Single Girl, Married Girl

Here is a fairly simple and fun song for beginners in DAA ionian tuning. I am dedicating this TAB to Kelly, a lady who is, as I write, just beginning to play mountain dulcimer in traditional noter style, much to the delight of her adoring husband. Kelly, I assume your married life is more fun than the one described in this song. If not, then follow the example of the lady in the picture above!
This TAB version of "Single Girl, Married Girl" is mostly inspired by the well known Carter Family recording of it. However, I have evened out the parts where... they eliminate or add a couple of beats, simply to make it a little easier for beginners to follow. It still remains quirky and interesting enough, what with the repeated last line of each verse. If you ever get really good at this one, you can always go back to the funky Carter Family timing, which is even better.

I have always loved this song! You can hear a snippet of the Carter Family's version here on Amazon, (or download the whole MP3 of the tune there for 99 cents).

If you find yourself feeling like the poor married girl in this song, then go jump on your bike or buy yourself a new dress immediately!

continue reading the rest of this post here...

A face from the past

Dulcimer musician Stephen Seifert recently asked me about the picture I had used on my second blog entry that I posted on Feb. 14, 2009. Stephen wondered why he had never seen the image before and asked me where I got it. It is a tintype of a bearded man holding a lap zither or scheitholt and a bow:Well this little picture has an interesting story...

Several years ago, I was searching the term 'zither' on Ebay, and this tintype popped up in the antique tintype category. I realized it was an important and marvelous image that looked to be from the first half of the 1800's, important especially because the fellow is holding a bow. New photographic proof that lap zithers were sometimes bowed does not pop up often. This was a rare image and appeared to be in very good shape.

I would have loved to try to buy it, but I figured it would sell for well over $100 to tintype collectors, and I really couldn't justify spending that on an image as opposed to something more 'useful'. No other dulcimer collectors were likely to find it since it was not in the Ebay 'instrument' category at all, and it didn't have the terms scheitholt or dulcimer anywhere in the auction either.
So I contacted Ralph Lee Smith about it, because I thought he might view it as something worth trying to get, from the dulcimer history standpoint. Ralph was very excited by the tintype zither man, and said it was indeed a wonderful image with historic value, and that he could certainly use for an upcoming museum exhibit he was planning. We both estimated its date to be likely somewhere between 1860 and 1880.
Unfortunately, Ralph was not an Ebay member and had no clue how to go about bidding on anything, and had no idea how much to bid. I offered to bid for him, and we then figured out a logical maximum price for the tintype that would give us a decent chance of winning it.
So I bid on the tintype at the last few moments of the auction and happily I won it for us. I had it shipped to me, where I would scan it in high resolution before sending it on to Ralph.

It arrived and it was truly marvelous! It was on a tiny piece of tin, only about 1 1/2" x 2 1/2", and the image was CRYSTAL CLEAR. The bearded scheitholt player's piercing eyes stared out at me from a time long past. I so wondered what his name had been, and where he was from, what language had he spoken?
I scanned it at very high resolution and further brought out it's details in PhotoShop, so that I would have a nice image of it and so I could send the scan to Ralph as well, for his reproduction purposes.

I hated having to part with it and ship it off to Ralph, but it was to have a great home and be 'safe' with him. Ralph reimbursed me the Ebay price, I remained with a beautiful photo image to remind me of it, and Ralph used a large poster print of the scan in his recent Mercer museum exhibition .

Ralph still has the little jewel, and he told me he didn't mind at all if I told the story of the tintype here.

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The Bravest Cowboy

Today I actually cleaned up my office, which was getting drowned in accumulated piles of junk that I thought were really important but which didn't actually need to be piled around everywhere at my fingertips. A good fresh start for Spring! I got rid of some things that were emotionally difficult to sort through, as well. I feel unburdened, and I love the visual shock now when i walk into my office and wonder if I'm in the right place.

Well I've been promising myself to post another relatively simple mixolydian mode tune again soon for the benefit of all you mix-heads out there (I know you're out there lurking and going through withdrawal)...so here is a good ol' western cowboy song for you- The Bravest Cowboy.

