Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

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!

The Culver Coffee Company is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a holiday open house from 2 to 4 pm on Saturday, December 6. I will be playing Christmas and other music on hammered dulcimer, perhaps with a little bowed psaltery or recorder thrown in. I hope to have more details to post as the date gets closer.

For some reason I picked up my tin whistle the other day, and again today I played it a bit. I learned the G and A scales in addition to the D, and I picked out a few tunes like the usual Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Then I started doodling around in E dorian — basically the same notes as the D scale, but focused around E instead of D.

And this tune, perhaps a sort of slow march, resulted.

Whistle March