Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

Yesterday I started mixing and editing “Down the Brae / Ballydesmond Polka #2 / Ballydesmond Polka #3,” the most recent track for The Hanshaw Trio’s home recording, and today I just finished mixing it down.

Mixing involves things like panning, effects, and volume. I set the panning so that the fiddle is 33% to the right, the dulcimer 33% left, and the guitar is centered. Then I add just a hair of reverb to the fiddle.

The interesting part is drawing the volume envelopes. If I had a mixing board, I would move the faders manually; newer boards can record this movement so that mixing can be automated. With the software we’re using, Cakewalk’s Guitar Tracks, I could do the same thing, using the mouse to move the faders and having the program record that movement. However, I find it easier to use their envelope method instead.

You start by creating an envelope, which shows up as a straight line on the track, with a dot (node) at each end. You can then add more nodes and define the movement from one to the next (jump, linear, fast curve, slow curve).

My first task is to mix large chunks, like sections where dulcimer has the melody or sections where the guitar is fingerpicking. Then I may have to make smaller, shorter adjustments like when a particular guitar strum goes over 0 dB (which creates distorted noise), or where the fiddler stepped away from his mic a bit and therefore needs a boost. I think some folks use a tool called compression to deal with the guitar spike problem, but it’s easy enough just to add a dipping node at each spike, so I haven’t explored the compression option.

This particular medley involved editing the best “Down the Brae” take with the best “Ballydesmonds” take. We started the “Ballydesmonds” takes with the last two measures of “Down the Brae”; the overlap gives me more elbow room to find the best editing point. I ended up switching dulcimer tracks at the point where I hit a bass note before starting a set of arpeggios leading into the “Ballydesmonds.” I switched the fiddle and guitar over a bit later after their last “Down the Brae” notes had faded out.

Today’s work involved finishing mixing the individual tracks, and then mixing down the three tracks into a single stereo track, which will later be converted into a WAV file ready to burn onto a CD.

I like this medley. It has a lot of energy and momentum. And I’m especially impressed with the guitar work on this one. Kudos to Craig.

Lunchtime!

Last night we worked on Down the Brae / Ballydesmond Polka #2 / Ballydesmond Polka #3.

All three tunes are in Am; Down the Brae is a march, which has a similar feel to the Irish polkas. The chord changes get a bit closer together as we go from tune to tune, and each tune also gets a little more note-y, and there’s some cool F chord substitutions in the last tune, so there’s an increase in energy just from stringing these three together in this order.

We spent a good bit of the evening finalizing our arrangement decisions; our arrangement is fairly busy, but we think the similarities of the tunes help keep it grounded.

Down the Brae starts with an intro of guitar fingerpicking, then a fiddle and dulcimer call and response, then both together — just twice through the tune. A set of fast dulcimer arpeggios leads into fiddle and guitar playing the A part of Ballydesmond #2, then guitar switches to backup and dulcimer joins the melody for the B part, and on into the second time through. Dulcimer and guitar start Ballydesmond #3 while fiddle plays some bass notes (how cool is that, fiddle playing bass!), then he joins the melody on the second A part. The second time through this tune dulcimer plays a harmony part, and we end with a bang.

Because the arrangement is fairly complicated, and because the dulcimer arpeggios and switch from finger-picking to strumming create a natural break, we tried recording Down the Brae and the Ballydesmonds separately. We started the Ballydesmond takes with the last two measures of Down the Brae, to allow for some overlap of sound, particularly the dulcimer’s sustain, and to allow for more elbow room for editing.

Today I hope to choose the best takes of each part and try the edit; I hope it works!

Yesterday I tried some percussion rudiments practice on my hammered dulcimer. Last weekend I had a workshop on the topic at the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest; I’d done some visiting afterwards and got home Thursday, and recovering from the trip and other things kept me busy over the weekend.

The first thing I worked on was the single stroke roll, RLRLRLRLR, increasing tempo to find the point of control.

Then I tried a few paradiddles (RLRR / LRLL), but my left hand was so uneven I decided to work on some partial paradiddle exercises instead. The right-handed ones — like RLRLRLRL / RLRRL — were easy enough but not likely to develop my left hand. (Duh.) So I did a bunch of left-handed ones. It’s difficult to keep my left hand relaxed, especially when it sometimes bounced too many times or just stuck to the string. I was tempted to try funny angles or do weird things with my thumb or fingers to try to control a nice double bounce. The other thing is that when I use left hand lead, I usually flick the back of the hammer with my middle or ring finger, which has generally helped me keep the hammer straight and get a clean, consistent, strong sound. Perhaps the combination of tension, weird movements, and the flicking are responsible for the fact that I had to quit because my left wrist hurt. I don’t think I was actually moving the wrist all that much.

I noticed that there’s a different timing principle for paradiddles than for another exercise we’d done in the workshop. This exercise is an alternation between a bar of single hits: R L R L R L R L, and a bar of double bounces: RRLLRRLLRRLLRRLL. In this exercise, the hands move with the same timing, so that the individual bounces are twice as fast as the singles. The partial paradiddles, though, involve the hands moving more quickly with singles, so that each individual bounce takes up the same time as a single.

