Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

Today The Hanshaw Trio played at the Farmers Market. It was a bit chilly and quite windy, but we had a good time anyway and so did the folks who stopped to listen. Edward Camacho got this photo of us:

I am now on maternity leave, somewhat indefinitely. I hope that I’ll have time and energy to get back to performing sometime in the spring. Private lessons will continue until the baby comes, and will start back up again as soon as I have the energy. I’ll also continue to ship any CD orders, but be aware that it may take me a bit longer as I won’t be checking my post office box as often.

This weekend I was at the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest in Harpers Ferry, WV.

I think this was the eighth one I’ve been to, nineteenth one they’ve had. My first was in the spring of 2001, and I went to another spring one this year, but I’ve attended and enjoyed the fall fest the most. In the spring, you have one teacher and class for the whole weekend, which is a great way to get in depth into one topic. But in the fall you have different classes with different teachers, so you get a little more variety. Plus it’s not like other festivals with tiny one-hour classes where maybe you get through learning one tune — these are mostly longer, with some as short as an hour and a half and others as long as three hours, and there are more technique-focused classes than repertoire classes.

I traveled with Keith and Marty, students of mine, and we arrived Thursday evening. I got to listen to part of the great jam session at O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown before sitting all day caught up with my back.

Friday morning Dan Landrum kindly tuned my dulcimer for me — once again I’d managed to hurt something in my hand just in time for the festival. Later on a few of us helped with registration, and then the first class began at 2.

My first class was Dan’s percussion techniques, which I also took last fall. It was a good refresher, plus I got some new ideas. One thing I’m still trying to figure out is how it’s possible to not hold onto the hammers (just rest them on your finger and keep them from falling off with your thumb) and still play with volume and energy. I’m so used to using my fingers to drive and control the hammers, and I guess I need to keep learning how to use all my arm muscles — relaxed and fluid, not tense and forced — and also the energy the hammers get from gravity and hitting the strings.

At the end of Friday’s dinner, there was an open mic opportunity. I hadn’t planned to play anything — I always have before, but I wasn’t sure my hand was up to it, and I hadn’t wanted to aggravate it by practicing anything before the festival. Because there weren’t many people signed up, though, I agreed to play. I did some originals: “The Irksome Girl / Midnight Maze” which is on our trio’s CD new this year, and “In Him Will I Trust,” a song with lyrics from the Psalms.

I got some nice comments afterwards, which is always so reassuring and affirming. Ken Kolodner even told me I don’t punch the chords anymore, which was one of his main criticisms of my playing from previous years. This is one of the things that is great about going to a festival: getting useful feedback from other participants and from the teachers. Plus it’s great to hear what kinds of things other people are doing, especially folks who are at or above my abilities. Isn’t there a saying about how it’s best to be in a position where you are teaching some folks and being taught by others?

After the open mic, it was late night jam time. I helped in the festival store for a while just outside the room where the slow jam was going on. It was well-attended and sounded like it was going well. On my way up to bed I stopped in the Tap Room where the “fast” jam was going on. There was a nice small group playing, which I joined for a bit, and it was quite friendly and accessible. In previous years sometimes the fast jam has been so large and so driven by the best folks in the center that I would get bored, especially when they’d get to where all the tunes were in a particular key and I couldn’t tell them apart anymore or even tell whether the chords were changing or not.

Saturday I had three classes. The first was slip jigs with Maggie Sansone. I hadn’t had a class with her before, so it was nice to get to see how she teaches. We learned two really nice tunes plus The Butterfly, which I already knew.

After lunch was Jody Marshall’s Renaissance class, which I’ve done twice before. It’s more fun when a) there are other instruments besides dulcimers, and b) when it’s not right after lunch! But we did a bunch of lovely and challenging tunes and arranged two to play at the Sunday brunch.

Then I taught a small class on Pachelbel’s Canon. I think it was mostly a success — we got through two lines of chord patterns, the two main phrases that everyone recognizes, and talked through a lot of the other lines. We also talked a bit about playing for a wedding processional, and a bit about playing the Canon as a duet or with a group.

I don’t like to see people frustrated, but sometimes there’s not much you can do about it. Some of the students were not getting the stuff quickly, and there didn’t seem to be much I could do to make it click. I think probably all they need is more time with the tune, and they’ll do fine with learning it at home. It’s a bit hard for me to decide how to proceed in a workshop setting with that sort of thing — technically, I could have just handed out the sheet music and sent them all away to learn it and they would have been fine. Or I could have drilled each bit until everyone had it, but then the faster learners might have been bored and we would have covered less. With more teaching experience, I expect I’ll get better at judging this sort of thing and responding in better ways.

The evening concert was in Shepherdstown, where Rick and Felicia and I had planned to have Thai food for dinner. Before we could go, though, we helped Rick pack up the items in the store that would be sold at the concert. It looked a bit sparse, and the other store people weren’t there to help, so we weren’t sure if it had already been packed up or not. To be safe, we packed a bunch and took it over, but yes, they’d already done it during the last class. Oh well — we still managed to get our Thai food and arrive on time for the show.

The concert was enjoyable. Bamboo Breeze, featuring Chinese yang qin and percussion, played first, followed by four dulcimists from Maggie’s record label: Maggie herself, Jody Marshall, Karen Ashbrook, and Ken Kolodner. Paul Oorts and Dan Landrum also played on some things. I think my favorite pieces were Ken’s waltz Summer’s End and a Middle Eastern thing Maggie played. This year’s concert was about a half hour or more shorter than previous years, and that was actually nice. There was enough to really enjoy, and not so much that it dragged.

