Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

Chenango Summer Music Festival

This weekend festival in Hamilton, NY, features mostly classical music but also a variety of other musical acts plus a dessert contest. My official performance was a morning show at the Barge Canal coffeehouse; after lunch I also played some on the Village Green. In the afternoon I headed over to Susan Nolen’s home for dinner and a jam session — we had a fiddle and three hammered dulcimers (including a new Nick Blanton… mmmm) and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering

In July, I attended the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Binghamton. This festival features workshops, concerts, jams, and sales for hammered dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, and autoharp. I taught two classes, one on modes and one on weddings, and I also got to take classes, including Cliff Cole’s “Special Effects” and “Singing With Dulcimer,” Bob Wey’s “Playing With Your Blocks,” Deb Justice’s “Irish Tunes,” Rick Fogel’s “Playing From The Heart,” and Donna Missigman’s “Waltzes,” shown in the picture. This was a great festival. It was so cool to meet various people: Curt Osgood, who also recorded at Wilburland; Cliff Cole, who reminds me of Tim Seaman; Deb Justice, a fellow William and Mary alum; Bob Wey, who helped me decide to get a strobe tuner; Sam Edelston, who does some really interesting things on the dulcimer; Marya Katz, who also plays a Jerry Read Smith dulcimer…

The Hanshaw Trio

When Trim the Velvet lost Harry Lawless, we found Craig Higgins and became The Hanshaw Trio. Here we are at the Ithaca Farmers Market on a late August Saturday. The mostly Celtic ensemble includes Jerry Drumheller (fiddle), Craig (guitar and mandolin), and myself (dulcimer).

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I worked on four pieces. First, I wanted to finish “Christ Child Lullaby.” I did the dulcimer parts without too much trouble, thanks to practicing each of them ten times daily since my last attempt. Then I tried the recorder — but after maybe half a dozen takes on one recorder part, my fingers were stiff enough that I needed to do something else for a while.

So, second, I corrected an error in a harmony part in “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin,” then added guitar to the medley. I’m not very good at finger-picking stuff, so this part was difficult to learn and took a lot of takes to record.

Third, I added guitar to “Three Ships Medley.” This part was mostly strumming, so it wasn’t as difficult as the other. There’s one section played with a capo — Matt suggested I retune with the capo on, which I’d ignorantly never done before; it makes a big difference. I wonder if that says something about the intonation on my guitar…

Anyway, my back and left shoulder were really stiff after recording these two guitar parts, because I’m one of those “guitarists” that has to look at the left hand all the time. That’s when I decided to give up on those “Lullaby” recorder parts until next session; too stiff, and extra practice would probably help a lot, too.

The last thing I did that afternoon was a preparation for the evening session. We’d decided to record Craig’s guitar part first, so that Jerry, the fiddler, would have both dulcimer and guitar tracks to follow. But on one of the tunes, “Easter Thursday,” Craig needed to hear Jerry’s part, too. So I recorded a dulcimer version of Jerry’s part as a reference track.

Home to rest a little and make and eat an early dinner. And my in-laws arrived just in time for me to let them in and then head back to the studio for the trio’s evening session.

The trio convened at 6 p.m. Jerry headed downstairs to warm up, and Matt got Craig set up to record. We started with “Hewlett / Silent Night,” which turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be: I’d unintentionally slowed down in places, which made it difficult to keep tempo with my tracks. We figured out that recording section by section made it a lot easier. Once the guitar tracks were finished, Jerry recorded his parts.

Next we tackled Craig’s parts for “Easter Thursday”; Jerry joined me in the control room to watch and listen. This tune is difficult because it’s in an unusual meter — it’s a 3/2 hornpipe — and because there’s a syncopated section at the end of the B part. Having that reference track helped a little.

I ended up standing in the window sort of conducting — keeping track of the first beat of each measure, and indicating when to play during the syncopated part. Lots of fun… when we were off from each other we’d be shaking our heads and laughing silently, and when we got it right my index finger “batons” would become thumbs up. Meanwhile Jerry sits on the couch fascinated, as I am, by all the technology and the whole recording process.

Once we thought we had Craig’s part down, Jerry went out to do his part. But the middle section was problematic. I realized that my decision to have Craig play this section syncopated was not only making things difficult for Jerry, but also just didn’t sound good. So I wanted to have Craig redo that section.

Matt was unconvinced about being able to position him the same way so that the part would blend seamlessly with the previous parts — both of them suggested instead that we just copy the part from a previous section and recycle it for this section too. I’m not comfortable with that idea, so they agreed to try re-recording the section… fortunately, we did manage to get the positioning essentially the same. Whew.

Now it was Jerry’s turn again. He’d never recorded before, but he did his parts for the first tune in four takes, and just three takes for this one. Impressive!

After doing some editing and checking the other takes to make sure they didn’t all have the same mistakes in the same places, I offered everyone cucumbers (Craig actually accepted) and sent Craig and Jerry home. Matt burned the end-of-session CD for me, I wrote a check, and, at about 10 p.m., headed home myself.