But wait! Before you get too comfortable, I pulled a little trick on you... I made it in mixolydian all right (tonic D note on the open melody string) but I put it in BAGPIPE TUNING! Ha ha. Actually, I started playing it in old reliable DAD tuning, but I found it had that odd sour feeling to it that I dislike in some D tunes. I have mentioned this before, in this post where I might have to kill you. The sour feeling comes from the interval of the 5th- the middle string tuned to A. (remember, in the musical scale abcdefgabcd-etc, an interval of a 5th is 5 steps or intervals up from the tonic key note, the key note being 1. For key of D then: D=1, E=2, F=3, G=4, A=5) Now usually I just LOVE that 5th interval in tunes. But in some happy type D songs, that 5th interval just doesn't sound quite right to me, and when that happens I simply tune all my strings to D and then it sounds great. Try playing it both ways and you'll see what I mean! It's also called a unison tuning. So for bagpipe mixolydian D tuning, your bass string will be a low D and all your other strings will be the higher octave D, all the same note. (For myself, I just tune all my strings to the high D for bagpipe tuning, since I don't use heavier bass and middle strings at all, I just use .010 strings everywhere because I don't care for the bass string sound...but that's for another post altogether!)
There are some slightly interesting strum patterns in this one that are good to practice as well- I worked them to not conflict with the rhythm of the lyrics. This is actually a good one to practice singing along with your dulcimer player on, since both the dulcimer melody line and the lyrics are relatively plain and simple, and there is only one part to the tune. Try it by practicing with just the first verse a few times! Plus, you needn't worry about how 'good' your voice is, since cowboys are supposed to have cruddy voices! (unless they are cowboy movie stars of course, but those are fake cowboys)

So now you have a cowboy mixolydian tune. You could play it while watching Tom Mix.

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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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Little Sadie and the Dorian mode

I am going to introduce you to the Dorian mode now. You know how the Aeolian mode has a sort of spooky or lonesome sound to it? Well think of the Dorian mode as the 'other' lonesome blues-y spooky mode. Most spooky/blues-y/lonesome songs can be played nicely in either the Aeolian or Dorian mode.
Remember- the Mixolydian mode has your key note ("Do" of do re mi) or tonic note on your zero fret (open string). The Aeolian mode puts your tonic note on the first fret. The Ionian mode puts your "Do" tonic note on the third fret. The Dorian mode puts your tonic note on the fourth fret. And guess what?- that's as high as we are ever going to go on this blog! Once you can play a couple of tunes in those four modes, you can get by pretty well without learning any of the other modes if you prefer. Mixolydian(0 fret), Aeolian(1 fret), Ionian(3 fret), and Dorian(4 fret).

Now, you may ask- why can't I just play Little Sadie in the lonesome Aeolian mode instead of having to learn the Dorian mode too?... The answer is that the Dorian mode, which starts higher up (on the fourth fret instead of the first), will then give you some of the real LOW notes that you'll need in order to play Little Sadie. Good answer, huh?

Now I found that I could not sing Little Sadie at ALL in the key of D, or even C...I had to go down to G to sing it well. Thus, I'm tabbing this version of Little Sadie for you in G in the hopes that you too will find it easier to sing than if it were in D.
Look at this chart to see the Dorian G tuning.

Here is another important note:
Usually, when we tune to a key, we put our bass string to that key/tonic note, and we tune our middle string to a 'fifth' above that, which is five steps up in the alphabet if you count the tonic note as your first note when counting up 5. Thus for the key of G I'd be tuning my bass string to G and my middle string to (count on your fingers up g-a-b-c-D) ...to D. Then for dorian, my melody strings would need to be tuned so that the tonic G is found on the fourth fret. To get a G note on the fourth fret I'll need to tune the open melody strings down to C. C=open, D=1st fret, E=2nd fret, F=3rd fret, and G=4th fret. So a regular Dorian tuning for G would be GDC. (You'll tune the melody strings DOWN one step to C if you are starting in DAD, or UP two steps to C if you are starting in DAA.)
BUT...if you use a REVERSE tuning here, you will be re-tuning your bass and middle strings over a much shorter distance if you are starting from DAA or DAD. Look at the second chart in the picture, the REVERSE Dorian tuning. Reverse tuning is a sort of cheat method which sometimes can result in re-tuning your bass and middle strings only a short distance, it winds up being much easier to re-tune and much easier on your strings. Look at the reverse Dorian tuning on the chart to see how this would work. The reverse Dorian G tuning is DGC- much easier to get to from both DAD and DAA!
So I have tabbed Little Sadie to sing in the key of G, and tuned in reverse Dorian mode.

