Marcy Prochaska: Hammered Dulcimer

Once again, things kept us away from recording for the last month.

One of those things was the Chenango gig this past weekend, which involved two hours in the car together. We listened to the mixes that I’ve roughed out so far, and decided that we have at least four, possibly five pieces that are CD-worthy, if I can just get the mix right. For example, the level of reverb (for the fiddle) that sounded good on my computer speakers was overwhelming in the car.

Tonight, we worked on three medleys: redoing Banish Misfortune / Swallowtail Jig, and first attempts on Dubuque / Spootiskerry and O’Keefe’s Slide / Derrane’s / Trip to Durrow.

Dubuque is a fun tune with a syncopated B part; we start with a half-phrase call and response between dulcimer and fiddle for the two A parts, playing together on the B parts, and then the guitar joins in for the second time through. I play chords the last time through, experimenting with a kind of back-up approach inspired in part by Ken Kolodner and Karen Ashbrook, although they might shudder to hear that.

After a run of dulcimer walk-downs in the B parts, dulcimer and guitar play the first time through Spootiskerry. The fiddle plays some floaty sustained notes in the B part, then takes over for the second time through. I get to do some fun arpeggios in the B part where the chords change pretty quickly.

The other set is two jigs followed by a reel. For a change, we have the guitar start this one, playing melody, then the fiddle joins in on the second A part, and dulcimer on the Bs. Dulcimer starts Derrane’s, with just a few well-placed guitar strums. Trip to Durrow’s change to the reel meter, with its fun chord progressons, brings a boost of energy to close the set.

Sometime this week I’ll need to listen to these takes as well as the most recent takes of Out on the Ocean / Morrison’s / Kesh, which hadn’t fit on the jump drive last time. Hopefully, even though we all felt sloppy tonight, some of these takes will be usable. Even if they’re not, there’s really no such thing as a worthless night of practice.

Oh, we might have also decided on an album title, but I’m not telling yet.

Good morning. It’s 5:00 am, a time no one should ever have to be aware of. I have to be up at this time on a Saturday because our trio is playing an 8:30 gig at a coffeehouse two hours away. What was I thinking? (Insert grumbling whiny not awake yet noises here.) And of course, since I knew I had to be up early, my body prepared in advance and woke me up at 3:45. After an hour I gave up on getting back to sleep. Fifteen extra minutes means I can blog a bit.

Yesterday I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon working on mixing and editing. (Our trio is doing a home recording.) I think I’ve got a good workable mix of Star of Munster / Old Copper Plate, and I think maybe three others might be acceptable. Banish Misfortune / Swallowtail Jig, though, we definitely have to do over.

I tuned in the afternoon, which was going quite well until one of the strings broke. I have a box of extra strings and I think I matched the right gauge. I didn’t do it quite right, though; I only got two windings instead of the more secure three or four. It’s a little scary to replace a dulcimer string, especially a really high one, because they’re so tight; as I bring it slowly up to pitch I’m afraid it’s going to break again. Fortunately, dulcimer strings rarely break. This is the fourth one I’ve broken in five years. Anyway, new strings stretch, which means they go flat quickly, so I’ll have to tune it up again when we get to the gig. I hope it’ll stay close enough for the duration of our performance.

One good thing is that we’re not driving two hours to play forty-five minutes at the coffeehouse and then come home again; we should be able to go play in the gazebo on the village green afterwards, until 11:00 or perhaps even later. (Chance of rain: 30%.)

Well — time for me to get dressed and put my waffles in the toaster oven. Made them yesterday and stuck them in the freezer; a double batch of cinnamon walnut waffles, with half regular and half whole wheat flour. Butter and honey; mmmm.

This morning, I attended the debut screening of the film I scored. This afternoon, I made my first experiment in editing and mixing tracks all by myself.

Instead of the usual Cornell Plantations luncheon, this year they had a mystery presentation followed by a lunch reception. The husband of a particular lady who has been very involved with both Cornell Plantations and the Lab of Ornithology made a donation to make this film project — a collaboration between the two entities — possible. Everyone managed to keep the project a secret from her until the presentation today.

A variety of folks associated with the two groups assembled in a campus theatre to see the two films in high definition. First was the one I scored, “The Wildflower Garden,” followed by the one Laurie Hart scored, “The Sanctuary.” Both are short nature films focusing on particular areas around campus. Natural sound is the primary score, with a narrative and an underlying bed of music.

