# Marcy Prochaska

### Hammered Dulcimer

## Tuning reminds me

Today I need to tune again for a gig at the local Alterra nursing home, and that reminds me of my earlier post about my fears for the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering, which I ought to report about.

I tuned without any big problems last Wednesday, and the dulcimer sounded fine at that evening’s jam and while we were practicing on Thursday. Later Thursday, though, I was starting to worry about our plan to play on the Commons Friday, because I wouldn’t have time to retune between playing there and leaving for the festival. We decided to stay home instead, which reduced my worry.

It came back the next day, when we started to practice and Rick said the difference between our dulcimers was significant enough to require retuning. I went at it with a sinking heart but trying to think “good enough.” I had a fairly difficult time of it, but I managed not to completely break down and cry until I was done and safely hidden in my bathroom. While Rick tuned his in an easy twenty minutes (how I wish I could do that), I got lunch together, and then we left for Binghamton.

I am not very flexible or adaptable. It’s hard for me to recover from something like a terrible tuning time, plus there was the stupidity with the car the previous day*, plus I was tired because we’d stayed up talking too late the last two nights. Nothing like going to a festival already overtired, feeling stupid, and psychologically worn out from a bad tuning session.

I was determined to avoid tuning for the duration of the festival, but had that underlying fear that it would become necessary, and along with that, an underlying fierce defensiveness lest anyone challenge me about it. No one said anything to me, and as far as I could tell it sounded okay for the rest of the weekend (it’s hard to tell, in a room full of dulcimers, whether mine or someone else’s is wrong).

Today I hope I can tune with less stress, even if I am increasingly certain that I’ll never be able to tune any faster.

*Instead of having Rick back his truck out into the road, then having me drive my car out, then replacing his truck, I tried to drive around his truck. I missed the truck but ran over the porch step, splintering a bit off the railing and putting a nice crumpled dent in the fender. Fortunately I didn’t break the light.

Published in:

- Festivals
- Tuning

on July 27, 2005 at 9:14 am Comments (2)

## Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering

Wednesday evening my friend Rick Davis arrived from North Carolina, in order to teach at the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Binghamton this weekend. After a quick dinner, we attended a local “slow jam,” a group of musicians learning tunes together, often playing them first at a slower tempo and then again at the usual speed. Thursday we practiced a bit for the piece we planned to play in the Friday coffeehouse concert at the festival, had lunch at the Moosewood, and visited the Farmers Market. Friday morning I had to tune again, which was very annoying and discouraging. We had just enough time to eat a little lunch before we left for Binghamton.

Things began with Cliff Cole‘s workshop on mapping the dulcimer. He went over various ways to play major and modal scales and some chords. Then I taught a class on Carolan tunes. I’m not an expert on 18th Century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, but I do play a handful of his tunes, which are popular among dulcimer folks. We learned Blind Mary and Captain O’Kane, and I also handed out Hewlett and Planxty Irwin. I included chords and harmonies for each tune, so folks will have some additional options to work on at home.

The coffeehouse concert started after dinner. In the middle was a set by the featured autoharpist, and before and after were sets by other instructors, who each got to perform one song or tune. In fact, if someone was accompanying someone else, that counted as their turn. So I ended up doing a solo version of my piece so that Rick and Cliff could do their own pieces and not lose their turns by accompanying me.

Tip: Don’t commute an hour and a half to a dulcimer festival. Even though we left right after the concert, we still didn’t get home until a little after 1 am, and had to get up at 6am to get back in time for the morning meeting. It’s no fun to get so little sleep without even getting to jam.

Saturday morning I went to a mountain carols class by Donna Missigman. We learned three carols, including a G major version of Star in the East, which I’d previously learned in A minor. The next class was about arranging, by the featured hammered dulcimist, Mark Wade. He talked about arranging in terms of overall structure, like intros and conclusions, transitions, building up to a peak, and that sort of thing.