Once you tune to DGC (which is not that hard) you will see that it's quite easy to play Little Sadie, no big deal.
You just needed to locate the tune to a place on the fretboard where you'll have all the notes you need for playing it. And that's what modes are helpful for!

Enjoy playing the outlaw song Little Sadie!

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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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Froggy Went a' Courtin'

Here is a very fun song that is especially liked by children. I love envisioning all the little animals coming to wedding! There are many versions of Froggy, and I chose one that did not have the long nonsense rhyme in the verse, since we already have the dulcimer playing along too. Sometimes it's best to keeps things from getting too complicated.
Here is a link to a lovely sound clip where you can get an idea of how this version might sound as it's sung: Froggy...
I found I could sing it pretty well in G, but it was still just a bit low for me, so I tabbed it in the key of A, ionian mode, tuning EAE. (incidentally, those two E's are about as high as you'd want to tune your dulcimer strings if you have a scale length of 28" or more- tuning up to F or high G might well break you a string.)
If you prefer singing it a little lower in G, just tune DGD instead and follow the same tab. It's simply ionian mode tuning, so you could even tune it back to D ionian as well (DAA) if you find you can sing it well in the key of D. Remember, once we get the mode, we can change tuning to go up or down to suit our voice yet still follow the same tab numbers, as long as we stay in the same mode...in this case ionian, with the tonic key note being on the third fret of the melody string.

Don't be afraid to play around with the timing a bit, especially as you listen to that clip and get a feel for the song. You may like to add an extra beat or two of additional 'resting' space after each "uh-huh", just like the unaccompanied ballad singer typically does. That actually makes it sound more natural and interesting. It becomes a slight logistical problem to write extra beats into TAB, and the extra beats can vary from verse to verse, so I tabbed it 'straight' for basic learning purposes. Tab is just a basic blueprint for learning a song anyway, and tab shouldn't be followed religiously. So after you get the song basics down, you should make the song your own!

Incidentally, this song is very very old, having been already referred to in 1549 and was published again in the 1600's and 1700's...From Andrew Kuntz's Fiddlers Companion:

http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/FROG_FY.htm
FROG AND THE MOUSE. English, Country Dance Tune (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning. AABB. Kidson's tune is from Thompson's Pocket Companion for the German Flute (1797), and is the same as that used for the old song "Amo Amas I love a lass" (from the "Agreeable Surprise," 1781). He points out the nursery song "A frog he would a wooing go" is quite ancient and is mentioned in the 1549 work Complaint of Scotland under the title "The frog cam to the myl dur {mill-door}." A ballad "Of a most strange wedding of a frog and mouse" was entered at Stationer's Hall in 1584, according to Chappell. It can be found in Melismata (1611) and in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719) as a political song. American versions go under the title “Froggie went a-courtin’” while in Ireland it can be found as “Cousin frog went out to ride (fa lee linkin’ laddy oh).” Kidson (Old English Country Dances), 1890; pg. 3.

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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!"

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Black is the color...

Here is a ballad that likely has a different melody than the melody you are familiar with. Black Is The Color (of my true love's hair) is a very old American ballad- Cecil Sharp notated it in North Carolina in 1915. It was passed along in the same area until ballad singer Evelyn Ramsey was recorded singing it. Current N.C. ballad singer Sheila Kay Adams learned it from Evelyn, though Sheila's version is slightly evolved and is 'her own'...

It should be noted that John Jacob Niles wrote a newer melody for this ballad long ago- a very pretty one, and it's the popular melody that most of us grew up hearing associated with this song. However, his is a modern composed melody and the one I'm tabbing here is much more spare and quite distinct from Niles' prettied version. I personally don't much care for Niles' version of this ballad, but if you like it I'm sure you can locate dulcimer tabs of his version a'plenty elsewhere on the web. This one I put together for you is decidedly less "folky"...but that's why I like it! It has that older lonesome mountain sound to it.

