Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

For a few months, a few streets downtown have been closed. Yesterday, on route to church, we found them open. And what marvelous work has been done? No, not repairing the cracks and potholes due to our heavy winters, but fancy new red cement crosswalks with decorative white paint arrows! Oh, thank you, Ithaca!

Last Thursday The Hanshaw Trio met to record again after a haitus of two months. I’m still working on mixing and editing the track, a medley of O’Keefe’s Slide, Derrane’s, and Trip to Durrow. We recorded six takes, and two of them are possibilities for the first two tunes, and three of them for the final tune.

Right now I’m working on edits using take 4 for the first half, edited with take 3, 4, or 5 for the final tune. Yeah, even using take 4 for both parts requires editing, because we missed our entrance for Durrow and just waited for the previous chord to fade out, then took it from there — so I have to edit out that gap.

Yesterday I played for an afternoon wedding. It was lovely — nice weather, a nice setting (we played from a balcony overlooking a yard edged with trees), and a nice mix of Celtic and classical music on harp and hammered dulcimer. We used my new pa, and found out that, as I suspected, better mics (borrowed from one of my trio partners) do work better with it, so now I know what my business’ next purchase will be.

This Thursday I am headed to West Virginia for the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest. It’s my favorite dulcimer festival (even though I’ve only been to one other). I was supposed to teach a class on modes, but only one person signed up so we canceled it. The good news is I get to go to a class on percussion techniques that was scheduled at the same time.

Things I’m especially looking forward to are:

1. Playing my tune “Fallen” in Friday’s open mic, with my friend Rick Davis on psaltery and musician extraordinaire Paul Oorts on guitar. I think Paul is awesome, and I’m so excited that he agreed to accompany us.
2. Eating at Shepherdstown’s Thai restaurant. Mmmm.
3. Visiting friends for a few days afterwards — including a couple I haven’t seen since last year, who have a new baby, and some girls from the youth group I used to work with, whom I haven’t seen for two years.

Anyway, I doubt I’ll be blogging again until I get back.

Wow, two months between sessions. I guess we’re busy folks, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change until January. We have a few gigs in September and October, and then it’s time to review Christmas material and play Christmas gigs. We’ll have to keep trying to fit in some recording sessions between gigs, practice, and other work.

Today we played at the Farmers Market. This is the second year they’ve run a Thursday afternoon / evening market, and it’s still quite small, with maybe ten vendors and twice as many visitors. It was lovely weather, and we had a good time playing together.

We reconvened at Craig’s, and fortunately the dulcimer still seemed sufficiently in tune for recording. Good thing, because I’d remembered to bring my tuner, but forgotten the tuning wrench.

We spent the evening working on the O’Keefe’s Slide / Derrane’s / Trip to Durrow set, and I think we have a few potentially good takes.

Lots of false starts and interrupting mistakes in between. And we discovered that Craig and I have been playing different chords at the end of the B part in Durrow. (How did we not notice that before?)

During one take Craig missed his echo, and we just let the previous notes fade out, then he just started again from the echo (it would be an easy edit) and we carried on.

I got caught in the “don’t laugh” problem, where I’d think how funny it was, but try not to laugh, then think how funny trying not to laugh is, and so on — I came pretty close to losing it. We were all a little punchy today, even at the market; I like how easily we laugh together.

By the way, back in July I’d made a preview CD with all the stuff we’ve got so far — seven tracks — and we think we like it.