After lunch, Sam Edelston did a class reviving a variety of his favorite lessons from past festival classes, including a useful and fun exercise for learning to control hammer bounces and developing greater facility with fast reaches. Next I attended a singing jam, which was fun even though I didn’t sing much. My other class was the last one of the day; I taught four simple separated hands techniques, including octaves, sixths and fifths, three-note right-hand chords, and right-hand root-fifth accompaniment.

Rick, Cliff, Elliott, Nancy and I had dinner at a charming little place called The Copper Cricket. The dessert made up for the dinner. Cream cheese filling wrapped up in pastry with raspberries, raspberry sauce, and ice cream. Mmmm.

Saturday night’s concert began with the featured mountain dulcimer player, then Mark Wade. He started with some classical pieces, then went into some traditional things played in untraditional ways, and some other stuff like blues. Rick and I did stay late this night in order to jam a bit with Cliff, A. J. Bashore, and Sam.

Yesterday we tried to play at the Farmers Market but there wasn’t room for us, so we played out on the Commons instead. It was a lovely day with low humidity and a nice breeze, and we had a good time playing together. When we got home, we collapsed for a nap, woke up to go eat at Ralph’s Ribs, and returned to go to bed again.

Rick left about a half hour ago. Today, I think I’ll tune, go to Home Depot and Agway to get materials for a chicken wire fence for the gardens, since the groundhogs got through my stick fences over the weekend (grumble grumble grumble), practice for our next trio recording session this Thursday, and listen to the CDs I got from swapping with Cliff — one is something his band recorded in a cavern, and one is his daughter Emily’s.

Unless I get overtaken by a nap.

Published in:

- Festivals

on July 25, 2005 at 9:06 am Comments Off on Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering

## Fun at the market

Today I played at the Farmers Market.

Very humid, but cool and breezy enough that I didn’t feel too worn down until around 1:30 or so.

First, my student Emory and I played together for about forty minutes. He’s eleven, and has been taking lessons for about two years. He’s one of those kids with aptitude for and interest in a variety of things. He’s been playing piano for years, recently took up oboe, and is also learning lampworking — a method of making glass objects. He’s already composed some nice and creative original hammered dulcimer tunes. We divided our time among his solo pieces, one of mine, duets where we take turns on melody while the other accompanies, and others where he played melody and I played chords. We had fun and folks at the market were properly impressed; I am pleased.

Then my trio arrived, and we played together for a little over two and a half hours. We still make more mistakes than I’d like, but we also still have a lot of fun playing together, and people seemed to enjoy our music. Our arrangements and playing are definitely improving because of the work we’re putting in for our home recording. One thing that was fun today was that we set up in a rather tight triangle instead of our usual line. The fiddler and I were basically face to face. I have to look at my instrument a lot in order to keep my place and play accurately, and he often plays with his eyes closed. We made eye contact fairly often, though; another form of the paying attention to one another that makes doing music with other people such a pleasure.

To my surprise, I sold twice as many of my debut CD as I had the previous best-selling market day this season — I actually sold all of that one that I’d brought with me. I ordered a thousand when I recorded it in 2002, and now I have fewer than 200 left. I really never thought I’d ever sell them all, but now that’s not such a bizarre idea.

The Belgian waffle with whipped cream and strawberries was a nice way to end the market day, and it was nice of Christi Sobel, an artist who helped me with the graphic design on my second CD, to help me eat it.

Published in:

- Performances

on July 16, 2005 at 5:13 pm Comments Off on Fun at the market

## Not safe, but good

I love C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. I think they’re not only good literature, but full of fruitful ideas. One is the idea that Aslan, the Christ-figure, is not safe, but good. God is not in the business of wish-fulfillment or comfort or convenience. Not that all wishes, comforts, and conveniences are bad, but that sometimes there is something more important. God’s purposes and ways are higher than ours, and can be quite dangerous to us in an earthly sense, but we can have confidence that whatever he brings our way, he will carry us through it, and all things will work together for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).