I mostly used Evelyn Ramsey's version to create a dulcimer part, but you can hear an MP3 of Sheila Adams' breathtaking unaccompanied singing recorded here: on the Digital Library of Appalachia website - just click on the button that says "Access this item" and hopefully the MP3 will take a couple of minutes to load and begin playing for you with one of your computer's music listening programs. Sheila is a wonderful ballad singer, story teller, and banjo player, and I've had the privilege of taking several workshops under her in both ballad singing and clawhammer banjo. Evelyn Ramsey's recording of this ballad can be found on the CD that comes with this outstanding book: Sodom Laurel Album - the book includes a marvelous traditional music CD of the Madison County NC region.

I must tell you that it is virtually impossible to translate all the subtle rhythm and phrasing variations used by either Sheila or Evelyn into dulcimer tab. What I'd really suggest is to listen to recordings of the song you want to play from tab and listen again and again, until you are able to 'get' some of the beautiful little variations these ballad singers use when they sing every verse ever so slightly differently- a pause here, a little roll of notes there, an extra beat here, etc. I have just laid out a basic structure of the ballad that is fairly easy to follow. As Sheila tells how her "Grannie" Dellie Norton used to say- First learn the ballad as you hear it, and then go out and make it your own. So I say to you as always, don't be afraid to make traditional tunes and songs your own...put your own personal style into them and play them as you like them! Notice I threw in an extra verse that I found from another old version of this ballad, because I liked it. After all, that's what all these traditional music makers have done over the generations- they have each made the music their own. But also don't be afraid to seek out older recordings and play them that way too, if that's how you like them.

I tabbed this ballad in Aeolian mode (you might think of aeolian tuning as DAC, which is indeed aeolian "D" tuning- but that was way too high for me to sing it, so I re-tuned my strings to DGF, which is "reverse aeolian" G tuning. (See my previous post on the concept of reverse tuning) It's rather like tuning to regular G aeolian GDF, except that it's way easier on the bass and middle strings to go from DAC to DGF, as opposed to going from DAC to GDF. Remember, when you tune your melody string(s) from D or C to F- you must tune them DOWN to F, not up, because anything higher than that high E might break your strings. Don't be afraid to try new tunings, especially if it enables you to be able to sing along with your playing!
As with all these dulcimer tabs, if you tune your dulcimer higher or lower but remain in the same mode, you can still play it the very same way as in the tab- same fret numbers and all. Thus, you could tune your dulcimer here to DAC ('regular' D aeolian) and play it too, with or without singing along.



P.S. Just for fun- here is a link to a clip of a lady from Arkansas singing this ballad in 1958 which absolutely makes me want to HURL! (gee, I hope her relatives are not reading this)

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Sugar Hill

Here's a fun old-time song, Sugar Hill. I've put it in the key of C, in ionian tuning. I can sing it better in C than in D. Maybe I'll try to do another version in the key of G for other singers' voice ranges, what do you think?

My 9 year old banjo student loves this song because everyone is knocking each other upside the head and being all rowdy like... It should be played and sung with gusto...no funeral procession renditions, please!

Click here to listen to a peppy little version of Sugar Hill played by two good friends of ours, Beth and Woody from New Hampshire.

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Top Secret (don't make me have to kill you)

I want to add a note to my last post, but I felt it was interesting enough to deserve its own separate little post, so as not to confuse people.
In my last post about the tunings I use most frequently in mixed old-time music sessions, I wrote...

My longer scaled dulcimer will be usually tuned to DAA or DDA to play in the key of D, ionian mode, and can be lowered one step down to CGG or CCG to play in the key of C.
My shorter scale dulcimer will be often tuned to AEE to play in the key of A, ionian mode, and lowered one step down to GDD to play in the key of G, ionian.

Now, do you notice how for the keys of A and G I give just ONE tuning each? That tuning consists of a bass string tuned to the tonic note (G or A) and then the middle string tuned to a "fifth" above that (five steps up from the "1" tonic note). The fifth in the key of A is E, and the fifth in the key of G is D.
Now notice that for playing in the keys of D and C, I give not one but TWO choices of tunings for each key. First I give the equivalent of the same thing I suggested for the keys of A and G- in other words, the tonic "1" note on the bass string and the "fifth" for the middle string. (DAA tuning for D, and CGG tuning for C)

Now here's where the difference comes in- why did I also give a second tuning choice for the keys of D and C? The second choice I gave consisted of tuning the bass string to the "1" tonic note and also tuning the middle string to the tonic 1 note, thus eliminating a 'fifth' in the the open drone strings. In keys of D and C, this is a DDA tuning and the CCG tuning. With this type of tuning, when you fret the tonic '1' note on the melody string in ionian tuning at the third fret, what you hear will be DDD or CCC. This sounds like what people call a 'bagpipe tuning'.

