Forum Activity for @strumelia

Good one Dusty.  

Also, try 1 up, 1 down, like Cuffy does here: 

Wow, i'm so happy we have a little group of us now here having fun learning to play!

Helen, though the grooves help keep the bones from sliding out of your hand slowing while playing, I think as yuo get better you may find you don't need them.  The advantage of not having grooves is that you can more easily change the positions of the bones experimentally, and you will find that this changes the tone and volume more than anything else- more than the type of wood even.  I have several different types of wood bones, and any type I can make louder or softer, crisper and ringy or dull and mellow- simply by changing their position in my hands.  Try experimenting a lot with that.

Yay!

Sheryl-  haha you got me on that one.  ;D

One would have to used UNWAXED floss, and any filament or hair would need to be rosined up I think.

I always get my biggest callus right at the tip of my longest middle finger.   I laugh because when I recently got into my bones playing frenzy, I actually got a small callus started on the side of one of my fingers where the bones rub against it. 

I would think she could test out the switch before actually buying a left handed dulcimer by flipping the dulcimer around and just going through the motions of making chords and strumming in her opposite hands...without paying attention to any 'wrong' sounds that result in the test.  The question would be if she can make and hold down chords with her hand that has tremors.  One other thing to keep in mind is that it's a little harder to resell a lefthanded dulcimer than a normal one.

I would think a large flexible pick made from cutting a big triangle out of a stiff plastic deli container- try the side, the bottom, and the lid for different stiffnesses.

I know our wonderful FOTMD member Lexie might be able to give some excellent advice here- i hope she jumps in! 

Thanks so much, Tumbleweed.   :)

Wout said:

"My ten years old son just hides my bones, but I have a rather large collection."

That reminds of the joke:  "Our parents moved around a lot when we were growing up. But we always found them."   lolol

Notice how Happy Birthday doesn't even have a "B part"?   ...'cause the candles are melting and so is the ice cream, so hurry it up! 

My upstairs office is directly above Brian's downstairs office.  For bones practice, I'm supposed to go in the other upstairs room to cut down on the racket...oops I mean rattle.   And 10pm is the bones curfew, which I think is quite reasonable.   lolol

Hey I'm just happy to have other bones nuts to talk to!

That's GREAT, Sheryl!   A practice buddy!!!  

Hmm...wondering if you could tune your bass and melody strings down a bit to C (middle string up to C), and then use a pencil or dowel to make barre chords across all your strings, and just play the melody if the songs are following a familiar structure, or else find your three I IV V main barre chords that match the tune's key.  Might not take long to figure out the key, and by knowing your zero fret is C, you can find the tonic barr chord right away and you're in business.  This could work fine especially since you have the 1.5 and 6.5 frets.   It'd be less to think about, no chord fingerings to keep remembering and switching, and might work well for that unusual situation, surrounded by key-changing guitars all night. 

Another option is to tune to CGc and do the same, making barre chords after you locate the tonic location for each tune they play.   Doing from the home base of C would be easier to calculate on the fly than starting in D on the open strings.

Life-altering game changer in all my music playing, on any instrument, has been two pronged
...and for me they've gone hand in hand:

-discovery of dronal tones and older intervals and dissonances...and how they can move me to my soul.

-embracing rhythm/beats/percussion as an equally important aspect (if not most important) as notes or melody in my music making.

Bob, you and your son are totally rockin!     Yayyy...we both met the challenge! 

Sheryl, we did about six takes for this video.  This one was the last take, and the only one where I couldn't resist putting in that final 'last word' click 'cause the silence was deafening... which made us both laugh. 

Tom, the lucky break of Dom actually coming to our town inspired me to try yet again with the bones, and this time it began to 'take'.  I love that we all inspire each other!

OK Bob, now you have to put yor money whar yer mouth is!:

-still rough, but I'm happy to be at this stage after two months of steady practice...lots of room to improve going forward!...

http://fotmd.com/strumelia/youtube/1797/bones-practice-with-fiddle-sept2015

Hey Bob, is this challenge still on?   Are you going to post a recent video of yourself on spoons?

Wout I'd love to see a little quick video demo of you playing the sculptured bones you have...?

Tom, that's cool, a boxwood set.  They must have a very clear tone, it being such a hard dense wood.

I've been practicing.  This evening in fact I played for about an hour along to Brian practicing his fiddle.  At this point I can keep semi-decent rhythm 'most' of the time, though I don't have much of any fancy moves yet.  Because I'm no longer making a horrific random clatter, Brian now doesn't seem to mind my playing along sometimes as he practices.     
I'm pleased with my progress over the past two months, especially so because I had tried and failed on bones several times over the past few years.

I find my left hand is mostly just doing plain time stuff, while my right hand does the triplets and such.  It seems to be veering to that naturally, and I'm letting myself just develop whatever feels good.  I remember the advice about how you could take a dozen beginner bones students and have one teacher teach them all the same way...then if you look at them a year or so later every one of them has their own unique style.

I like my wooden bones most of the time, they are easier to handle...but I have some ox shin "Lark" thin bones that have that porcelain-like bone tone that Im trying to work with too.  They seem to require a whole different hand position and technique, so that presents additional learning curve I'll have to work through. 

