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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Sad week....

Sorry I am not posting right now. I seem to have a dying beloved kitty here, it's emotionally difficult right now and I'm just not able write much about music this weekend. Will post as soon as I feel a bit better- thanks.

Update...
Our beautiful Lydia passed away peacefully at home with us on May 7th, in our bed. At 8 years old, her life was not nearly long enough. She was a truly wonderful cat in every way and we'll deeply miss her cheerful loving sweetness. Thank you, my dulcimer friends, for your kind and thoughtful comments.

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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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Oh My Little Darlin'

Here is a fun song that is quite easy and fun to play and sing. It's in mixolydian mode... You can tell it's mixolydian because it ends on the open string (zero fret) which is the key/tonic note, in this case a G. I've tabbed it here in the key of G, the key in which it is commonly played. I used the reverse mixolydian tuning of DGG instead of a more usual mixolydian GDG....because it is way easier to tune to this reverse DGG tuning if you are starting from DAA or DAD.
If it's too low for you to sing in G, then just bring it up everywhere one whole step to EAA and play it in the key of A instead.

--> By the way, since this a tune in mixolydian mode, you can play from this tab exactly the same way while tuned in DAd!
I like the lyrics with the man complaining about his wife always crying. Heck, if my husband was telling some girl that someday they'd get married, I'd be cryin' too!

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TAB...a blessing or an evil?

If you read online forums about mountain dulcimer playing, it won't be long before you stumble into yet another go-round of the endless debate between people who play from TAB and people who play by ear. Each side tends to think the other is misguided, or that they are being unfairly treated, and the discussion can typically get pretty heated...

What I usually hear from the two sides is-

Those who promote playing and learning tunes by ear are suggesting that anyone can learn tunes by ear and those who claim they can't simply aren't trying hard enough. They look down on groups of dulcimer players who are dependent on TAB and they say that using TAB results in a dry mechanical sounding music that lacks the subtle personal touches of music learned by ear directly from another player or from an audio recording.

Then those who play only from TAB defend their stance by saying that not everyone can learn to play tunes by ear, and that if it weren't for TAB many of them probably wouldn't be playing at all, and why are these other people looking down their noses at them and trying to spoil the joy and fun they get from playing their TAB in a social/club type dulcimer group?

In reality, both sides are right in how they view TAB. There is no all right or all wrong here. Like most things in this world, TAB is both good in some ways and not good in other ways. We should view TAB objectively, without our emotional pre-judging baggage attached.

Personally, I think it is possible for anyone to learn to play a simple tune by ear....if it is presented in a very understandable way, and if they approach it with sincere effort and not give up too easily. Sadly, most people give up on anything that they cannot accomplish in two or three attempts, or they do not have a good teacher or mentor to learn from. They have no idea how to go about doing this on their own.

I also agree with the pro-ear group when they lament the lack of creativity in music that is learned and played only from tabbed versions. I myself find it impossible to include the many subtle nuances in a tune if I am trying to write it into a TAB that can be fairly easily followed. Tabbed versions of tunes 'can' sound mechanical unless the person playing them has also heard the tune actually played by living breathing feeling musicians.

When people play by TAB in a group there is an unfortunate tendency for the group to discourage any individual from adding personal touches to the tune, from deviating from the written TAB. "That's not how it goes." might be heard. Clearly this is not a situation that encourages personal growth in playing music. But when people say that, I don't think they say it in a mean-spirited way- they genuinely believe the 'renegade' is making mistakes or accidentally playing the notes not 'right' ('right' being exactly how it is tabbed out).

Another problem in being totally dependent on your TAB collection is that it pretty much means that you can't play with anyone who doesn't play the same tunes from the same TAB as you do. This means you can't even think about trying to play in fun jams with other types of musicians. I've even seen instances where two dulcimer players who both play only from tab were overjoyed to find each other at a festival and wanted to 'jam' together but they were completely unable since they both were only familiar with their own TAB sheets and had none in common, and they were unable to improvise at all. Now that is indeed a sad situation, and can hardly be called a 'jam'. They wound up taking turns playing their TABs for each other. (!)

On the 'pro TAB' side of the debate...
It is indeed true that many people would not be playing dulcimer today (or any instrument) if it weren't for TAB. Especially in today's society where learning from other local musicians in our community is becoming very uncommon- for isolated beginners there are few choices when it comes to learning to play music, particularly when they have had no muscical background at all. TAB becomes a welcome and non-threatening method of getting a start. It's sort of like those old paint-by-number kits for people who would never be taking 'real' art classes with an artist instructor.
Dulcimer clubs that get together in big groups to all play their TAB books together in unison offer a wonderful welcoming and non-judgmental environment for beginners who would otherwise have no direction and no encouragement at all. In this sense TAB really is a wonderful thing that brings isolated beginners together with a clear purpose, in an accepting environment.
There are players in these clubs and groups who will steadfastly insist that they could never learn to play by ear or to improvise. Perhaps this is really so, perhaps not. In either case, I feel it's unfair to criticize these people- if playing from TAB makes them happy, then why try to make them feel bad about that? That would be both arrogant and negative. They are getting joy from their playing. Yet it should also be remembered that there are many people out there who used to insist they could never learn to play by ear or improvise, but who actually DID wind up starting to play by ear and loving it- they were able to learn new things when the time was right for them, and when they had the right help to guide them.
Respect others' ways of playing. But also, never say never.

I myself have found TAB to be a wonderful way to learn new tunes, both in my dulcimer playing and my banjo playing. I do know how to read standard music notation, but I find TAB to be a great sort of 'shorthand' to help me get a new tune started, to help my students be able to take something home with them to work on, or to jog my own memory when I've forgotten a tune. I use TAB abundantly in this blog on purpose, because I feel TAB as a learning tool really helps make the music immediately accessible to beginners who have no real live mentors nearby to learn from, knee to knee.

I think of books full of TAB as cookbooks with recipes for tunes written in them. Sometimes you can't figure out how to make a dish by yourself, so you read the recipe and it guides you. Once you've made the same dish 25 times you might not need to look at the recipe anymore. And sometimes you can invent a little variation in the recipe and come up with something new. Other times you might figure out what ingredient you can substitute for one you don't have in the pantry. A successful cook slowly gets know how to adjust the recipe when they need to. The cookbook recipe is a tool too.

But perhaps most importantly, we must remember that the 'feeling' of music is just not found in the TAB- you have to put that in. And feeling in a song or tune is maybe the most important ingredient of all. I have seen my share of dry flat 'typist' dulcimer players who play like court stenographers. Some of them have been playing for many years and can play fast, too...but I find it not much fun listening to them. Far more than right or wrong notes, it is feeling and emotion from the player that make the music come alive. When we take that chance and let our emotion out into what we play, it is returned to us many times over as JOY. You get back what you put in.

Tabs are good and very useful to help one get the bare bones of the tune. Then once you can play it, add the feeling, add the spice, make the tune your own. If that seems too hard to do, then try it with a simpler tune. Use whatever methods available to get playing, including tab... but then don't be afraid to experiment and try new things as well!

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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!

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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.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

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?

continue reading the rest of this post here...

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.

continue reading the rest of this post here...

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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