Of course, near the end I was certainly dragging; at 31 weeks pregnant, I was stiff and sore from all the sitting and standing and bustle of a day and a half of festival. Nevertheless, I stayed up with the fast jam, sometimes playing, sometimes just sitting at a table crunching ice cubes, for a couple hours. It was again a small and accessible group.

At one point Paul and Pete started playing a polka, so Joanie got up and got first Kitty and then Dave dancing.

Sunday morning there was some Gospel music at the breakfast open mic. It was lovely to hear Cindy and her sisters — and Rick and Felicia — sing in harmony, sometimes a capella and sometimes accompanied. Dan also played a fun medley in the middle.

The sweetest moment of the whole weekend, for me, was afterwards when Cindy and her sisters sat around me to sing “Jesus loves me” to the baby. Wow.

My final class was harmonic minor with Karen Ashbrook. We learned about the harmonic minor scale and basic chord progression, and learned a few really nice tunes, despite all of us being short on energy.

I perked up again at lunch for whatever reason. My young student Emory played in the open mic, which was the first time I’ve really seen one of my students perform for an audience. It was really cool. He played two of his original pieces. He and Dan Landrum impressed each other, which was fun — I had a feeling they would appreciate each other. Our Renaissance class played our two pieces next, which went well, and then Paul Oorts’ group played some very nice things.

After a hasty round of goodbyes, we were about to leave when I remembered I needed to check my CDs out from the store. Good thing I remembered! Good timing, too, as Joanie was just coming upstairs from finishing the final inventories.

We got home around 9:00 last night. It is nice to be home again with Mark and the kitty and a mattress that doesn’t insistently tell you where every single spring is.

A final thought: some tune types seem to run into each other. I remember being particularly confused by hornpipes and jigs when I was first starting, and then in Karen’s class we learned a mazurka that felt a lot like a slip jig to me. I’m guessing the dances that go along with these types distinguish them more than the musical characteristics do. I tried to write a slip jig a while ago — actually my first attempt ended up in 6/8 instead of 9/8. This second one folks think is more like a waltz, and I think at least one person thought it was most like a mazurka. If anyone reading knows about these things, let me know what you think it is! It’s called Toboggan. The link is a MIDI file, not a recording, so don’t expect a real dulcimer sound.

The Hanshaw Trio performed at the Trumansburg Pourhouse last night. This was our second-to-last show for the year, and perhaps ever. It was a good time for us and the small crowd.

Sacrificing the visual

One of the main reasons I was excited about this festival was that Jerry Read Smith was going to be there. I haven’t seen him in several years, and I wanted him to look at my dulcimer, sort of give it a checkup, especially to see if anything needed to be adjusted to make tuning easier for me.

Basically he did two things he’d told me I could do myself, but that I hadn’t wanted to do without an expert there in person to make sure it was the right thing to do. First of all, he took a hammer to any pins that were sticking or slipping, seating them further into the pinblock.

Secondly, he moved some of the strings up or down on the side saddles. I confess that I’ve always hated this idea. I find it visually distracting to have some strings not absolutely parallel to the others. And it bothers my idealism — ideally, the strings should all be absolutely parallel and tune just fine. Seems to me there must be something else wrong if they’re straight but not tuning properly. Jerry — and Dan — would like to persuade me that sometimes it’s just the best solution, and that the visual aspect is simply not that important. Sigh.

Loosening up

The first meaning…

Sunday afternoon Dan watched me play with regular hammers, and he thinks the way I play with my left hand is likely to lead to injury. My left hand doesn’t work the way my right does, at least not naturally or automatically. To compensate, I’d developed a finger flick — hitting the back of the hammer grip with a middle finger — that helps me get a nice clear tone and good accuracy with my left hand.

I know there are other players who do this — Nick Blanton and Tim Seaman among them. However, maybe they use their wrists better than I do. I didn’t think I moved either of my wrists while playing, and I didn’t think it mattered. In fact, I thought it was a good thing, preventing carpal tunnel syndrome. Dan said my right wrist does move just a little, nice and loose, but that my left one is locked stiff.

Those of us standing around talked about the whole ergonomics thing for a while, and the consensus seems to be that the more muscle groups involved, the better, and the more loose and relaxed these muscles are, the better. Dan doesn’t even really hold his hammers — they balance on his finger, and his thumb keeps them from falling.

So I need to think about what I can do to loosen up my left wrist, and the grip of both hands on the hammers.

The second meaning…

I tend to think fear is safer than arrogance. I suspect people will like me better if I need to be encouraged, reassured, than if I need to be taken down a few pegs.

It’s not really that simple. Being too fearful is just as annoying — but in a different way. It gets old pretty fast to those who have to do the encouraging and reassuring; the fearful person makes a high-maintenance friend.

The most comfortable people to be around are neither overly fearful nor arrogant, but comfortable with themselves.

For whatever reason — yet another symptom of pregnancy, lol? — I felt just a little bit more comfortable with myself at this festival than I have at similar occasions in the past.

It was nice.

Hammers

Several people noticed my flexible shaft, angled cimbalom grip hammers from Sam Rizzetta. One person who has arthritis thinks she’ll look into getting a pair for herself. Other folks, including Dan and Christie, found them awkward. Dan said it would be impossible to play the kinds of things he plays with those hammers — percussion stuff is too fast, and the flexibility loses too much energy and requires more muscle. Interesting. So far, I still like them for keeping my thumbs loose, but I admit that I miss the sound of my old regular hammers.

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.