I actually prefer this tuning for the keys of D and C- without the middle drone string sounding a 'fifth'. Why?...
Because when I play with fiddlers in the keys of D and C, the tunings they use sound a bit more resolved and cheerful than what I hear when I use a fifth in my open drone. My 'fifth' note in a drone sometimes sounds a little sour to me in old-time D and C tunes, especially when banjos and guitars are involved as well.

Don't ask me why this is...I honestly don't know! I just know what does and what doesn't sound good to me. But I do know that my 1-5-5 tunings sound really good in the keys of A and G (especially when the fiddler is using a 'cross tuning' such as AEae), and that a 1-1-5 tuning sounds more consistently agreeable with D and C tunes.

I didn't want to emphasize this in my last post because things were hard enough to explain in a simple way as it was! ;) But now you know the whole story...and
here I now reveal to you my personal most used and useful tunings in the four most common old-time music keys:
Key of A: AEE
Key of G: GDD
Key of D: DDA
Key of C: CCG

(note- these tunings are not for what most folk musicians call "modal tunes"- those lonesome spooky sounding ones...for that you'll need to be tuned in either Aeolian mode or Dorian mode, not Ionian mode like those I list above, but we'll get more into that issue later on)

Hey, this is Top Secret Information that took me several years to figure out on my own, and I hope that my revealing this information will help enable more dulcimer players to break free of the unfortunate artificial chains that prevent them from playing in all kinds of fun jam sessions with other instruments! YAY! If you divulge this valuable information to undeserving, rude, or unpleasant dulcimer players...I might have to kill you.

Do give these tunings a try when you find yourself itching to change keys!

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The tunings I use most often in old-time sessions

People often ask me what tunings I use in order to be able to play fiddle tunes in mixed old-time music sessions. I will try to give a simple basic answer here that is easily understood. As we all know, mountain dulcimers have a reputation of being only played in the key of D. This was not always the case... Before 1960 most dulcimer players were more adept at changing keys and tunings than they are today.

 

 If you read my previous post titled "What happened?" you will understand how the dulcimer evolved into its current state where it has earned a reputation of being an instrument forever stuck in the key of D. But I am assuming that anyone reading this blog will want to at least experiment in playing in other keys as well. Since this blog is about noter/drone style playing, we don't have to worry about chord shapes and chord fingerings when considering various tunings. We only have to consider where the melody falls on the melody string(s), and how to tune the open drone strings to go with it. 

Now- I see traditional and old-time dulcimer tunes as falling into basically two categories: 1) ballads and songs which may be sung to, and 2) old-time tunes which tend to include a lot of fiddle tunes and dance tunes (not songs or ballads) and are often played in groups of musicians. The ballads seem to have a slightly higher proportion of Aeolian and Dorian melodies, and the fiddle tunes seem to have more Ionian and Mixolydian tunes. They do overlap a great deal, and so let's keep in mind that this is a generalization just to help us get our bearings. 

When I play ballads and songs, I most often play them without other instruments playing along, and I try to tune my dulcimer to a key that I can sing in. The key of D is usually the very worst key for me to sing in. Men seem to find D a bit less difficult. So finding a key I can sing in and can tune my dulcimer to can be tricky. In addition, I am still struggling in my ability to sing and play at the same time. It's something I have to work hard at and Iam not very accomplished at it! For me it's like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. Add to that this challenge of trying to find a tuning I can sing in well on the dulcimer, and you can understand why this skill is a constant 'work in progress' for me. I truly need to work on this more and can never seem to find enough time to devout to improving my dulcimer/singing skills. But let's put aside the issue of singing with the dulcimer for now, and instead let's discuss the tunings I most often use for playing old-time music in group sessions with other musicians.... 

