Forum Activity for @strumelia

Wow, you have very wide-ranging music genre interests!  You seem to be a fairly experienced player. 
So, it seems that most of the accidentals you are running into are in the most modern types of music you play- modern film scores, which can be especially daunting since movie music tends to change moods mid-song, often not following the usual expected structure of a song. I would think a chromatic dulcimer might be your best bet in the long run if you intend to pursue playing a lot of that kind of music. And certainly the modern chording style of playing would be the way to go as well for that.

Now you've got a whole bunch of great ideas and options from the good folks here in terms of methods and tools to use to get those elusive notes when they pop up.     Go forth and create many happy accident(al)s !  lolol 

I just saw this post Terry.  GOOD STUFF!  

Hi Yep,

Folks who play mostly chord/melody style like yourself can often find the accidentals on another string- usually the middle string. Try that first.

There's also a way of slanting your noter so the tip touches the wood fingerboard in the place where your missing fret would be- giving you the half note accidental. Others could maybe point you to videos and discussions here on FOTMD that describe this technique.

Retuning into a different mode (but staying in the same key) can solve the missing accidental in most cases, but not all.

Some tunes can be altered just a bit in order to skip or avoid the accidental. Not everyone can figure out how to do that but if you can, then great!  It can make for a more 'personalized' tune version.

If you find that in your playing, if you frequently need a particular accidental or note that always seems to be on a particular 'missing' fret location, then in my opinion there's no reason not to have the new fret added there if it enables you to play more enjoyably. As to extra fret 'acceptance'-  you're not playing dulcimer in order to gain approval from others .  My mtn dulcimers have the 6.5 and the 1.5 frets added- and I've never regretted it.  I have an epinette with only the diatonic frets and I would never add extra frets to it- i love that it was built strictly traditionally, and playing it without extra frets is very enjoyable.  If you decide you want a chromatic dulcimer, you can save for it and then look for a used one to buy- you can always resell it later if you decide it's not for you.

You don't mention the KIND of music you typically play that has accidentals.  Certain genres of music have more accidentals than others.  Interestingly, I find that both Modern music and very early Renaissance/Medieval music seem to present the most accidentals to me- which is amusing since they are at complete opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of time periods.  Traditional and rural folk music from 1830-1940 or so presents me with the fewest accidentals... and (not coincidentally) the American mountain dulcimer was developed around playing that kind of music.

I enjoy several genres of simple music to play at home on a few different instruments.  The medieval type music seems to have enough accidentals in it to make it problematic for a non-professional musician to play on a non-chromatic fretted dulcimer or instrument.  I will be getting a langspil with chromatic fretting in order to have a traditional instrument that enables accidentals and mode changes easily, 'on the fly'.      

Some folks do find that adding one or two extra frets is confusing... but the confusion will fade if they stick with it. After all, most dulcimers have the 6.5 fret and nobody finds that extra fret terribly confusing.  ;)   Going from a 'normal' mtn dulcimer to a chromatic has its own learning curve as well.  My banjos are split between totally fretless banjos and chromatically fretted... if I play them all fairly regularly, the differences only take about 30 seconds to get used to when I switch from one to another.

I don't buy new instruments that often, but when I do there's usually a very specific function I'm looking for. 

Richard, what lovely instrument. I love the snowflakes and love your description.  Maybe one day we will get treated to a little demo from you playing it.   

It's a wonderful thing to own an instrument that is a joy when we strum it.  

Thanks for the great explanation, Dusty!

JP, I'm just curious- did you not look over the other threads in this Site Questions forum to see if the solution to your problem had already been asked about and answered?  I hope you now understand why you were not seeing the whole discussion.

Dusty mentions the main site links along the TOP navigation bar on every page of FOTMD (Home, Forums, Photos, Videos, etc). When one is very confused about how the site is laid out, it really does help to click those links to gain a better understanding of the areas of main function and content. Not everything is immediately accessible from the Main Page... or else it would have to be five miles long.   

I'm glad you were able to post a new thread here in the Site Questions forum in order to ask your new question, though!  I'm going to edit this thread's title to be more descriptive of the thread subject now- in order to help others in the future looking for answers to similar questions as yours.  :)

Hi Susie.  Sheba is a pretty average sized girl cat.  We got her from the local Humane Society... we get all our cats from there.  

Sally Ann has filled out very nicely. Looks like she grew a sleek new coat, too.  

and- my oh my, those are two beautiful dulcimers!