This morning I played a bit more with the 7/8 pattern I’d learned in a workshop on odd-time tunes: R L R L R L R / L R L R L R L. I started out playing the pattern with my right hand on a note on the right side of the treble bridge, and my left on the left-side note opposite. Then I experimented with letting the accents fall on other notes, which was fun and actually a bit easier, because the left hand accents felt more purposeful. I could see a simple tune come out of this if I keep playing with it.

The highlight of this year’s Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest was having classes with Dan Landrum all day Saturday: “Odd-Time Tunes” in the morning, and “Percussion Rudiments” in the afternoon.

At the time I was looking over the festival brochure, I didn’t really know much about Dan, except that he was touring with Yanni and that he played a Dusty Strings D-600, like my former teacher, Tim Seaman; it was mainly the class titles that caught my interest.

I mentioned in February how I admire Malcolm Dalglish’s playing and can’t figure out what all he’s doing a lot of the time. I’ve noticed similar rhythmic stuff in others, like Cliff Cole or Rick Davis, or this fellow Nate that I met at the Farmers Market. T. J. Osborne, who I met through EverythingDulcimer.com, helped me out a bit over the phone with some ideas, and Sam Edelston also had some interesting exercises at the Cranberry Gathering this July. Both were helpful, but I didn’t seem to be making much progress.

Part of it is a matter of learning styles. I don’t do very well learning on my own. This is partly about external motivation being easier than internal, which is a fault; it’s another symptom of how I don’t often enough locate myself within myself, but in what other folks do for me or say about me and so on. It’s partly about relationship, though; music is just more fun and more interesting with other people.

Part of it is a matter of time. As exciting as it was to meet Malcolm after his concert, it’s not the best time to learn about his techniques. Likewise, a phone call with T. J. or a ten minute workshop segment with Sam is not much time to understand and develop a technique.

So, a total of five and a half hours of percussion and rhythm workshops sounded very appealing. Even better, when Dan introduced himself Friday evening, I felt immediately comfortable with him.

The first two hours was “Odd-Time Tunes.” I was the only person who had signed up, perhaps because Joanie had included it in the page of workshop descriptions, but not in the page of workshop times and titles — oops. Fortunately, we were able to have the class anyway.

I played a few things for him — my “Variations on a Three-Year-Old Theme,” as part of answering his question about my musical background, and my arrangement of “What Child Is This? / Menuet,” because he asked me to play my most rhythmically challenging piece and I couldn’t think of anything, and a bit of a Bach prelude to demonstrate how convenient it is to have my extra bass notes on both sides so I can hit them with either hand.

He taught some patterns and exercises to develop a feel for 7/8 and 5/4 rhythms, and played bits and pieces of tunes to demonstrate how the patterns work. Much to my surprise, I found that I could do some of the exercises. The ones that I particularly stumbled over, he was able to break down into something easier to catch. This was very exciting and relieving — it was exactly the kind of thing I’d been wanting to learn, and here I was actually learning some of it. I might have even learned enough to try composing some stuff that would use some of these patterns.

He also showed me his Linear Chromatic, an interesting dulcimer developed by James Jones. Most dulcimers lay out the notes in diatonic scale boxes. A diatonic box has four notes on one side, like D, E, F#, and G, and four on the other side, like A, B, C#, and D. Some dulcimers, like mine, put the extra notes on additional bridges, which requires big reaches and unusual hammering patterns. The linear chromatic puts them into the box, so that the notes on one side would be D, D#, E, F, F#, G, and I guess G#, then on the other side you’d have A, A#, B, C, C#, D. What this means is that, with a bit of a stretch, you can still use the hammering patterns you learn on a regular dulcimer, but it’s much easier to use the chromatic notes. It was interesting to see some of the ways Dan’s found to take advantage of this layout.

In the afternoon, there were several of us in the “Percussion Rudiments” class, which involved learning single stroke rolls, paradiddles, double stroke rolls, and a host of little exercises that could help us master various aspects of each rudiment.

Dan’s teaching method in this class involved two particularly useful concepts.

One is the point of control. First of all, he had us play a single stroke roll faster and faster, until we felt we were starting to lose control, signalled by sloppy rhythm and by muscle tension. We could then determine an optimum practicing tempo by backing off slightly to the point of control. Secondly, he had us work on an exercise with a double hit by one hammer. You can either strike twice, at least at slower tempos, or let the hammer bounce twice with one stroke. We started slowly, striking twice, and gradually increased the tempo and started letting the hammer bounce instead of tightly controlling it with two strokes. In this case, we were sort of blurring the point of control.

The other concept is the burst. A single stroke roll, for example, is continuous: Right Left R L R L, etc. But you can generally play just three notes — RLR — much faster than you can play a continuous roll. So you can practice this or other small bits of an exercise in short repeated bursts. One I particularly liked involves single hits RLRLRLRL followed by double bounces RRLLRRLLRRLLRRLL; the idea is that the motion and timing (both phrases should be the same length) should stay the same, allowing one to get into and out of bounces cleanly.

It was great to have time to try things and get feedback. And I felt that I was learning techniques in a context — rhythmic patterns — that seemed likely to translate somewhat naturally into my playing. Before, for example, I might try to just practice isolated double bounces with my left hand, but even if I could do a few in a drill like that, they weren’t showing up when I played tunes.

I wonder if I’ll have the discipline to actually practice these things on my own…

I miss having a teacher, and I think Dan’s teaching style would be a good match for my learning style. Plus I just like him. Too bad he’s in Chattanooga.