For the wooden ones-  my favorite right hand pair is a maple Whamdiddle brand pair in the 'short/narrow' size.  Then in the right hand my fave pair so far is some Whamdiddle poplar in regular size.  I suspect if we practice a lot we can probably make most bones sound pretty good no matter what the wood is or whether we split pairs up. 

Is that the dulcimer in your avatar picture Robert?

Big hugs to you Dana!   Great news!!

Jeff thank you for the great report.  So glad you made some enjoyable connections and friends, and that your Dad had a good time too...that's just awesome. 

That's truly a wonderful tale, Ann!   :)

Tom's a member over there too, Sheryl!   YOU could join there just because you like to listen, too, you know.   ;)

I see, Sheryl- good sleuthing, my friend!

If you go on this site:  http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/    you can play just about any of the videos there and have some good minstrel banjo tunes to play bones along with on your computer, along with a LOT more by Tim Twiss.   :)

Worth repeating, several times.   

David,

if playing DAd tab and in DAd tuning, you will be playing in the key of D.  You can lower all your strings by one step and be in CGC tuning, and you can still play using the same DAd tab, but you'll be playing in the key of C.

Sheryl I have most of Tim Twiss's recordings, including his Grape Vine Twist cd- good stuff to practice with!  Brian and I are actually playing Grape Vine Twist on fiddle/banjo lately.  I have almost every minstrel era recording I can get hold of.  I'm curious as to how you came to get Tim's cd- do you play minstrel banjo?

Tom- what are your fave minstrel banjo cds to practice bones with?   I like the Joe Ayers, Bob Flesher, and the Camptown Shakers stuff particularly.

Cool- so Wout you are practicing to old English or Irish tunes?

Sheryl to an old country song?

When I'm practicing alone, I'm playing to Civil War era minstrel tunes and songs on cds.  Here's an example of stuff i play to: https://youtu.be/VI-Ukj7c78E?list=PLSMm3dUxYUnV5epZOGii-FCbDrPdVQsFU

Or I practice just with no music, practicing very basic rhythms over and over. When I play to Brian's live fiddling, he's doing American oldtime tunes at various speeds.

Then you'd need to make an actual photo album so one can see all the images side by side... either here in your profile page Photo section, or online somewhere in a photo hosting site.

So...what music are we practicing to?  

Why?...Because the file attachment editor feature is not intended to function like a 'photo story album', Wout.      Most folks would either just attach ONE file or image file, or if there were many, they'd just load the pictures onto a free photo site somewhere online and then post a single link to them in their post so peopel could go look at them in an album or webpage online, rather than attaching 15 or more separate pdfs in one post after another. OR, they'd create a new photo album in their profile page Photos area.  The post attachment function is not meant to present a long photo album series of pictures named the way you want.   That's why. 

My new bones are coming any time now, they were in stock.  Good thing is that the site tells you right there whether a particular style is in stock or not.  A lot of specific bones are hard to get, being made by hand by certain people only.  Some styles are only available once in a while, too.

I talked to Scott last week and mentioned what you said about the American vs. European grip, and Scott said for the people he knows, it mostly just comes down to personal experimentation and choice.  I have to say that of the American players i see all kinds of different hand/bones positions- lots of variety!      We all have different size and shaped hands, so we all need different size/weight/balance bones, too I imagine!  Brian's walnut ones he made for himself are way too big and clunky for my hands, I know that.  They seem to fit him just right.

Oh, I really should mention this- here is the biggest/best website dedicated to bones, run by Scott Miller... BonedryMusic.com

Scott is awesome, and very giving of his time and knowledge. He offers the absolute biggest selection and learning material on bones .. anywhere .

Here's a video of Scott's energetic and joyful bones playing style at a Civil War re-enactment 8yrs ago (too bad it's fuzzy and has wind noise): 

Wout-  maybe bones made from bamboo should be called "boos"   heh heh

Sheryl, I'm a beekeeper.   Send me a private message with your postal address and i'll mail you a little piece of pure beeswax.

I'm fielding multiple complaints from members who feel that some folks are denigrating other styles and types of players in their comments.  I have to agree, such comments and remarks are unnecessarily derogatory and thus inappropriate.

I'd like to ask everyone here to please stick with the subject of the original post here, which is simply "What tunings I like to use, and why".  The subject is not "What I don't like about other people's playing styles and dulcimers".

This goes for elsewhere on the site as well.  To all: please resist continually remarking on things you disapprove of.

Wout, that's an interesting approach!   I certainly do notice that if one clenches too much it produces less of the nice triplets etc...but what you say is true as well, I just never thought of it that way too.

hahaha.

I sold three pairs of bones that I didn't care for much, and ordered two pairs that I really want to try out (made of ox shin bones but slender sized).   Wound up being about the same money, so that's always nice.   can't wait to get the new ones.

I practiced with Brian this evening...with him playing fiddle tunes.  I get nervous about that because he's pretty particular about accompaniment sound/noise, and it's so easy to sound too loud on bones.     Well, I made tons of mistakes, flubbing up left and right, but got a few good phrases in too.  So....he totally shocked me by saying that he LIKED our fiddle/bones "duet".   !!!  I asked him if he was just trying to be nice, and he said no, that he liked it and wanted to do more practice of fiddle & bones together, so I could improve more.    Woo-HOOO!

Despite all the awkward attempts and missed beats, I love that feeling of when you occasionally 'nail it' with a good crisp rattle that is perfectly timed and snapped shut at the end just right.