Our 3 cats seem to like it when Brian and I play tunes... as we begin to play they casually* saunter into the room (*so we won't know they actually approve of something we do) ...and they take up positions in various chairs. As though their appearance was all accidental.

However, our red cat Rufus detests my pennywhistle playing... at the very first note he races  out of the room. I can't really blame him.  

Sheba (aka Boo Boo) likes to lie on the backs of chairs and along the tops of open doors.

@dusty-turtle , is that a quart sized mason jar or a pint?

And... once you've made your jar and put it in the fridge, how long is it good for would you say?

Dusty you are making me want to try that stuff now. 

Brian usually drinks like 4 cups of regular brewed coffee per day, and me 2-3 cups. (I try to stop by 1 or 2pm, otherwise it keeps me from sleeping deeply.) We use the paper filter hand-pouring method. Coffee is one of our favorite indulgences!  Over the past two years there have been quite a few articles about coffee (in reasonable amounts) being GOOD for one's health.  Yay!!

Do you mean your grounds sit in thier cone filter immersed in the water for 48 hours?   And... is the water you pour in hot to begin with?  Hmm..I think I may need to turn to Youtube for some tutorials here.  

I don't want to ingest 'too' much caffeine however- I've found too much does make me feel icky, and definitely interferes with my getting deep sleep cycles.

Dusty do keep an eye on whether you might overindulge and then experience any caffeine-withdrawal headaches- which of course get 'cured' by.. another shot of caffeine!  'Hair of the dog' kind of thing, but you don't want headaches to begin with. 

I'm thinking that maybe cold-brewed coffee is powerful in the same 'visionary out-of-body experience' way as when Americans try Turkish coffee. There's a reason the Turkish drink their coffee in those tiny little cups. 

Some of us are old enough to remember pre-starbucks times in America when everyone just drank watery Bunn-o-matic Maxwell House diner counter type coffee that you could practically read a newspaper through. (what's a newspaper, some might now ask). American coffee used to be real watery from when I was a kid in the late 1950s all the way up to maybe the past 25 or 30 years it seems to me. Back then only weirdo beatniks drank espresso(aka 'foreign' coffee) in subversive coffee houses.

It's great to have a 'vice' that might actually improve one's health.     Thanks for your 'uplifting' post, Dusty!

@folkfan , Tigger has got a mischievous look in his eye!  

Sounds to me like at that particular note/moment, your voice starts out right on the note but then drifts a little high towards the end of the note (performance jitters maybe?)- and at the same moment Hazel's note on the violin is just a little too low.  Your dulcimer is and remains in tune because it was tuned and it has frets.  So things combined just at that moment in such a way (like Goldilocks' 3 chairs) that made a conflict discernible to you.

Keep in mind that even though both instruments may be correctly tuned, the violin has no frets and is much more difficult to play exactly in tune than a (fretted) dulcimer.  Especially with a child's smaller less strong hands.  Hazel does well, but like any learning violinist she does occasionally waver slightly off key since she is learning to fret- any tiny,  tiny finger movement changes the note, while the dulcimer can generally rely on the frets to make each note be in tune.  Playing violin/fiddle is a bear to wrestle with and most folks work at it for several years before they can play reliably 'in tune'.  You have to be both determined and brave to play the fiddle, IMHO.

The important thing here is that overall the hymn sounded lovely and your performance projected a sweetness and love that radiated out from you and your daughter together.  The audience must have really enjoyed the treat.  Well done!!  

Tell me which note you think was the worst (give me the 0:00 time on the vid) and I'll tell you who the guilty party was... if you promise not to pass it along to her-  in case it was Hazel...      

Yeah I was cracking up too when I realized your head was going to be covered with a veil for the ENTIRE video... LOLOL

Shoot the videographer!

Sandi, I enjoyed your hymn- you have a beautiful voice.  Was that Hazel on violin??  Oh my, I remember when you mentioned she was newly born, over on everythingdulcimer!  I must be really old now!     lolol

Your church is very lucky to have you playing for them Sandi!  And of course it goes both ways- you are lucky to have such and appreciative audience.  

Robin-  and maybe again decades later.   

Patty!  What an adorable smiley puppy face!  

I love Spring... it inspires me to cook more and to prepare healthier food, for one thing.

We have fresh ruby red leaf lettuce growing in the garden now, so making fresh salads is a frequent thing.

