# Marcy Prochaska

### Hammered Dulcimer

## October Snow

Last night The Hanshaw Trio got together for another recording and practice session. It’s been raining here for weeks, but by the end of our session there was snow on our cars.

The first snow came in October two years ago, too, and I ended up writing a tune called “October Snow” in response — thinking about the childlike excitement for the first snow, mixed with the dread of long months of darkness and cold. I don’t play the tune exactly like I first wrote it down, but the MIDI at least gives an idea of it.

Anyway, unaware of the coming white stuff, we began our session by revisiting Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze, a pair of original jigs. I wasn’t happy with our previous arrangement of this medley, so I’d made some changes.

First of all, we now start with a guitar intro, then dulcimer playing the A part twice, then fiddle playing the A part twice, then both of us playing the B part. Before, we’d also tried doing four A parts the third time through the tune, but I think it makes for a better transition to Midnight Maze if we just do the A part twice.

I had also been trying to play bass notes along with the melody. It’s hard to do that both accurately and expressively, and the bass notes tended to be too loud. So this time I left them out, and perhaps I’ll add them back in later by recording them on a separate track. That way I can also control their volume better relative to the melody.

For Midnight Maze, I ended up writing new fiddle parts to add syncopation and interest, and also to hopefully avoid the awkward bowing and fingering the melody involved. Jerry hasn’t had time to learn these parts yet, so he’ll add them in later, too.

I have three full takes and two partials (just Irksome Girl) to listen to; I hope they’re good enough to use this time — we’re all a little anxious to finish this project.

After recording, we started reviewing Christmas repertoire. Last year we developed trio arrangements of nine pieces from What Child Is This?. Two of them, Fallen and Easter Thursday, we play all year. Last night reviewed the others: The Lord at first did Adam make, Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin, O Come O Come Emmanuel, He Shall Feed His Flock, Three Ships Medley, Noel Nouvelet / Wexford Carol, and Hewlett / Silent Night.

Published in:

- Composing
- Hanshaw Sessions

on October 26, 2005 at 1:23 pm Comments Off on October Snow

## Theme Switcher

I’ve given up on developing a functional variable-width style for this blog. Instead, I have developed two fixed-width themes, Textile Medium and Textile Large, for 800×600 and 1024×768 screens respectively.

You can choose which style you prefer and a cookie will remember your preference.

In the sidebar, under the Author information, there’s a heading that says “Themes” and a drop-down menu. You can select either of my Textile themes, or see what the site looks like in the original WordPress classic and default themes.

Enjoy! And let me know if there are any problems.

Published in:

- Site updates

on October 24, 2005 at 12:55 pm Comments Off on Theme Switcher

## New arrangement MIDI

Yesterday I worked up a new arrangement of the Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze medley.

Jerry had told me that the melody of Midnight Maze, particularly in the B part, involved some very awkward bowing and fingering, and I also thought it might be more interesting to make his part different from mine — in keeping with the theme of the dream world and its weird juxtapositions.

I didn’t want to take the time to really write the guitar part — who wants to notate strumming!? — so I only roughed it in for Irksome Girl in order to provide the intro and a sense of the chord structure and syncopation. The guitar will also play during Midnight Maze, I just didn’t bother writing it out.

Keep in mind that MIDI is a digital format — these sounds are just attempting to resemble a guitar, dulcimer, and fiddle.

Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze MIDI

Published in:

- Composing
- Hanshaw Sessions

on October 19, 2005 at 10:44 am Comments (6)

## Concert report

So… yesterday I celebrated my fifth hammered dulcimer anniversary with a concert.

The venue was the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. The concert was upstairs in a beautiful gallery, with a huge landscape behind us, a persian rug for kids (and flexible adults) to sit on, a couple of benches in the back, and chairs lining the sides.

The museum is a wonderful space acoustically; the instruments carried well, and the natural reverb made my voice sound nice. I felt that the trio’s faster pieces got a bit swallowed up in the big space — they didn’t feel as lively to me as they should have, but that may have just been my nerves.

The room was comfortably full; someone estimated maybe fifty people were there. I don’t think I’ve had more than thirty before, so that was great.