 

As you may or may not know, I am very lucky to be married to a wonderful old-time fiddler. We have lots of friends who play old-time music as well, on fiddles, guitars, banjos, etc. We often play with these people at gatherings and potlucks and such. Of course some singing is always done in these sessions, but most of the music we play together consists of American fiddle tunes from the 1800's to today. There are enough old fiddle tunes to keep us plenty busy! Most of these fiddle tunes are played in four different keys: G, A, C, and D. There are quite a few 'modal/minor' tunes too, but for simplicity let's not discuss those now. In old-time sessions, the musicians often will play many tunes in a row in one key, then re-tune and switch to another key for a long while. This is because the banjo player is tuned to a particular key and would find it hard to keep re-tuning all their strings every other song or so. Also, many old-time fiddlers are in "cross tunings" as opposed to "standard tuning" and thus would have to re-tune to change keys as well, just like the banjo player. This works to the dulcimer player's advantage, since we too tend to have to re-tune to change keys, especially if we are not using capos. Indeed, the tunings I use most often are quite similar to the 'cross tunings' that old-time fiddlers sometimes use, such as AEae. 

 

Now we get to the meat of the matter.... Notice how the keys of G and A are only one step apart in the musical alphabet. (The musical scale notes go: abcdefgabcdefgabc...etc.) Also notice how the keys of C and D are only one step apart as well. I have found that the most practical solution for me when playing in long old-time sessions is to have TWO dulcimers with me- one for the keys of G and A, and one for the keys of C and D. I have also found that the most practical all-around mode for me to play fiddle tune sessions in is ionian mode. 

 

I have one dulcimer with a scale (VSL) of 28" to 28 1/2", and one dulcimer with a slightly shorter scale of 26" to 27" long. The scale length is the length in inches from nut to bridge- the part of the string that vibrates freely. If you have a (+/-) 28" scale instrument AND a (+/-) 25-27" instrument, then you will be able to tune and play easily in pretty much any key. My longer scaled dulcimer will be usually tuned to DAA or DDA to play in the key of D, ionian mode, and can be lowered one step down to CGG or CCG to play in the key of C. My shorter scale dulcimer will be often tuned to AEE to play in the key of A, ionian mode, and lowered one step down to GDD to play in the key of G, ionian. A shorter scale of 26"-27" enables you to tune up to E easily without breaking strings, to play in the key of A. I used to break too many when tuning up to E on my 28 1/2" scale dulcimer, that's why I had my slightly shorter one built (26 1/2"). While certainly possible to tune back and forth on one dulcimer between the keys of A, D, G, and C, I did this for a year and found that I was breaking strings enough to make it annoying for me (like once or twice a month maybe). I think it was not so much from tuning up to high E as it was the accumulated stress on the string caused by tuning up and down and up and down so often between notes like from G to the E five steps higher and back down again. 

 

Thus, keeping two dulcimers for the two close 'pairs' of keys (G/A and C/D) led to my very seldom breaking strings and made my life a lot easier. I bought this lightweight padded double dulcimer case which is very handy to cart my pair of dulcimers around in. It might seem like a hassle to haul two dulcimers around at group gatherings, but actually it's not so bad when they are in a double case, and dulcimers weigh less than guitars and MUCH less than banjos. For me, the convenience of having the two dulcimers for the four most common keys far outweighs the extra bit of weight to carry. 

 

 I chose my shorter scale length dulcimer (26 1/2") for tuning to the keys of A and G, since a high EE was the highest note of all that I'd be tuning to in the four keys I'd be playing, so the shorter length kept less stress on the strings tuned up that high. And I chose my longer scaled dulcimer (28 1/2") for tuning to the keys of C and D, since GG was the lowest note of all that I'd be tuning to in the four keys, and a longer scale would help avoid those low G's from feeling too floppy. 

 

Yes there are times when I tune both my dulcimers to keys and modes other than the ones I'm describing above, but these are my practical "working tunings" that I play in most often with others, so I wanted to tell you about the tuning layout I worked out for myself after a couple of years of trial and error. You may well find a better plan that works for your particular playing situation! The 4-key tuning plan I use works quite well when playing old-time tunes with other instruments in group sessions in the keys of A, D, G, and C. If I need to play in minor keys there are other solutions which I'll discuss later on. When I play alone at home or when I am working on singing ballads with my dulcimer I can tune to anything I feel like trying out, of course. 

 I hope this outline of my own practical tuning habits helps someone somewhere to find some good solutions for themselves when playing with others. Perhaps it will give you some good ideas for experimenting in tunings.

