Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

The Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival this weekend was great!

The schedule is great!

There are six classes, three on Friday and three on Saturday. They’re all an hour and a half long, which is a nice length. An hour is too short to do more than lecture or learn a tune. Longer can be nice for some things, but there was only one class I thought really needed more than ninety minutes.

There is plenty of time to rest and recover from things. The lunch break is nice and long, with a mini-concert in the middle. Everyone eats together in the cafeteria, where the festival store is also set up. Angie took lunch orders during the morning class and so lunch was just a matter of picking out your sandwich and sitting down to eat it. Very relaxed and easy — for the participants if not for Angie!

There’s also a nice long break between the afternoon class and the evening concert. A jam happens in the cafeteria, or you can duck into one of the classrooms to practice something you learned or talk to a teacher or whatever else you need to do. It’s so nice to have jamming happen in the afternoon while folks are still awake, and not have to wait until after a long evening concert and battle the sleepies. Makes the concert more enjoyable, too, since you know you can go right to bed afterwards if you so desire.

The approach is great!

This festival is focused on technique. My other favorite festival, the Upper Potomac, also has lots of classes that focus on building skills, but apparently this is not the typical festival fare. I think it’s great — why go to a festival just to learn tunes? If you learn technique, you’ll be that much better equipped to learn — and arrange and compose and perform and improvise — tunes.

The classes are all team-taught. That means more help for the students — when there’s time to try something just taught, teacher and helper can both go around answering questions and making suggestions. Or if some folks are particularly struggling, the helper can stand near them and quietly advise without interrupting or slowing down the rest of the class. Helpers also may have a different way of explaining or demonstrating something. It’s also great from a teacher’s perspective — I got to see how three other teachers approach things, which can help me become a better and more effective teacher.

The classes were great!

I taught two classes, one introducing chords and one introducing some separated hands techniques. I had the help of Christie Burns in the one and Stephen Humphries in the other. The students in the classes were great, enjoyable to teach, willing to try new things, patient, etc.

Christie taught a class on bringing new life to old tunes — a new beginner and I spent the class out in the hall working on stuff more at her level, something that wouldn’t have been possible without the team-teaching approach. I’ll have to remember to ask Christie to send me her notes!

Mark Wade taught a class on adding accompaniment to melodies. I’ve talked to students before about “filler notes” or “arpeggios,” but Mark broke it down into very specific kinds of arpeggios — descending, down and up, ascending, with bass notes, and so on.

Saturday, Dan Landrum taught a class on modes. When I teach about modes, I focus on the four most commonly found in Celtic and Old Time music — Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian, and Aeolian — and what tunes in these modes sound like. Dan’s approach is jazz-influenced: He taught how to find all seven modal scales, talked about chords from a jazz perspective (which led into a long discussion trying to clarify the different types of seventh chords), and went on to talk a little about improvising or composing based on modal scale and chord patterns. This is a class I would have enjoyed for another hour or so; ninety minutes was just enough time to introduce the topic and answer questions that had to be addressed before getting into the meat of it.

That afternoon Mark, Christie, and I talked about practicing. Mark had a great handout full of different drills you can do with two-octave scales and arpeggios, practicing shifting accents, evening out both hands, and so on. At the end we had a short question-and-answer / sharing time to discuss other practice tips and ideas.

There were also other classes going on — two or three at a time just for hammered dulcimer, plus some classes for mountain dulcimer.

What else was great?

I confess I skipped most of Friday’s concert, but the bit of Lee Rowe’s mountain dulcimer performance I caught was great. Saturday’s mini-concert by Stephen Humphries was really cool - it broke out into some discussion in the middle, and brought everyone to their feet at the end. Saturday’s evening concert was also a lot of fun, with various combinations of the instructors in the first half, and Dan’s new jazz group in the second half. I especially liked Christie and Butch’s two songs, one about getting married which was sweet, and one about being a folk musician which was funny.

I didn’t get to the pasta or Chinese places, but the Mexican place was great and so was the barbecue.

