Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

It’s late on Monday night. I wonder how big the post-concert jam is? My hotel neighbor and I returned after the concert — there will be another time for jamming, but we want to sleep. After I unwind a little online.

This is my first time at a week-long festival, as opposed to a weekend. I like the format so far — five class sessions each day, so you get five hours of instruction each day from five teachers. Unless, like me, you take four classes, or fewer.

I’m taking Linda Lowe Thompson’s class on jigs — we learned a really nice mixolydian one today called Double Dutch. She does the two-note bounce thing to get two sixteenth notes with one hand, one stroke — it would be a cool trick to learn.

My second class is beginning whistle with Guy George. The Susato whistles he had for sale were so much easier to play than my Waltons, and have such a nicer, sweeter tone, that I had to buy one. Guy uses his pinkies to help hold / balance the whistle, but my right pinky doesn’t quite reach without locking or overextending, which makes it stiff and a little sore — so I’m going to try to either not bother, or to change something to make it work more comfortably. I also discovered that you don’t have to lift your fingers much — which, lo and behold, makes it a lot easier to find the right holes again.

Then there’s lunch. I bought some havarti cheese and some crackers, some baby carrots, some yogurt, and some fruit, so that I could pack lunches. I even bought a mango. I love mango, but have never bought one before. I hope I picked a good one.

My third class is Stephen Humphries, percussion rudiments. I’ve taken rudiments classes several times at weekend festivals, but I haven’t made use of the stuff on my own much. I’m hoping that a whole week of it might help at least a little.

Then there’s a long break for me — there’s about forty-five minutes for short workshops or jamming, then the fourth class session when I don’t have a class, so for me it’s two hours of down time. Not enough to go back to the hotel… but a lot to just sit. I’m glad I brought my knitting. It might be the best time to tune my dulcimer, if I end up having to tune it at all — but my strobe tuner is rather big and heavy and I hate to have to take it to the festival site along with my dulcimer, guitar, knitting, and everything else. Perhaps I could borrow someone’s digital tuner — but with my past experience I don’t know if I would be happy with the results — especially the results for my fragile overwrought pysche, ha ha.

I arrived yesterday in time to check in, get some dinner (Kurtz Restaurant has a nice atmosphere, and the grilled chicken salad was very nice), then register and jam a little. On my way back to the hotel I remembered about lunch so I had a late shopping trip to Wal-mart before getting to bed.

Tonight my hotel neighbor and I had dinner together and then went to the instructors’ concert, which, hurried as it was (each performer got about two songs or tunes), still lasted a good three hours. There were some really nice things in the concert. Les Gustafson-Zook had a great kids’ song about getting in (and out) of the bathtub. Bing — wow, what a voice. Rick Thum and Ken Kolodner were driving energy and so was Butch Ross. Cathy Barton and Dave Para had a funny work song about the hard life of a folk singer. And there was more, and more, and more.

And now, folks, I am off to bed.

How lax I’ve been about updating this site! Apologies.

Today I got to play at the Yellow River Festival again. My set was mostly Old Time, with some originals and other things thrown in.

The whole thing was a bit of a whirlwind. It was graduation for my husband’s school, so he wasn’t available to take care of our little girl. I can’t fit the dulcimer and the toddler in the car at the same time, so I first ran her over to a sitter’s, then returned home to fetch the dulcimer, then to the festival, where after checking in I got to visit with a friend and hear some other music, then my set, then take the dulcimer home, then fetch the little one, and whew.

Yesterday I played at the Culver Coffee Company fifth anniversary and holiday open house.

There were treats everywhere — some made with ingredients sold in the store, like some fabulous pecan bars topped with maple pumpkin butter — and recipe cards and faux candle lights and decorations and champagne.

I played Christmas and other pretty music, mostly on hammered dulcimer, plus one on recorder and a few on bowed psaltery. I even played with two bows for the first time — on Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.

It was snowing continuously yesterday, and the roads were slow — but even though the shop was never crowded, it was never empty either.

My former trio partner, Craig Higgins, is now in a rock band called Snake Oil Salesmen. His colleagues decided to cover my tune Irksome Girl, which our trio used to play and included in our CD. To watch and listen, go to the Snake Oil Salesmen music page — it’s the second video.

I just found and installed a new event calendar plugin that will help me organize and display upcoming events. It’s Event Calendar 3, and I like it even better than the one I previously used.

It took me a while to figure out how to install it. I knew to unzip the compressed folder after I downloaded it, but silly me, I didn’t realize, until a visit to the support forums, that then I needed to open the unzipped folder and upload the folder inside — I had tried uploading just the unzipped folder itself.

Tada!

And I even have an event (one lonely event — may more come soon!) to post!