This fourth day we began with “The Wexford Carol,” the second half of the medley beginning with “Noel Nouvelet.” I’ve been practicing these parts a lot, and all that hard work at home translated into less difficulty in the studio. The arrangement begins with both hands playing melody an octave apart, followed by an ornamented version. Next is a section with echoes, and the final section has a mostly sixths harmony and a bass part.

All that was done before lunch. So the next question was whether to go home really early or to try “He Shall Feed His Flock,” which until this week I hadn’t played since last Christmas season. I did work pretty hard on it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, making arrangement decisions and practicing them, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was ready to record. Still, I decided to stay and give it a try.

I like the intro, using my yarn-wrapped hammers for a soft, mellow effect. At the closing chord, I repeat the intro part as a conclusion. In between, I did the main part with separated hands; the left plays melody while the right plays three-note chords. The form is AAB twice through, and I vary the ornamentation a bit on the repeated sections. Still, I’m not sure there’s enough difference between the first AAB and the second, and I’m not convinced I played the right-hand chords as well as I’d have liked… I’d prefer them to be less heavy on the downbeats.

As we listened to the whole thing, after recording that last section, both of us seemed unconvinced. Matt said he was still too much “in” it, thinking of all the editing and the various short sections. I felt that it didn’t seem to flow, and it didn’t even seem very pretty. Maybe that’s because I’d had to record sections too short to feel natural and expressive, and maybe also because I hadn’t practiced enough to play both accurately and expressively.

It’s hard to listen objectively right after recording. It’s hard to listen objectively when you’re feeling uncertain and discouraged to begin with.

Actually I think it’s impossible to listen objectively at all.

There’s so much to influence how something will sound to you, from external or physical factors like recent events, temperature, or your state of health, to internal factors like your current self-image or level of anxiety. So I think I’ll plan to listen to “He Shall Feed His Flock” several times over the next week or two before making a final evaluation of it. Meanwhile, I can also be thinking of alternatives: practice more; add guitar, psaltery, or recorder to part(s) of it; record the left and right hands separately, maybe even with a softer hammer in the right hand…

My next session is scheduled for July 29 and 30; besides finalizing “He Shall Feed His Flock,” I’d like to prepare two or three other pieces. My trio, newly renamed the Hanshaw Trio and featuring Jerry Drumheller on fiddle and Craig Higgins on guitar, is also preparing two medleys; we plan to record them late in August.

First, the details.

Stuart and Robin and I met at our friend Jolie’s house (close to the studio) to practice with the recording of “The Lord at First Did Adam Make” that I made yesterday. Then we headed to the studio, practiced some more, worked on adjusting our tuning, and recorded the parts. After the Millikens left, I finished the rest of “What Child is This? / Menuet.”

What to do next was a difficult decision.

If I started a new piece and didn’t finish it, chances are it would be difficult or impossible to have the tuning so exactly the same that the later sections would match. I almost went home early, but then decided to risk it. Amazingly enough, we managed to record all the dulcimer parts for “Fallen”: the melody throughout, a drone in the beginning, and some arpeggio sections. This means I have a CD to practice with for the guitar and bowed psaltery parts, which I’ll try to record next week along with another medley, “Noel Nouvelet / Wexford Carol.”

Working at Wilburland is changing my approach to recording.

At Outback Studio, where I recorded No Loose Threads, our approach was to record a section in one pair of tracks, allowing the last notes to fade out naturally. Then with headphones on, I’d listen to this section and then record the next section in a second pair of tracks. The rest of the piece would go the same way, switching back and forth between the two pairs of tracks. If I made a mistake in one section, I could do another take of just that section.

I assumed I would use the same approach here, but Wilburland’s computer system makes it easy to splice together smaller bits of different takes. One way to respond to this possibility is to record lots of small bits, and that has been my first temptation. Instead, I think it would be better to record longer sections, which I tried today. Playing a longer section is more natural, which makes it easier to be more musical and expressive. Then if one take has a mistake near the beginning and another has a problem in the middle, we can use the best part of each one.

The whole process of recording brings up the question of where to draw the line between natural and artificial.

There are folks who think the best kind of recording is live; some require an audience while others don’t mind a live studio recording. Live captures energy and flow, as well as synergy with ensemble members (and with the audience if one is present). On the other hand, mistakes that seem unnoticeable in a concert setting (they go by so quickly) can become increasingly distracting or annoying each time one listens to them on a CD.

There are all sorts of tricks to minimize mistakes. The Outback Studio approach, for example, helped by minimizing stress: if I only have to play one section without messing up, that is psychologically less threatening than having to play the entire piece flawlessly. The kind of splicing we’re doing at Wilburland is a little more artificial, but I’m still actually playing each of the parts.

Where I draw the line is at looping and recycling tracks. Looping is where you’d record maybe a short rhythm section and repeat the recording instead of actually playing the section over and over. Looping obviously gives consistent results, but to me it’s too artificial; I want to play the section every time.