I think the festival store was pretty great, too. Jerry and Doug brought not only Jerry’s dulcimers, but also some made by Dusty Strings and MasterWorks and I think some others, plus bowed psalteries, mountain dulcimers, hammers, and other accessories. Plus there was a great selection of performers’ and teachers’ CDs, t-shirts, and more.

The downtown jam at the aquarium was a lot of fun — started out with a group of students and some of the teachers just jamming as usual, and morphed into Dan, Stephen, Christie, Mark, Randy Clepper, and others doing improv and other wild and unusual things.

You know what else was great? The people and the atmosphere. I got to know some of the other teachers better than I had before, partly because of the team-teaching thing, and just enjoyed hanging out with folks in general — at meals, at the guest house, at the Landrums’ Sunday after most folks had already gone home, and so on. And the Mountain Arts Community Center was homey and comfortable, and the whole weekend felt relaxed and peaceful.

Sure, I’ll go back if I can. And I’d recommend the festival to anyone, especially anyone who really wants to develop their musicianship and not just increase their repertoire.

Last night I got back from the Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival. I have so much to say about this weekend that I think I’ll break it up into several individual posts. Meanwhile, here’s a few pictures:

Alyce, Sharon, and Carol traveled together from Ohio. We stayed in the same guest house along with luthier Jerry Read Smith and Doug, who works in Jerry’s store. We had a great time hanging out together for breakfast, dinner, and evenings. This picture was taken with Sharon’s camera, but I forget who took it for us!

Those of us in the guest house all arrived Thursday evening. The festival began Friday morning with two 90-minute classes followed by lunch, another class, a break for jamming or practice, dinner, then the evening concert. Saturday’s schedule was about the same.

During lunch both days there was a mini-concert. I played on Friday, and Stephen Humphries on Saturday. I did a bit of classical, several originals including the one I’m singing in the picture, and “What Child Is This? / Menuet.”

This picture is one of the many Brad Bower took over the weekend.

Sunday everyone who was sticking around headed downtown to jam at the aquarium.

Some of us had to stop for snacks occasionally.

Kathy Angus (wife of Rob, who is seated at the right playing the Nick Blanton dulcimer) took these two pictures.

See more photos at the official festival site.

I forgot to post the one picture I got at this spring’s UPDF before my batteries gave up (I know, I should have brought some spares).

Bill Mitchell, of Peat and Barley, playing his Dusty Strings D-600.

This weekend was the spring Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest in Harpers Ferry, WV. I have been going to the fall fest for several years, but I hadn’t been to the spring one since my first festival ever in 2001. It turns out that several of us who had been in Rick Thum’s advanced beginner class that year were in the same room again for T. J. Osborne’s advanced solo technique class this year — Judith, Shelley, Rick, was it Steve? — and me.

I got a ride with Jody, one of my students, who enjoyed Sam Rizzetta’s Beyond the Melody class.

Thursday afternoon we arrived and checked in, then out with Rick to Shepherdstown for a visit to O’Hurley’s General Store and Kazu, the Thai place. Mmmm… Thai.

The festival takes place at the Hilltop Hotel, with classes on the two lower floors and across the street at the annex. Most folks stayed at the hotel, too. In exchange for some volunteer work (helping with the store and helping lead a slow jam Friday evening), I got to share a room with three other women, which was fun.

The festival really started on Friday morning, with classes running until late afternoon, with a break for lunch. Unlike the fall fest, the spring festival classes last the whole weekend — it’s a chance to explore the topic in more depth.

In our class, we looked at using paradiddles to develop ease in hitting two consecutive notes with one hand (useful for playing chromatic music or music in odd keys), separated hands using alternating or Alberti bass or Travis patterns, and tremolos with hammer flipping to add melody notes to a tremolo droning pattern.

I couldn’t play much, but it gave me the opportunity to see what the others in the class were doing and get to know some of them better, particularly Shelley’s friend Danielle and Bill Mitchell, half of the band Peat and Barley. I’m also grateful to all the folks who helped me carry things or who tuned for me.

Between classes and dinner were mini classes. Friday I sat in for part of Dave Reber’s class on rhythmic patterns for developing the weaker hand; they also seem useful for developing ease with syncopation and double strokes.

