Forum Activity for @dusty

I got my second vaccine shot this morning.  I then ordered  lunch for the family from my favorite sandwich spot (actually called The Sandwich Spot).  The joint sits across the street from a small park near a small complex for "active seniors."  In the park there were three or four groups of people without masks, all "of a certain age" as they say, picnicking together.  It occurred to me that they had probably all been vaccinated, and it was the first sign I've seen in a long time of social life getting back to normal.

Here in California, the vaccines will be available to anyone over 50 as of April 1 and anyone over 16 after April 15.  That means my wife and daughter can get vaccinated, too, so long as vaccine supplies don't run out.  Once the whole family is covered I'll feel a lot more comfortable meeting with friends I haven't seen in a long time.  

Someday we'll all be interviewed by young students doing oral histories of the "Great Pandemic of 2020" (hopefully not the "First COVID Pandemic") and they won't believe how our social lives were shut down. I never used to go to the movies too often, or go bowling, or hang out in cafes, or that kind of thing. But now I miss those experiences.

Wendell, you're right both that Ron Ewing is known for his baritones and his dulcimettes and also that you rarely see his instruments hit the used dulcimer market.  That alone tells you something about how people like them.  I know of at least one professional dulcimer player who has been playing a Ron Ewing standard dulcimer for decades.  She loves it.

No need to apologize, @rojo.  There are lots of nooks and crannies here at FOTMD and it might not be obvious which is the best one. The overall goal is for our conversations to be usable and searchable months and years from now.  So you might imagine someone joining in a year with a question such as yours. Where would they look for information?

@rojo, you might want to pose these kinds of questions in the Dulcimer Making Group , where builders discuss their work.  Here in this more general forum there are lots of folks like me for whom instrument construction is no more familiar than ancient Greek.  Make sure you "join" the group first so you can see all the conversations already there, but then feel free to start a conversation specific to your question.

Each tuning needs its own tab, marg, but a small adjustment may be all that's needed.

However, there are obvious limitations.  In a 1-5-7 tuning in D, meaning DAC, there is no F# on the melody string. So you cannot play a D major chord as you would in DAA or DAd.  But that's the point. It's a tuning for minor-sounding melodies.

There are two main reasons why people who fret across all the strings and play chords change tunings a lot less than drone style players.  One is that we don't need to since we have access to notes not available on the melody string.  But the second is that a new tuning requires learning new chords shapes. 

You're getting it. Marg.  Remember in my first post when I mentioned that if you are tuned to D, you can probably go down to C or up to E, but going lower or higher than those keys would require different strings?  One reason to use a "reverse" tuning like DGd would be to play in the key of G while still using the same set of strings.

Another thing: the drones can only be the 1 and the 5, but you don't necessarily have to have both.  For example, a "unison" tuning of ddd is quite common. In that case you only have the 1 drone and there is no 5.

And yes, you can theoretically invent any number of tunings.  The Canadian dulcimer player Rick Scott uses all kinds of bizarre tunings.  Some of them, he admits, he arrived at because his old wooden peg tuners slipped, but he just left them and wrote a new song!  

However, if you only fret on the melody string, then you are limited because the drones should only be the 1 and/or 5, and you also have to have the right fret spacing for the melody you want to play.

Yes.  You got it!

I meant 1-1-5 for GGD.  Sorry about that. I just changed it in the original to avoid any confusion.

Technically, the only possible drones are the 1 and the 5. That is why in most tunings, the bass and middle strings are 1 and 5 and the only string that changes is the melody string.

DGd is a little different, but you could just count the same way we did before to find other tunings in that pattern.  It is a little different because DGd is considered a "reverse" tuning where the root (or the 1, that is the note that tells us the key) is on the middle string.  DGd is used in the same way as GDd, so it is an Ionian or 1-5-5 tuning, but technically it would be 5-1-5. What is reversed is simply the order of the 1 and the 5 notes on the drones.

