# Marcy Prochaska

### Hammered Dulcimer

## Semi-conductor

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I worked on four pieces. First, I wanted to finish “Christ Child Lullaby.” I did the dulcimer parts without too much trouble, thanks to practicing each of them ten times daily since my last attempt. Then I tried the recorder — but after maybe half a dozen takes on one recorder part, my fingers were stiff enough that I needed to do something else for a while.

So, second, I corrected an error in a harmony part in “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin,” then added guitar to the medley. I’m not very good at finger-picking stuff, so this part was difficult to learn and took a lot of takes to record.

Third, I added guitar to “Three Ships Medley.” This part was mostly strumming, so it wasn’t as difficult as the other. There’s one section played with a capo — Matt suggested I retune with the capo on, which I’d ignorantly never done before; it makes a big difference. I wonder if that says something about the intonation on my guitar…

Anyway, my back and left shoulder were really stiff after recording these two guitar parts, because I’m one of those “guitarists” that has to look at the left hand all the time. That’s when I decided to give up on those “Lullaby” recorder parts until next session; too stiff, and extra practice would probably help a lot, too.

The last thing I did that afternoon was a preparation for the evening session. We’d decided to record Craig’s guitar part first, so that Jerry, the fiddler, would have both dulcimer and guitar tracks to follow. But on one of the tunes, “Easter Thursday,” Craig needed to hear Jerry’s part, too. So I recorded a dulcimer version of Jerry’s part as a reference track.

Home to rest a little and make and eat an early dinner. And my in-laws arrived just in time for me to let them in and then head back to the studio for the trio’s evening session.

The trio convened at 6 p.m. Jerry headed downstairs to warm up, and Matt got Craig set up to record. We started with “Hewlett / Silent Night,” which turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be: I’d unintentionally slowed down in places, which made it difficult to keep tempo with my tracks. We figured out that recording section by section made it a lot easier. Once the guitar tracks were finished, Jerry recorded his parts.

Next we tackled Craig’s parts for “Easter Thursday”; Jerry joined me in the control room to watch and listen. This tune is difficult because it’s in an unusual meter — it’s a 3/2 hornpipe — and because there’s a syncopated section at the end of the B part. Having that reference track helped a little.

I ended up standing in the window sort of conducting — keeping track of the first beat of each measure, and indicating when to play during the syncopated part. Lots of fun… when we were off from each other we’d be shaking our heads and laughing silently, and when we got it right my index finger “batons” would become thumbs up. Meanwhile Jerry sits on the couch fascinated, as I am, by all the technology and the whole recording process.

Once we thought we had Craig’s part down, Jerry went out to do his part. But the middle section was problematic. I realized that my decision to have Craig play this section syncopated was not only making things difficult for Jerry, but also just didn’t sound good. So I wanted to have Craig redo that section.

Matt was unconvinced about being able to position him the same way so that the part would blend seamlessly with the previous parts — both of them suggested instead that we just copy the part from a previous section and recycle it for this section too. I’m not comfortable with that idea, so they agreed to try re-recording the section… fortunately, we did manage to get the positioning essentially the same. Whew.

Now it was Jerry’s turn again. He’d never recorded before, but he did his parts for the first tune in four takes, and just three takes for this one. Impressive!

After doing some editing and checking the other takes to make sure they didn’t all have the same mistakes in the same places, I offered everyone cucumbers (Craig actually accepted) and sent Craig and Jerry home. Matt burned the end-of-session CD for me, I wrote a check, and, at about 10 p.m., headed home myself.

Published in:

- Photos
- What Child Is This?

on August 26, 2004 at 11:41 pm Comments Off on Semi-conductor

## A touch of grey

As always, this recording session began with tuning. I took the dulcimer to the studio yesterday and did an hour’s worth of tuning, then finished this morning. It took a long time again, but was relatively straightforward and nonproblematic. Whew.

Speaking of tuning, I’m anticipating the arrival of a new tool that I hope will help reduce my tuning time: I won an Ebay auction for a Conn Strobotuner ST-11. Its grey face sports a spinning patterned disc with flashing lights behind it… when the note I’m plucking is in tune, the pattern will appear to be stationary; when it’s sharp the pattern will seem to be moving to the right, and when it’s flat the pattern will look like it’s going left.

I’d tried a Peterson VSAM virtual strobe in a store, and found it confusing to read. At another store I got to see how a mechanical strobe works with a guitar, and to me it seemed easier to read, so when I saw the Conn on Ebay I decided to bid on it. I’m hoping that its continuous reading will cut the time I usually lose to my needle tuner’s sometimes delayed and inconsistent responses. I’m also hoping that it’s in working condition when it gets here!

Tomorrow evening, the Hanshaw Trio will be recording two medleys, so today I recorded my parts. We started with “Easter Thursday / O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” a medley I’m including on this album as a reminder of what the babe in the manger accomplished when he’d grown up.

“Easter Thursday” has two especially tricky parts: one separated hands moment where I kept hitting the note just above the one I was aiming for, and several places where, reaching for the Bb on my extra bass bridge, I instead hit the wrong side of a course coming off the regular bass bridge. It’s like the sound you’d get if you plucked a guitar string between the top of the fretboard and the tuning pins. So it took a while to get it right.

“Hewlett / Silent Night” went more smoothly, probably because it’s in D, one of the most playable keys on the dulcimer. We did it in just four takes. Because this one starts with the guitar alone, I first recorded a count and then plucked the notes the guitar will play, then on another track I recorded the dulcimer parts. Likewise, where there’s a pause near the end, I recorded another count so that all three of us will come back in at the same time.

After listening to the “Three Ships Medley” I’d recorded last time, I’d decided I should fix two little errors. To do that, I figured I’d have to record the two larger sections containing the errors. It turned out I had to re-record the entire thing because the mic placement today was a little different than it was last time. However, it wasn’t that bad… only four takes; and just five edits, compared to fifteen last time.

We also recorded the dulcimer harmony parts for “Three Ships.” One of the harmony sections had three notes that weren’t timed exactly right, leading to a technique that, for me, falls in a grey area between what’s too artificial and what’s acceptable: Matt moved those three notes slightly to correct the timing. I said in an earlier entry that I draw the line at looping or recycling — that I want to really play every note each time. Well, I did play those three notes… but not with exactly the right timing. Hmmm.

The end is in sight. I’ve scheduled the rest of the sessions, at least what I think I’ll need, and if all goes well I should be done by mid-October. That should mean I’ll have the CDs by mid-November. So, this year I expect I’ll make my anniversary concert a release party, although it’ll probably be a few weeks late.

What’s left? Finishing the trio medleys, finishing three other pieces in progress, and three new pieces, plus, if time allows, a few fix-its. (Hopefully these other fix-its won’t require as much re-recording as “Three Ships” did!) I’m starting to work on the liner notes and graphics, too. This time I’ll make sure the web address is correct! (On No Loose Threads, I missed a typo in the URL, and I also didn’t realize that you can’t include the usual “www.” with addresses at Tripod, my former hosting service.)

Published in:

- Tuning
- What Child Is This?

on August 25, 2004 at 5:38 pm Comments (2)
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