Many thanks to the museum director, Frank Robinson, and director of development, Lynne Williams, and other museum folks for making the event possible. To Sherj and Katherine for running the refreshments and CD sales; to Mary Ann, Sheryl, Stephanie, and Mom for making / bringing / mailing food; to Lisa’s husband for videotaping; to Lisa, Jerry, and Craig for their part in the performance; and, especially, to my patient and supportive husband.

Here’s the set list. Originals are marked with *. Except for the songs Rad Te Mam and In the Cool of the Day, all pieces feature hammered dulcimer:

Pas de Deux
(Duo with Lisa Fenwick, harp and flute)

- La Rotta / Bunch of Rushes / The Chanter (harp)
- Carolan’s Draught / Sleepers Awake (flute)
- Allemande (harp)
- In Him Will I Trust* (flute and voice)

No Loose Threads
(My first CD)

- Variations on a Three-Year-Old Theme*
- Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (flute)
- Rad Te Mam* (guitar and voice)
- Road to Lisdoonvarna / South of the James*

Unrecorded

- In the Cool of the Day* (guitar and voice)
- Praeludium for lute
- Sheep May Safely Graze (guitar and flute)
- Third Street Market*

break

What Child Is This?
(My second CD)

- Fallen* (fiddle and guitar)
- What Child Is This? / Menuet
- Easter Thursday (fiddle and guitar)
- Noel Nouvelet / Wexford Carol

The Hanshaw Trio
(With Jerry Drumheller on fiddle and Craig Higgins on guitar and mandolin)

- Out on the Ocean / Morrison’s / Kesh (fiddle and guitar)
- Staten Island / Julia Delany (fiddle, mandolin, and guitar)
- Irksome Girl* / Midnight Maze* (fiddle and guitar)
- Winter East and Kensington* (fiddle, flute, and guitar)

Encore:

- Dennis Murphy’s / John Ryan’s

Published in:

- Performances

on October 17, 2005 at 10:18 am Comments (2)

## Jam

On October 2, I went to a house concert: Carolyn Cruso, who plays hammered dulcimer, flute, and sings with guitar.

Joe Crookston, a recently-arrived local singer/songwriter, organized the event and also performed a short set of his own songs. I met him this spring when I was busking on the Commons; his little girl liked the dulcimer, so he stayed a while and we chatted a bit. He’s another one of those people who seems to be comfortable in his own skin. I saw him and another singer/songwriter, jazzy-folky Linda Stout, in a concert this summer. I really like his music. He’s got a driving rhythm, great guitar licks, a warm rich voice, and a way with lyrics.

The email “flyer” for the house concert said something about jamming afterwards, so I brought my dulcimer. No one else had brought an instrument, but the three of us — Carolyn, Joe, and I — jammed anyway. What fun! We did some traditional tunes — Morrison’s, Staten Island, Julia Delaney — and some Irish songs, and improvised in Am. That was the scary part, for me — but I managed to throw in some interesting ideas.

This morning Joe sent me this picture:

Published in:

- Performances
- Photos

on October 17, 2005 at 9:45 am Comments Off on Jam

## If the shoe fits

Last night we worked on Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze, two original jigs.

The title Irksome Girl comes from one of those band name generator websites. We decided it didn’t work for us as a band name — it doesn’t exactly fit our “kind of Celtic” style. But it does fit for a description of our band’s sole female.

Guess who’s the most picky, the most demanding, the most likely to be in a foul mood, the most sensitive, the most whiny, most likely to send too many, too-long emails? Fortunately we all (seem to) tolerate my rough edges and still manage to get along quite well and enjoy one another.

Anyway, since we weren’t going to use the title for a band name, I figured I’d at least use it for a tune title.

Irksome Girl is in Am for the A part. There’s some walking bass stuff, but essentially the A part centers on that Am chord. In the B part, the key changes to A mixolydian, and the chord progression rocks back and forth between A and G or Em.

We start with four A parts, first just dulcimer and guitar, then adding in the fiddle. The third time through, we do a sort of re-intro, with fiddle and guitar doing two A parts and then me building in a rhythmic bass thing for two more A parts, leading nicely into the B part.

Midnight Maze might be the first tune I wrote here in Ithaca. There was a community-wide reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein going on, which I thought was a cool thing to do. The introduction to the book talks about its origins in a contest, and how Mary’s idea came to her in a dream.