For example, I have a hard time playing the low D drone consistently in “Fallen”; to even it out a little, I was willing to record it twice (as if there were two dulcimer players droning simultaneously) and to play with the equalizers some, but I didn’t want to just loop a nice section of it.

Recycling is similar; maybe you’d record the chorus of a song and instead of singing it again after the next verse, you repeat the first recording. I’d rather not do that for the same reason I’d rather not do looping.

(By the way, right now I’m listening to what I recorded today. I noticed that in some places, it sounds like the music has shifted to the left, and then it shifts back. And I realized that those places are where I move from playing on the right side of the dulcimer to the left side. I just think that’s interesting. Oh, and have I mentioned how exciting this is? I love to play the dulcimer, and of course I can hear it when I’m playing, but it’s entirely different to hear it when I’m NOT playing; I can hear it more when I’m not busy attending to where my hands are going next.)

A final thought.

As I look over what I’ve written so far, I’m thinking about audience interaction. I remember hearing a quotation about how some musician played for an audience of one, no matter what size the audience actually was. (Anyone know the musician or the source of the quotation?)

I like that idea; I think music is at its best when it’s intimate, up close and personal. I’ve been trying to take that approach in the studio. In one sense I’m playing for myself and Matt, the engineer, whose observations I already value pretty highly. In another sense — and I don’t mean this to sound particularly holy or anything — I’m playing for me and God: me and the one who knows and loves me better than anyone else, me and the one who knows and loves music better than anyone else; an intimate little tete-a-tete.

I hope other folks will enjoy listening in.

Today was the first recording session for my latest CD project, an as yet untitled Christmas album.

Ideas for a Christmas recording had been floating around for quite a while, but serious planning began this spring. Initially, I knew I wanted it to be an instrumental album, centered on the hammered dulcimer with support from my other instruments (recorder, bowed psaltery, and guitar), from my trio (fiddle and guitar), and possibly from some other local musicians.

I also knew I wanted to focus on music that reflects the spiritual meanings of Christmas.

Right now, for example, I plan to open the album with an original piece called “Fallen.” I wrote it one day after viewing the finalists’ entries in the competition for the September 11 memorial. Its theme of mourning the fallen also looks beyond that tragedy to the first and greatest fall of humanity in Eden. It’s because of that Fall that we have Christmas and the Savior it celebrates.

Near the end, I hope to include a piece called “Easter Thursday” along with one verse of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded”; again as a reminder of what God came to earth to do. In between, there will be carols both familiar and less well-known, from “The Lord at First Did Adam Make” to “Silent Night” and “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

When I arrived at the studio this morning, I found that the dulcimer wasn’t as in tune as it was last night after I spent most of yesterday tuning it. Some of you reading this may know how frustrated I’ve been with tuning. It takes me much longer than it should (believe it or not, most dulcimer players can tune in an hour or less), despite an excellent dulcimer and good tools and techniques. Must be me. Anyway, I was quite upset to find I’d have to do all that work again, and under the pressure of being in the studio and supposedly ready to start recording. Fortunately, the good folks at Electric Wilburland (a great studio housed in an old church in Newfield, just south of Ithaca) don’t charge for tuning time, and Matt was very patient as I did my best to get it ready.

Once the dulcimer was in tune, we decided which microphones to use and where to position them, then did the same with my soprano recorder. For the dulcimer, we decided on a matched pair of Earthworks QTC1 mics. They are set up like ears, with a foam disc in between like a head. Notice also the bits of white tape on the dulcimer, which helped us position the dulcimer in the same place each session to avoid changes in the stereo image.

The first tune we worked on was “The Lord at First Did Adam Make,” a carol from the 1800s that tells the Christmas story beginning with Genesis. My arrangement opens with solo recorder and includes sections with multiple recorders, multiple dulcimer parts, and a dulcimer accompaniment. Today I recorded the first recorder verse and all but one of the dulcimer sections; tomorrow Stuart and Robin Milliken will join me to add the other recorder parts, and then I’ll do that last dulcimer section.

Today I also recorded almost half of a dulcimer solo medley of “What Child is This?” and a Quantz “Menuet.” After one time through “What Child is This?” with the familiar chords, I change key (a blend of A minor and dorian) and introduce more major chords (F, D, C…) — thanks to Keith Bryant for some of these chording ideas.

It’s exciting to be in the studio again. I would have loved to record with Henry Smith at Outback Studio again, but since Mechanicsville VA is a little too far away now, Wilburland is a good second choice. Actually it’s great so far and I think I’m really going to enjoy working there.

The tuning thing is a huge source of anxiety; knowing how awful some tuning days have been, I hate the thought of having to tune in the studio. This will either force me to quit altogether, or else learn to metabolize some of that anxiety and patiently do whatever it takes to get in tune. Maybe necessity will even help me learn to tune a little more quickly.

Meanwhile, I have plenty of wonderful musical work to do, selecting and arranging and practicing pieces for this recording as well as continuing to teach and perform.