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Blood of the Old Red Rooster

This is a very old murder ballad with lots of blood in it! Its better known title is "Edward", the story of a young man who kills his own brother in a foolish argument and lies to his mother about the blood on his sleeve. The version I am presenting here is only one of many different versions. I based mine mostly on the singing of Miss Irmadine Finch of Arkansas, 12 years old...the niece of famed ballad singer Almeda Riddle. Click here for a wonderful 1953 recording of Irmadine singing this ballad...

I find I can sing this nicely in the key of C. In noter style playing, it needs to be in ionian mode on the dulcimer rather than mixolydian mode, because it has several lower notes that dip below the tonic note of C, notably the G note that the song begins with. Thus I tuned my dulcimer in C ionian tuning of CGG...the very same traditional tuning that Jean Ritchie's father Balis Ritchie always tuned his dulcimer to. Whenever I tune to CGG I always think of the Ritchies of Kentucky and their musical family and neighbors. Their mountain area of Viper, Kentucky was a rich cradle of dulcimer making and ballad singing.
I put a few really fun noter slides in this tab that you can practice. See if you can get all the sliding notes to sound clear- then you can start adding yummy slippery noter slides in other tunes you play! Half the fun of noter playing is sliding up and down, like a kid in stocking feet on a newly waxed wood floor.

One more fascinating tidbit about this ballad. Irmadine sings a verse about the "Guinea goodle pig" and I wondered what that could be- a guinea pig, perhaps?? Then I wrote to an old-time musician friend of mine who grew up in West Virginia. He said his grandfather used to raise hogs and talked about a breed of hog supposedly brought from French Guinea in West Africa- the Guinea hog. He said this type of pig was known to be small and hardy, with black hair, and could withstand the hot weather better than the English breeds. Thus the hog farmers would try to breed a Guinea hog with their farm pigs occasionally. After some further investigation, I found that the American Guinea hog is a currently endangered breed of pig that is very useful for small family farms... read more here for example.

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That's some banjo

In addition to dulcimer, I play old-time banjo. After playing banjo for a year or two, I had a desire to play fretless banjo. I felt it might make a better match with some of the more archaic old-time fiddling I was trying to play along with. I had initially succumbed to a case of the deadly Banjo Acquisition Syndrome, and by this time I already had a handful of lovely fretted banjos. They were quite pretty, some with very elaborate and beautiful pearl inlays of various designs. I was proud of my banjos, but I kept searching for a fretless banjo. I bought one, a delicate and lovely antique English fretless from the 1800's...but like many antique instruments, it was difficult to play smoothly... I continued my search for a smooth playing fretless banjo.

One day while perusing Ebay in my fretless banjo quest, I stumbled upon an unusual auction. It was for a fretless banjo that was a recently made reproduction of the famous formica-necked banjo played by old-time banjo player Fred Cockerham (now departed but revered by many). 

Fred's original formica banjo now resides in a museum, click here to see it. But a knowledgeable banjo playing friend of ours, Ray Alden, had designed and sold a few reproductions of Fred's white banjo years ago. This Ebay banjo was one of those very banjos, and indeed I also knew the current owner who was selling it on Ebay because he was now more interested in playing Irish music. His wife was even planning on attending the same party we were going to in a couple of weeks! I spotted the auction within a half hour of it being put up on Ebay.

Now, here was my dilemma:
This was about the ugliest banjo I had ever laid eyes on. The slotted peg head was shaped like Gumby's head, it had cheesy guitar geared tuners (just like Fred's original). The neck and peg head were overlaid with white kitchen counter formica with little gold flecks sprinkled throughout. Aggggghhhh! All I could think of when looking at it was making egg salad sandwiches. DAMN but it was ugly!
HOWEVER.....

It was one of those banjos that I knew would be easy to re-sell, since it was a perfect reproduction of Cockerham's famed banjo and you very seldom saw something like this up for sale. It was made by people with excellent reputations in the banjo world, so I knew it would be quite playable and well made. The "Buy It Now" price was such that I knew I could probably re-sell it easily if I didn't like how it played. And I could pick it up at the party in two weeks and not even have to pay shipping! Who knows, I might even be able to use it at home for practice.
It was too good a deal to pass up. I bought the monstrosity, thinking I might wind up re-selling it.