I think dreams are fascinating, with their weird yet familiar landscapes, people, and events, juxtaposed and jumbled together. Midnight Maze nods to Mary Shelley and to the world of dreams.

It’s in Bm, and I tried to write a melody full of jumps and turns and shifts. We start with a single guitar chord and a long low B fiddle drone while dulcimer plays melody, then the guitar returns in the second A part and the fiddle joins the melody in the B part. Second time through I drop an octave, and the last time we repeat the second-to-last phrase to make a kind of tag ending.

It’s a difficult medley, especially for me. Playing the bare melodies is a bit awkward, and I’m also trying to throw in some walking bass notes in Irksome. We also had to decide between guitar strumming all the time, or fingerpicking some parts and strumming others. We like the fingerpicking, but there’s not enough time to grab a pick for strumming, so if he fingerpicks, he’s got to strum without a pick.

I’ve got seven full takes plus two partials; I hope there’s enough good material in them to edit together a good version of the medley. If not, it’s still useful development and practice.

Published in:

- Composing
- Hanshaw Sessions

on October 13, 2005 at 10:51 am Comments Off on If the shoe fits

## Troubleshooting WordPress

I have three unresolved issues with the layout — so far.

One is that there are no paragraph breaks, at least none that look like `<p>` breaks usually do, with a line of space before the new paragraph. Why is this happening? I am guessing it is in the CSS somewhere, but I’m not sure what to look for. Any suggestions?

Second is even more puzzling. On the front page, in Firefox and in Safari, the sidebar box is higher than the content box. In IE they’re even. What’s wrong there? I want them to be even everywhere. And in Firefox, they’re only uneven on the front page.

Third, the archive pages only show excerpts from each post. I’d like to find the code for that so I can determine how long the excerpt should be, and I’d also like to make the “More[…]” into a working link with the text “[Read more] ”

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Published in:

- Site updates

on October 12, 2005 at 2:45 pm Comments (2)

## Timing

Today I ran through the set list for my anniversary concert, including what introductions and other talking I want to do. It’s an hour and forty-five minutes long, which is about fifteen minutes longer than I’d like — I was tired before I was done, and my guests will be sitting on a persian rug or in hard metal chairs.

I’ll have to think about what I can cut short — particularly talking — and maybe plan a short break in the middle. I don’t really want to cut out any tunes… I’m geeky enough to have planned five sets of five tunes for this fifth anniversary, and I don’t really want to change that.

Published in:

- Performances

on October 7, 2005 at 5:57 pm Comments Off on Timing

## Help from UrbanGiraffe

Woo-hoo! I found a helpful guide to dissecting WordPress themes at UrbanGiraffe, John Godley, who even answers questions!

Obviously I still have work to do, but progress continues.

Published in:

- Site updates

on October 7, 2005 at 5:53 pm Comments Off on Help from UrbanGiraffe

## Yikes

Sort of in over my head, trying to customize this template. I’m making progress with the background image, fonts, and main colors, but yikes, other details are overwhelming. For example, I want the body of each page to stay put — to clear the paisley border on the left (which I remember I had to remove for users of older IE… which reminds me I need to be testing all this to make sure there’s no problems for older browsers), and for the left margin not to move when someone changes the size of the window. But I still want the width to be collapsible, to avoid those annoying horizontal scrollbars. I’m not sure quite how to go about doing this. I almost wonder if I’d be better of building a template from scratch — I might understand it better than just experimental tweaking of an existing template.

I also don’t know yet whether I want to revise my whole site with WordPress (which offers static “Pages” as well as blog posts) or just keep existing static pages as is. That may affect how I customize the template — if I revise the whole site, I might change things more, but if I keep existing pages, I want the blog to more or less match.

And normally when I link to pages within my site, I don’t have to spell out the whole url, but just a slash and the desired page’s name. But since this blog thing is in a separate directory, I don’t know how to escape that directory without just typing out entire urls. And yet I don’t like the idea of having all the WordPress stuff in my main directory.

And…

———-

Not to mention I need to keep practicing for the upcoming anniversary concert and other events, and the rest of non-online life.

Published in:

- Site updates

on October 5, 2005 at 4:27 pm Comments Off on Yikes
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