Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost,
For want of the horse, the rider was lost,
For want of the rider, the battle was lost,
For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail!

We have recorded everything except one piece, an original tune called “Cherry on Top,” composed by our guitarist on the day his daughter was born.

It’s something he’s often noodled around on during down time; the more we heard it the more we liked it, and decided we should work up a trio version “sometime.” Now that everything else is done, “sometime” has arrived.

I’m not that great at improvising on something like this by ear, so my first task was to try to transcribe it.

I pieced something together by listening first to the bass notes, then to the highest pitches, then to whatever I could pick out in the middle. Sometimes I could catch the rhythm but not the notes, and sometimes vice versa. Most frustrating, there seemed to be odd moments where there was an extra beat or a missing one.

Nevertheless, with transcription in hand I wrote out some tentative dulcimer and fiddle parts and sent PDFs and MIDI files to the guys.

When we tried it last night, we figured out what was going on with those frustrating rhythmic oddities; many of the notes that I thought were falling on the downbeat actually occurred an eighth note before the downbeat.

Wow.

Even watching Craig tap his foot didn’t help me catch the right rhythm — once you’ve got an idea of a tune in your head, it’s hard to shift the feel of it by something so small as an eighth note (or a horseshoe nail).

Today, with the help of a new recording with a metronome, the freeware Audacity which lets one slow down a tune without changing its pitch, and a drumbeat ‘metronome’ to my NoteWorthy Composer file, I straightened out my transcription — and now I can feel the tune the right way, and those rhythmic anomalies have disappeared.

Woo-hoo!

Otherwise, last night’s session included recording additional tracks for Hills of Lorne and for Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze, after a late start — soon after we arrived one of Craig’s kids got hurt and it understandably took them a while to determine it was not a broken arm; good thing it’s not!

For Hills of Lorne, we added mandolin picking the melody, mandolin playing some long tremolo notes, fiddle playing a sustained harmony part, and recorder playing the same part. I wanted to play the part on the whistle instead, but I’m still new at the whistle so it didn’t sound as good, plus my whistle is a cheapie with the mouthpiece glued on, so it’s not tunable.

I’m not sure if we’ll use all four additional tracks or not. That will require a lot of listening to a lot of combinations.

For Irksome, I just added some dulcimer bass notes.

There’s plenty of work yet to be done: get some photos taken, do the graphic design (with the new old Photoshop, version 6.0, that I just won on Ebay), write the liner notes, and record Cherry on Top — but it feels good to be almost done with this CD.

The Hanshaw Trio met to record this past Tuesday; we worked on Hills of Lorne and Midnight Maze, then had a little time to run through some Christmas music.

Hills of Lorne is a slow piece. We start with just fiddle, then add guitar on melody and dulcimer on harmony for the second time through, then all three playing melody the third time.

For the second time through, I decided to use hand-damping.

On a dulcimer, every note keeps ringing after you strike it. Different builders and designs have different sustain lengths, but sustain is part of that characteristic dulcimer sound. Sometimes, however, a player might want to reduce or stop the sustain. Options include mechanical dampers mounted on the sides and operated by a foot pedal, threading yarn or other material through the strings, or hand-damping.

There are different ways to hand-damp. Some hammers, especially in other countries, are designed to let the player easily turn their palms to the strings without the hammer getting in the way; it’s a bit trickier with typical American hammers.

I based my method on some instruments in the Indonesian gamelan, which require the player to strike the current note with one hand while the other hand damps the previous note. It’s an interesting challenge to think simultaneously about the current note, the next note, and the previous note.

For the third time through, on one take I played normally, so that there is a contrast not only of melody versus harmony, but sustained versus damped. After that take I thought I ought to damp this part, too, which I did for the other takes. Now, though, I like the contrast better.

We’ll also add mandolin to this time through, and perhaps something else — maybe some kind of drones or descant.

I’ve spent a lot of time already on engineering Hills of Lorne. We had four takes, and I’m using three of them. Take 1 for the fiddle solo, takes 0 and 2 for the rest.

The third time through is the trickiest, because there’s only that one take with un-damped dulcimer, and the fiddle on that take is not as nice as it is on the other. But I’m almost satisfied with the way I’m editing the takes together.

I haven’t even listened to the Midnight Maze takes yet.

Every fall it’s time to review for Christmas: to look over the sheet music, try to remember the solo and trio arrangements, change my mind about some of them, learn some new ones, reject ones I don’t like this year, and practice practice practice.

This week, I’ve been working mostly on the solo stuff.

I’d like to be able to do solo versions of all the pieces on my Christmas CD, What Child Is This?. Some of them are already solos: He Shall Feed His Flock, What Child Is This? / Menuet. Others are multi-tracked, with other instruments and/or with multiple dulcimer parts. These I have to simplify for dulcimer, except Christ Child Lullaby, which I think I’ll play on alto recorder this year.

My folder has a bunch of other Christmas material, too.

Some of them I haven’t been satisfied with as dulcimer pieces. For two of these, Joy to the World and O Come All Ye Faithful, I’ve been playing around with new dulcimer arrangements using a root-fifth right-hand accompaniment for one and right-hand arpeggios for the other. Last year I tried the right-hand arpeggio thing with O Holy Night and still didn’t like it as a dulcimer piece. It’ll be another alto recorder solo this year. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent, Good King Wenceslas, and perhaps a few others, will be bowed psaltery pieces.

Some of my favorites for dulcimer are Jerry Read Smith’s wonderful “The Storm” and “One Wintry Night,” Jim Taylor’s “Come Before Winter,” Vangelis’ “Hymne,” and Simeone’s “The Little Drummer Boy.” The last one is fun to play: I drum on the low notes with my right hand while my left plays the melody.

I’ll also need to review trio arrangements and create some new ones. Last year our trio gigs in the Christmas season were all fairly short; we learned nine pieces from the CD, and filled out the time with pieces from our usual mostly Celtic repertoire. This year we’ve got some longer gigs and will need a lot more Christmas music.

It’s easy to get caught up in this review process as work, something mechanical, a task to accomplish. It’s also easy to get a little overwhelmed by it, particularly as my first Christmas gig is next weekend already.

May the music itself remind me what Christmas is all about: First and foremost, the amazing act of redemption, God sending his son to be one of us, to seek and save us. Secondly, the great sweep of blessings God bestows on us — friends and family, freedom and safety, food and shelter, snowflakes and pine trees and fireplaces and dulcimers. And third, the reminder that when it’s hard to count any blessings, darkness is not the final word:

In thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

(Brooks, Redner; O Little Town of Bethlehem)