On Saturday I went to Sam Rizzetta’s class about hammers. Sam is responsible for a lot of characteristics of the modern dulcimer, including bridge markers, dampers, and extra bridges. He’s also experimented with a variety of hammer designs over the years.

Of particular interest to me were a style with angled finger grips. The grips have two cutouts to fit between the first two fingers, so no thumb action is necessary. The shafts are inserted at an angle so that the hands can be held in a neutral position. Thanks to a discussion at EverythingDulcimer.com a year or two, I briefly tried this kind of hold with regular hammers, but found it difficult to control and uncomfortable. Sam’s hammers, however, felt better, mostly because of the angled and shaped grips.

These hammers also have a flexible shaft made of some kind of fiberglass composite. I could play more cleanly than I expected to with them, but it would still require a lot of basic hammering exercises to develop control. It’s definitely a weird feeling to play with flexible hammers after being used to the regular kind.

I wonder what stiff shafts with these angled finger grips would be like, but I suspect that it would be more difficult to control them because the movement comes from the wrists or forearms instead of the fingers.

Sam and Lucille Reilly and Martha Marsey (an occupational therapist who was attending the festival) all agree that it is better to do repetitive motion with larger muscle groups. I confess that this is not at all intuitive to me. It seems to me that you should conserve motion as much as possible, so that a tiny movement should be done with tiny muscles. Perhaps the conservation principle still applies, so that even if I use wrists or forearms I shouldn’t move them more than necessary.

I am ordering a pair of these hammers. They’re quite expensive, which is daunting. But if it means being able to play without further injury, it would be worth it. On the other hand, perhaps with proper therapy I can learn to play with regular hammers without further injury either. Still, it’s worth a good try, and I’d like my physical therapist to see them.

Martha also pointed out that the first joint of my left thumb seems sort of fallen — I forget how she described it. She says I should ask my therapist about wraps I can use to support that joint in a proper position.

Anyway, after mini classes was dinner. All meals included an open mic opportunity; not very many people played, but it was cool to hear those who did.

Friday evening, after a panel discussion, Rick, Cindy, and I helped lead a slow jam downstairs. It was a full, loud room, but I think we all managed to have a good time anyway.

Saturday evening featured a Civil War themed concert, with Sheila Kay Adams telling stories and singing a few songs, playing one medley on banjo with husband Jim Taylor on the hammered dulcimer, and reading from her novel with guitar and vocal accompaniment from Jim. I think they plan to record the whole book with music, and it sounds like it will be really lovely. However, I was disappointed to hear dulcimer on only one medley! Sparky and Rhonda Rucker took the stage in the second half, with Sparky’s historical commentary and both of them singing songs with guitar and harmonica. It was a very entertaining concert.

The festival came to a close with brunch on Sunday, and we got home in the evening.

Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest

I love going to the UPDF each September.

This year the highlight of the festival for me was having a whole day of interesting classes with Dan Landrum (which has its own blog entry).

I also enjoyed seeing friends and meeting new folks, jamming, and the hospitality of my gracious and fun hosts.

Dan and I in this first picture. Below are my hosts Fred and Sarah on the left, and on the right are Don, Joanie, Butch, Christine, Nick, and Christie standing, with me and Kitty seated. Unfortunately I don’t remember all the names of the folks in the final picture.

(Can you tell I forgot to scan these until after I’d already cropped them and stuck them in my scrapbook? Guess which one overlaps Dan on the album page…)

 

A few other things

Also in September, our pastor hired The Hanshaw Trio to play at a presbytery dinner featuring a lecture on arts and the church.

In October, I celebrated five years of dulcimer with an anniversary concert at Cornell’s Johnson Museum. (See the concert flyer in another blog entry.)

The show began with the duo Pas de Deux, and closed with The Hanshaw Trio.

Then there was a surprisingly gorgeous day in November when a bunch of us got together to jam at the farmers’ market.

Here’s Rick Biesanz who books for the Peaceful Gatherings Coffeehouse in Corning and singer-songwriter Joe Crookston.

In the second picture, that’s Debra Chesman, who runs a jam and house concert series near Corning, Rick, Joe, and Gary Kline, a fellow Rick plays with in the Seneca Moon String Band.