Today I'm tying the young tomato plants to their stakes.. they're now tall enough to get damaged in a heavy storm.

Can't wait for corn season.  :D

We are very happily enjoying our new large screen porch we put in last Fall.  So nice to eat outside in the evening by candlelight ... crickets chirping... with not a single thought or care about mosquitos!

I've managed to lose a few pounds during the past 6 months by eating a little more fruits and vegetables, and a little less junk.

Tomorrow morning will zip over to our local fairgrounds for 45 minutes and go for a brisk 2 mile walk before the morning gets too warm.  I'm trying to do this once or maybe twice a week now, just for good measure.  I've learned if I try to do 'too much' I end up avoiding it altogether.  So it's better to keep my goals do-able.  :)

Just a reminder to everyone that we have a Site Questions Forum where you can find answers to many of the most common questions about how FOTMD works:

https://fotmd.com/forums/forum/site-questions-how-do-i

Not sure how to start a forum thread?  How to add a video?  How to change your avatar picture?  How to send a private message? ... take a look there and you will likely find an existing thread explaining just how to do that!  If you don't find the existing answer, then add your own new thread in that forum asking how to do a particular thing on FOTMD.

Our site questions forum is the EZ place to get answers on how to use our FOTMD site!   

Those dolphins are so gracefully designed, Dusty.

One of my favorite sound hole shapes is the quatrefoil ("four leaf").  Not sure why, I just like it and it has an old feel to it.
I had it used for sound holes on both my jouhikko and my "Elizabethan Garden" epinette des Vosges.

Richard you said it all.  

I fixed Sandi's link.  FWIW to everyone... if you put a link on its own line (hit 'enter' before pasting the link), it creates a working hotlink more reliably. 

Lois that's very kind of you to post.  FOTMD server/software costs are paid entirely from member donations, and all donations are much appreciated.       As for my time, well it's a labor of love for me, as well as our volunteer moderators.

Both Ron Zuckerman and Ken Longfield deserve our thanks for the work and dedication they put in as ED's Moderators/Admins when Bruce wasn't around (which was often, lol).  Well done, Ken and Ron!  

Ron's correct about the value of being able to search/find past content about specific subjects or people.

For example, if you want to find something you vaguely remember being posted on FOTMD concerning Tennessee music boxes, you can punch in:  TMB "Tennessee music box"
into the site search box and it pulls up this:

https://fotmd.com/search/results/all/1/25?search_string=TMB+%22Tennessee+music+box%22

Or do a search for:  fingerpicking fingerpicked

and you get this:

https://fotmd.com/search/results/all/1/25?search_string=fingerpicking+fingerpicked

Or if you search only within the Forums for: "Richard Farina"   you will get this:

https://fotmd.com/forums/forum?search_string=%22Richard+Farina%22

The amazing ED forums had 16 years' worth of discussions and valuable information on dulcimers, contributed by hundreds of passionate and thoughtful people.  

The EverythingDulcimer .com site has now shut down.  If you have bookmared the discussion forum, you'll no longer find anything there.

As he said he would do, Bruce very graciously made sure that folks can download for themselves all the site's TABS, Articles, Events, Club Listings, and Teacher/builder/performer Listing .  You can just click on the links he left for this and you'll be downloading a zip folder containing all the desired content. 
To read Bruce's message and get the links, go to the domain's main page here:

http://everythingdulcimer.com/

One word of advice I would add is that if you want to keep some of that content Bruce linked to, you should download it now... because he likely will not keep the page with the links and explanation there forever.

Bruce did not hand over the ED forums to someone else, and he explained his reasons there, which I think make a lot of sense.

As most of you know, the ED Facebook page will continue on, and is run by Ron Zuckerman, who is now also a member of FOTMD (welcome Ron!)

I know we are all very grateful to Bruce for having given us a wonderful place to connect, discuss, and learn about dulcimers for 16 years. That's a long time to run an interactive site.   

Do share with us your initial impressions on bamboo noters when you receive them, Sandi.

So great to have you posting here again, by the way!  

Glass noters I've tried out seem to give an odd metallic tone. Might be cool for certain effects though.

Every time I've settled on a favorite noter, a month or two later I discover that one of my other noters is actually my favorite.      I'm a fickle gal.

I wanted to remind folks to check their everythingdulcimer.com private message INbox and Sent box etc, to save any important private messages  in your ED account that you might not want to lose.  Only 4 days left...     