I have been thinking about the upcoming Cranberry Gathering, a festival for mountain and hammered dulcimer and for autoharp. I will be teaching two classes, and my friend Rick Davis from North Carolina will also be teaching. He’s arriving next Wednesday evening, so that we’ll have some time to practice for a piece we’ll do at the Friday night coffeehouse concert, and we’ll also spend Friday morning playing out on the Commons before heading to Binghamton for the festival.

That means that I’ll have to tune on Wednesday, and hope that my dulcimer stays sufficiently in tune for the whole weekend. With the weather being somewhat various lately, especially in terms of humidity, that hope seems really thin.

So what, right? If you were me, you’d just tune it again; Friday between playing out and arriving at the festival, and maybe again Saturday or Sunday sometime. And that’s what all the other dulcimer players will be doing. At least all the ones who care about being in tune and who are not raw beginners.

I’m not like those people. I can’t seem to ever tune in less than an hour and a half, and my average lately is just over two hours. And that’s not even all in one sitting; I get stressed enough that I generally have to take at least one serious break and sometimes two. I typically set aside a day for tuning, and work on it in bits throughout that day.

My reputation is at stake. I’m a professional performer. And I’m actually teaching some of these workshops. If my dulcimer doesn’t stay in tune, what will I do? I could leave it alone, or I could try to adjust it and hope that it doesn’t take too long, or I could try to adjust it and burst into a crying fit if it’s not cooperative. What will people think?

I’m dreading this.

Yesterday afternoon I was thinking about it. I was reminding myself that generally my dulcimer sounds pretty good to other people even when it sounds off to me. And that in the past my dulcimer has indeed stayed quite reasonably in tune for weekend festivals. There was one time when I did some visiting in Virginia before heading over to the Upper Potomac Fest in WV, and I had to retune in WV, and had a terrible time of it, but then the rest of the weekend it was fine.

Still worried, I tried the opposite approach, instead of trying to dismiss the fear, facing it head-on: what’s the worst that can happen? My dulcimer will sound awful, and I won’t be able to use it to demonstrate the things I’m teaching. I’ll try to tune it, wasting the entire class time, and having a panic attack, maybe even going into a rage and hitting someone or smashing my dulcimer. Everyone will think I’m absolutely crazy, or a fool, and that I have no right to be there at all, participant or teacher. I’ll never be able to go back. In fact, I’ll be blacklisted from all the other festivals, too, and wherever we go once the husband has finished here at Cornell, I’ll never again be able to play or teach dulcimer in public.

That’s pretty dire. But not the end of the world. Do I really care more what the dulcimer community thinks of me than what God thinks of me? Isn’t God big enough to provide for me even if I lose this career? I’m not saying it’ll be easy or that it won’t hurt a lot. But surely I can trust that God is good even when I’m a fool and humiliated?

Published in:

- Festivals
- Tuning

on July 14, 2005 at 9:07 am Comments Off on Not safe, but good

## Corning market jam

The Corning Farmers Market is a small gathering of vendors with canopies set up on both sides of a brick sidewalk lined with trees and flower beds, in a park between the river and a street.

We set up between an organic produce farmer the washtub bass player knows and a representative from a winery near the border of Canada (their Vignoles was lovely). A fellow who plays harmonicas, autoharp, mountain dulcimer, and some percussion joined us a little later.

We managed to find enough things we all knew or could sort of follow along on, so musically we had a pretty good time, and the vendors and customers seemed to enjoy it as well.

I got a little nervous and insecure on things I didn’t know, because sometimes it’s hard for me to hear what the chords are and sometimes even when they’re changing (one tune was all Am and Em and for some reason those two chords sound too similar to me). Sometimes it was also hard to hear clearly when the autoharp or mountain dulcimer was taking the melody. (Jam etiquette requires that when one instrument is taking the melody, the others should back off and play supporting parts.)

Most interesting was a group of three teenage boys who kept coming back to watch and listen. One of them, wearing a Rage Against the Machine shirt, said he couldn’t believe how much he liked this stuff, since it was far outside his usual listening repertoire. It’s exciting to see younger folks enjoying this music.

Published in:

- Performances

on July 8, 2005 at 8:57 am Comments (1)
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