Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

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.

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.

Today I need to tune again for a gig at the local Alterra nursing home, and that reminds me of my earlier post about my fears for the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering, which I ought to report about.

I tuned without any big problems last Wednesday, and the dulcimer sounded fine at that evening’s jam and while we were practicing on Thursday. Later Thursday, though, I was starting to worry about our plan to play on the Commons Friday, because I wouldn’t have time to retune between playing there and leaving for the festival. We decided to stay home instead, which reduced my worry.

It came back the next day, when we started to practice and Rick said the difference between our dulcimers was significant enough to require retuning. I went at it with a sinking heart but trying to think “good enough.” I had a fairly difficult time of it, but I managed not to completely break down and cry until I was done and safely hidden in my bathroom. While Rick tuned his in an easy twenty minutes (how I wish I could do that), I got lunch together, and then we left for Binghamton.

I am not very flexible or adaptable. It’s hard for me to recover from something like a terrible tuning time, plus there was the stupidity with the car the previous day*, plus I was tired because we’d stayed up talking too late the last two nights. Nothing like going to a festival already overtired, feeling stupid, and psychologically worn out from a bad tuning session.

I was determined to avoid tuning for the duration of the festival, but had that underlying fear that it would become necessary, and along with that, an underlying fierce defensiveness lest anyone challenge me about it. No one said anything to me, and as far as I could tell it sounded okay for the rest of the weekend (it’s hard to tell, in a room full of dulcimers, whether mine or someone else’s is wrong).

Today I hope I can tune with less stress, even if I am increasingly certain that I’ll never be able to tune any faster.

*Instead of having Rick back his truck out into the road, then having me drive my car out, then replacing his truck, I tried to drive around his truck. I missed the truck but ran over the porch step, splintering a bit off the railing and putting a nice crumpled dent in the fender. Fortunately I didn’t break the light.

Wednesday evening my friend Rick Davis arrived from North Carolina, in order to teach at the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Binghamton this weekend. After a quick dinner, we attended a local “slow jam,” a group of musicians learning tunes together, often playing them first at a slower tempo and then again at the usual speed. Thursday we practiced a bit for the piece we planned to play in the Friday coffeehouse concert at the festival, had lunch at the Moosewood, and visited the Farmers Market. Friday morning I had to tune again, which was very annoying and discouraging. We had just enough time to eat a little lunch before we left for Binghamton.

Things began with Cliff Cole’s workshop on mapping the dulcimer. He went over various ways to play major and modal scales and some chords. Then I taught a class on Carolan tunes. I’m not an expert on 18th Century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan, but I do play a handful of his tunes, which are popular among dulcimer folks. We learned Blind Mary and Captain O’Kane, and I also handed out Hewlett and Planxty Irwin. I included chords and harmonies for each tune, so folks will have some additional options to work on at home.

The coffeehouse concert started after dinner. In the middle was a set by the featured autoharpist, and before and after were sets by other instructors, who each got to perform one song or tune. In fact, if someone was accompanying someone else, that counted as their turn. So I ended up doing a solo version of my piece so that Rick and Cliff could do their own pieces and not lose their turns by accompanying me.

Tip: Don’t commute an hour and a half to a dulcimer festival. Even though we left right after the concert, we still didn’t get home until a little after 1 am, and had to get up at 6am to get back in time for the morning meeting. It’s no fun to get so little sleep without even getting to jam.

Saturday morning I went to a mountain carols class by Donna Missigman. We learned three carols, including a G major version of Star in the East, which I’d previously learned in A minor. The next class was about arranging, by the featured hammered dulcimist, Mark Wade. He talked about arranging in terms of overall structure, like intros and conclusions, transitions, building up to a peak, and that sort of thing.

After lunch, Sam Edelston did a class reviving a variety of his favorite lessons from past festival classes, including a useful and fun exercise for learning to control hammer bounces and developing greater facility with fast reaches. Next I attended a singing jam, which was fun even though I didn’t sing much. My other class was the last one of the day; I taught four simple separated hands techniques, including octaves, sixths and fifths, three-note right-hand chords, and right-hand root-fifth accompaniment.

Rick, Cliff, Elliott, Nancy and I had dinner at a charming little place called The Copper Cricket. The dessert made up for the dinner. Cream cheese filling wrapped up in pastry with raspberries, raspberry sauce, and ice cream. Mmmm.

Saturday night’s concert began with the featured mountain dulcimer player, then Mark Wade. He started with some classical pieces, then went into some traditional things played in untraditional ways, and some other stuff like blues. Rick and I did stay late this night in order to jam a bit with Cliff, A. J. Bashore, and Sam.

Yesterday we tried to play at the Farmers Market but there wasn’t room for us, so we played out on the Commons instead. It was a lovely day with low humidity and a nice breeze, and we had a good time playing together. When we got home, we collapsed for a nap, woke up to go eat at Ralph’s Ribs, and returned to go to bed again.

Rick left about a half hour ago. Today, I think I’ll tune, go to Home Depot and Agway to get materials for a chicken wire fence for the gardens, since the groundhogs got through my stick fences over the weekend (grumble grumble grumble), practice for our next trio recording session this Thursday, and listen to the CDs I got from swapping with Cliff — one is something his band recorded in a cavern, and one is his daughter Emily’s.

Unless I get overtaken by a nap.