(bump)

Robin, thanks so much!  Your descriptive word for this sound, "flatfoot" is perfect.. I can close my eyes and see someone dancing in old leather shoes on the wood floor...  

Hey Robin- didn't you used to have a video on here demonstrating your felt pick?  It was great...where'd it go?  

When putting simply the word "picks" in our site-wide search engine, it pulls up a veritable feast of pink adventures to enjoy exploring:

https://fotmd.com/search/results/all/1/25?search_string=picks   

I wrote a blog post a few years back describing my own fickle adventures with picks as well:

https://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/2009/03/take-your-pick.html

Oh my.... sweetness OVERLOAD!  

Love the one little grey pinky toe.

@cself, thanks so much for posting the direct YT links to Dusty's vids-  Dusty's older link was from when this site, FOTMD, was on another platform years ago, and thus the link did not function anymore.  I've taken the initiative of editing Dusty's old post to reflect the new links you posted as well.  Dusty's videos are SO worth watching!   Thank you!  

I'd like to add a couple of points to this thread:

1) Any time cookies are cleared or removed in your Browser, you will be logged out of most sites, even if you have the 'remember me' box checked.  Once you log in again, a new cookie will be created for making logging in easier.  If you have your browser set to not accept any cookies, then you will be needing to log in every time you visit FOTMD.  Likewise, if you share your computer, the same thing will happen if other users clear browser cookies. Also, the cookie settings on your tablet or phone will be different than the ones on your desktop, so you can't expect the exact same behavior across your devices.

2) This site is set so that if you don't delete your cookies and have the login 'remember me' box checked, then that particular device will keep you logged in for a certain number of days, or perhaps as long as a couple of weeks.  But it's not set to keep you logged in 'forever' (which is a good thing) ...so there will naturally be times every week or two where you WILL need to log in again when you visit.  This is normal. I find that I myself must log in at least once a week, even though i visit several times a day.

The 'remember me' checkbox is convenient, but if cookies are cleared on your browser you will be logged out despite that.  And the 'remember me' setting is only for a certain number of days, not 'forever'.  If you have the remember me checkbox checked and you still have to log in every day, then the suspect cause is likely that your browser cookies are somehow being cleared or not being allowed.

Hope this helps!

As Bridge just hinted at with his 'gut feeling' comment, the problem here could be that you are expecting equal temperament sounds on an older dulcimer that may have been fretted in just temperament.  This would result in an instrument that not only sounds badly intonated when in DAd tuning, but even in DAA tuning when chording it across all strings.

Our member Robin Clark has written extensively over on the ED forums about equal vs. just tempered scales on older dulcimers.  I don't know how much you guys already know or don't know about this subject, but here are a few of Robin's posts on it over on ED (which will sadly shut down at the end of this month):

http://everythingdulcimer.com/discuss/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&author_id=6698

There are also a lot of great discussions here on FOTMD concerning the equal vs. just temperament factor with older dulcimers:

https://fotmd.com/search/results/all/1/25?search_string=just+temperament

One thing I would say is that many folks wind up thinking their old dulcimer was improperly fretted and they proceed to pull out all the original frets and refret it in equal temperament. This is a disservice to irreplaceable older dulcimers and will immediately and severely devalue them forever (that's assuming they were not actually badly fretted by an inexperienced maker).  If one needs an equal tempered scale due to how one wants to play (intended repertoire, playing style, tunings), one would do far better to simply use a more modern equal-intonated dulcimer.  The old just-intonated dulcimer fret spacings sound sweeeeet when you play noter style in ionian tuning, as they were designed to be played.  

Again, I do NOT know if a just temperament is the cause for the frets being 'out of tune' in this instance, and I don't know anyone's expertise or knowledge level here.  But any time an old dulcimer is involved and thought to be badly fretted, the intended fret scale should be high up on the list of factors.  

I'm hoping Robin Clark will jump in here, since he has done a lot of research and experimentation on the subject.

I've moved this thread to our "Instruments- specific features, luthiers, etc" forum since it will be helpful to others seeking shorter scale/vsl McSpaddens in the future.  I also removed a few posts that were veering into different directions in a non-constructive way.  Thanks, and carry on!  

This is cool.

I did however, move this thread to the "Instruments- luthiers/instruments Forum because it's about a specific maker and the issues effecting the instrument's playability.