It was pretty exciting to see my name in the credits.

The lunch afterwards was quite nice, too. Cornell makes good food. I didn’t get to speak with Laurie or the videographer David Brown who had hired me, but I sat with the woman who was next to me at the screening and another woman I knew from our old church, and I got to talk with yet another woman I knew from a local jam session.

(It feels odd to refer to people as “woman” — seems so old. “Lady” would be worse, “girl” doesn’t seem to fit, and “gal” is just silly…)

Not long after I got home, I started experimenting with The Hanshaw Trio’s recordings of a medley of “Star of Munster” and “Old Copper Plate.” Take 8 was my favorite, but I had a bum note in the middle, so I wanted to see if I could replace that section with the same section from another take. For my first attempt at editing, I thought I did a pretty good job, although I need more practice to really understand what I’m doing and how to do it better. I’ll also need to do the edit differently; the tempos between the two takes were different enough that the edit isn’t smooth. I could try taking the section from another take with a more similar tempo, or make the section longer (going to a natural transition point) or shorter (just the bum note) in order to make the tempo change less significant.

I also learned how to draw an envelope to control the volume faders automatically, and I learned how to mix down the three tracks to a stereo track.

Woo-hoo!

We started with Carolan’s Welcome again, trying the variation I wrote about in the last entry. We also had Craig do some melody towards the end, and I experimented with some high harmony. I kept making a lot of mistakes, so once we had two reasonable takes to use for evaluating the arrangement, we moved on to other stuff.

Carolan’s Welcome was the last of the four pieces we’d decided to record first, so I haven’t practiced anything else in a long time. Fortunately, we decided to try Staten Island / Julia Delany, and Banish Misfortune / Swallowtail Jig, sets I’m fairly comfortable with.

I love the Staten Island / Julia Delany set; I love the switch from D to Dm, and Julia Delany is just a great tune. By the way, I’ve heard that Staten Island is supposed to be a hornpipe; we play it as a reel. (Definitions: A reel is a fast tune in 4/4 time. A jig is a fast tune in 6/8 time. For each step a contra dancer takes, a reel has two beats, and a jig has three. Hornpipes are more like jigs than reels — a little slower, and played with a lilted or swung or dotted rhythm.)

For Banish Misfortune, Jerry gets to imitate a bagpipe the first time through. He plays one A part, then drones on the D while I play the repeat, and so on for the B and C parts.

I’m not sure what exactly I want to do for the other two parts; I could play melody both times in the normal octave, or one time I could play in the lower octave, or I could do a sort of call-and-response with myself, one A part higher, the repeat lower, and so on.

Then I drop out for the first time through Swallowtail. (Having one of us drop out at a transition is an effective technique for signalling a change; still, I hope we don’t overuse it.)

Now I’ve got to listen to this week’s takes to see if I like the arrangements, and chances are I’ll want to practice the sets in hopes of recording better takes next time. I hope the recording won’t be too disrupted by our preparations for a pair of gigs — we have a Farmers Market performance and also a show as part of the Chenango Summer MusicFest coming up.

It’s been a long time, almost a month. It’s all Craig’s fault — first it was wrist pain, then a trip, then he and his family got sick… obviously all done on purpose to delay our recording, lol. But now that he’s back, and healthy, we’re at it again. Twice this week.

Tonight we decided on a new approach. No more sessions with fourteen takes of the same set. It’s just too hard to evaluate fourteen takes. I’ve narrowed those down to six, but even that was exhausting, and I still need to narrow the six down to two or three for the trio to choose from.

Instead, we decided we would do more evaulating at the session, eliminating takes that didn’t feel good or that we know we made significant mistakes on. Once we had two or three good ones to take home, we’d move on to another set.

So tonight we went through Out on the Ocean / Morrison’s / Kesh yet again, then Winter East and Kensington, and finally Carolan’s Welcome.

I’m a little uncertain of our arrangement for Carolan’s Welcome. The first time, the fiddle leads and the guitar and I play backup. The second and third times we do a call and response; the fiddle leads and I follow. The final section we play together.

I wonder if maybe we ought to have me lead the first call and response, so that there’s more of a contrast from the first time through. Something for us to think about and listen to.