolute beginner to understand.
Working with only one section at a time, and putting a simple 'down, down-up' strum together with only three notes, for a while we played just that first measure: "hot cross buns" on frets # 5, 4, 3, 3....over and over. At the end of the hour she was able to play Hot Cross Buns. It made me happy to see how thrilled she was. She kept saying "I just can't believe I'm actually doing this!". That's what it's all about.
Here is the very simple TAB I wrote for her very first dulcimer tune:

I tried to convey the strumming pattern in two places- at the top with down and up "V" arrows, and at the bottom with the vertical beat lines indicating a whole down strum or a down-up strum. Each measure has four beats.

Something special was in the air during her first lesson, because it began to snow so beautifully outside...huge fluffy flakes falling like a perfect antique picture postcard. I told her this was a good omen, that it meant her playing would bring merriment and joy to others. (I made it up but she loved the idea.)

continue reading the rest of this post here...

Starting simple

The real beauty of noter & drone style playing is its simplicity. If you can hum Mary Had a Little Lamb, then you can play it on your melody string with no need for a tab arrangement to guide you.
Chords have made things complicated enough for people to feel they need tab to get all the fingerings. There ARE no 'fingerings' in noter, fingerdancing, or Galax style playing... You play the simple melody line on the melody string, and the open drone strings will provide additional interval notes that will sound full, and you won't need to refer to 'fingering positions'. Many folks grow to love the sound of the mode intervals changing against the open unchanging drones.

Start SIMPLY, with a very simple melody you know. You will get better steadily if you just play easy stuff and have fun with trying to pick out melodies. Save the tricky tunes til later. Every time you get frustrated just go back a step to something easier. Once you can play Go Tell Aunt Rhody or Mary Had a little lamb without having to concentrate too hard, then move on to Twinkle Little star or Three Blind Mice or Frere Jacques. To start, perhaps you could tune your dulcimer (from bass side to melody string side) D-A-AA. This is tuning in the Ionian mode. Your key note of D in your melody will start on your THIRD fret on your melody string that is tuned to A. Your third fret will be a D, and you'll be playing in the key of D. Start playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on your melody string(s) starting and ending on your third fret. You will be playing in Ionian mode.

Good rhythm comes with practice and time. Rhythm is just as important as notes. Don't even worry or think about speed- speed just comes automatically as the months go by. Speed should not be a goal.
Try a longer more flexible pick. Try cutting a pick out of a stiff plastic take-out container from a Deli- make it 1 1/2" long and about a 1/2" wide, tapering to a rounded end. As you get faster, you might not want stiff short Herdim picks for playing fast tunes. Don't do any flatpicking on various strings. Basically you are strumming across all strings every time. Personally, I never flatpick at all- and flatpicking is a technique that is already amply covered in the teachings of more modern dulcimer playing styles. Some people do, however, angle their pick sometimes so they they purposely avoid hitting the drones on certain parts of the tune. Or, they angle it to only hit a low drone on some particular beat. These are cool techniques you can experiment with later.

Your beginning rhythm strum will be something like DOWN, down-up, DOWN, down-up. Like a galloping horse sound. Go to my YouTube Channel, HERE, and watch my videos about beginning strumming and using a noter.
Work on the strums and then work in your notes like TWINK, kel-l, TWINK, kel-l, LIT, tel-l, STAR, down-up.... You may need to practice your strum rhythm by holding your left hand on the strings to mute them and just practice your strumming without driving everyone in the neighborhood insane. Nothing comes without practice, but just remember that the first few days are the very hardest, from then on it will slowly, slowly get EASIER. Don't be frustrated, just try to enjoy the simple zen quality of the resonant sounds you are making. Think of yourself as a loon calling out a single lonesome note that echoes over the lake. There is profound beauty in a single heartfelt note. Let it come from within you and enjoy its pure beauty.

continue reading the rest of this post here...