I went to the party two weeks later and the Ugly Banjo was handed over. I was almost afraid to open the gigbag to look. Well, there it was, mocking me with its luncheon counter top, crap tuners, and dopey Gumby head. I sure as hell wasn't about to be seen playing it there at the party though. I played my beautiful inlaid banjo instead.
Back home again, I tuned up the thing and picked it up to check it out.
That's when everything changed.
It turns out this escapee-from-a-greasy-spoon-diner banjo played like butter. The neck felt wonderful in my hands and everything fit me like a dream...so easy to play! The formica felt so good under my fingers! ...And it sounded terrific! It was everything I had hoped for in a fretless banjo. I was awed. DOH!- now I couldn't possibly think of re-selling it! No, I had to play it!
I began to play it all the time, and my gorgeous elaborately inlaid expensive banjos lay forlornly in their cases like gilded embalmed Egyptian mummies.
In my crazed state, I played it in front of my friends, who at first thought I had lost my mind. But my infectious enthusiasm for the Moby Dick of banjos seemed to produce some sort of mass-hypnosis effect, and soon all my friends began to view the white formica banjo with kind tolerance, even puzzled admiration. I took it to old-time music gatherings, where it attracted attention of course, standing out like some glittery billboard, and several high ranking banjo players asked to play it out of pure curiosity. After playing it, each one told me privately that if I ever wanted to sell it I should please let them know first, because they wanted it badly. I began to take pride in my 'spectacular' banjo. I named it Casper after the handsome and stately pure white cat owned by our friend Ray who designed the banjo, had it made, made the bridge for it himself, and set the banjo up perfectly years before I bought it.

It reminded me of the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine visit friends who just had a baby, and the baby was frankly 'unattractive'. As the parents proudly showed Elaine their little bundle of joy gurgling in its crib, they asked her "Isn't he just gorgeous?!"...and Elaine, thinking quickly, said enthusiastically "That's SOME BABY!".

Thus, I grew to see my white formica banjo as a thing of great beauty because of how it played and sounded and felt to me. It gave me everything and asked for nothing in return. It didn't fuss, I didn't need to be careful of the finish like my other banjos. It already had a nick in the peg head. It's unassuming presence, playability, and great sound was it's appeal- and isn't that really what musical instruments are all about? Just as over the years I came to find more and more beauty in music played a simpler way, without all the fancy notes and excess musical 'decoration' I sought in the beginning, in the same way my Ugly Banjo showed me that beauty comes more from within. There is beauty and elegance in functional perfection that is completely independent of artificially valued superficial appearance.

Anyone for egg salad?

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Handsome Molly

Here is a fun old-time song. This is just one of its many versions, some are sung in a sad way, this one is peppy like a dance tune. It has some "floating verses" -verses that are commonly found in other ballads as well, borrowed back and forth between traditional ballads. The same or similar melody is used in a couple other ballads as well...

I've put it in CGG instead of DAA, so I could sing it better. I want you to notice that although the tuning appears to be for C ionian (CGG), the song begins and ends on a G note on the open string, and generally sounds as though it is in the key of G. So we are playing the song as though it was in G reverse-mixolydian tuning. Maybe it really is in G?...yet it also sounds to my ear as though it's in C. (doh!) In my years of playing clawhammer banjo, I noticed that there are some old-time tunes that you play out of one key even though you are tuned for a different key. Even the fiddlers sometimes aren't sure whether they are in the one key or the other- the tune Rye Straw is one example. I've never been able to exactly figure out the actual reasons for all this, so if anyone has any helpful information or corrections on this, please feel free to jump in!

In any case, even without understanding what's going on with the keys here, I simply found that this song works well for me in this tuning. It's easy enough to tune to (just get into DAA and tune all strings DOWN one step to CGG) and then follow the tab.
It's a fun song. It was a sung ballad first documented by Cecil Sharp in Virginia in 1918, then made popular by Grayson and Whitter's energetic 1927 stringband recording. Enjoy!

One of my personal favorite dulcimer players, Ken Rice ("FlintHill") of Pennsylvania, has worked out a slightly different and very beautiful version of Handsome Molly using his fingerpicking technique. He explains his picking method clearly on his YouTube clip of Handsome Molly, HERE- be sure to watch it! To play either Ken's version or my tabbed version, you simply need to be in any typical ionian tuning, such as DAA or CGG.
Lastly, here is a short clip of myself playing and singing this fine old ballad on my dulcimer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cANILXqlL5Y

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