Of the four main tunings I referred to earlier, 1-5-5 (Ionian) and 1-5-8 (Mixolydian) sound major, and 1-5-4 (Dorian) and 1-5-7 (Aeolian) sound minor. There is separate tab for those tunings.  If you play in a drone style where you only fret the melody string, you have to use those tunings for certain tunes.  For example, to play Shady Grove you will tune to a  1-5-7 tuning and your root or resting place will be on the first fret.  

Because a lot of tab is now written for people (like myself) who fret across all the strings and make use of other tools (some would say "crutches") such as capos and extra frets, many tunes that were once only played in 1-5-7 or 1-5-4 tunings can be written in 1-5-8 or 1-5-5 tunings.  To use that same example, if you tune 1-5-8 and use a capo at the first fret, you can play Shady Grove, but you will have to make use of the middle string for some of the melody. Similarly, if you have a 1+ fret you can also play the tune without a capo in DAd, again sometimes using the middle string. These methods are not traditional, though.

Marg, the short answer is that there are 12 possible keys to tune to for any specific tuning.

The important information in your question is the numbers to which you refer.  Those refer to scale positions of the notes.

Let's start with D and count the letters until we come back to D.

D = 1

E = 2

F# = 3

G = 4

A = 5

B= 6

C = 7

D = 8

So DAA is 1-5-5, DAC is 1-5-7, DAG is 1-5-4, and DAd is 1-5-8.  Those are the 4 main tunings we use. (Although I find the use of modal names for tunings to be confusing, in case you are wondering, 1-5-5 is Ionian, 1-5-8 is mixolydian, 1-5-4 is Dorian, and 1-5-7 is Aeolian.)

You can start on any note, not just D.  As you know, EBe and CGc are other 1-5-8 tunings.  But you could start on any note you want and arrange the strings in the same pattern.  Let's try F.

F = 1

G= 2

A = 3

Bb = 4

C = 5

D = 6

Eb = 7

F = 8

So a 1-5-8 tuning would be FCf.   A 1-5-5 tuning would be FCC.  A 1-5-4 tuning would be FCBb.  A 1-5-7 tuning would be FCEb.

There are twelve notes in the chromatic scale, and we could start this pattern on any of them, so each tuning can be used for any of the 12 keys.

However, in practice, folk, old-timey, bluegrass, or Celtic sessions usually stick to 4 main keys: C, D, G, and A.  So you might want to just ensure you know how to play in each of those keys rather than worry about the oddballs like Eb or F or Ab or whatever.

And remember that if you are tuned to the key of D, you can probably tune down to C or up to E, but any more than that you will probably need to change strings.

To your question about GGD, a "normal" 1-1-5 or Ionian tuning in G would be GDD.  So your GGD just uses two G drones instead.  But to figure out how to use that tuning in other keys, just count.

G = 1

A = 2

B= 3

C#= 4

D = 5

And we don't even have to go any higher.  Tune your bass and middle strings to whatever note you want, start on that letter as number 1 and count to 5.  That 5 will be the note you want for the melody string.

C, D, E, F, G, so in C, it would be CCG.  ABC#DE, so in A it would be AAE.

Again, if you know the alphabet and can count to 8, you can do this yourself.

Tom, since I'm not a beekeeper, I can't help you if you want a whole tune on that topic. 

My approach would be different and treat beekeeping as a metaphor. Maybe have the first verse about looking forward to springtime only to see that half your bees are gone.  Then the other verses would be about other things or people that have left.  One verse on bees, one on age taking about your athletic ability, one on your fruit tree drying up, on one a woman leaving. You get the point.

OR . . . instead of the theme being loss, it could be lots of work with no reward, so you put in all this work to keep bees and end up with no honey.  You lavish love and presents on your woman, and she leaves you.  You spend weeks building a garden, and the plants bear no fruit.  You spend weeks crushing grapes but they go straight to vinegar and you get no wine.  You spend a year of weekends rebuilding that '68 Mustang and someone steels it before you ever take it for a ride. That sort of thing.  The bee hive would still be the first verse and give the tune it's title: "Big Hive, No Honey."

A link to a time conversion site is probably safer and more practical than demanding that festival organizers list every possible time.  After all, even in the U.S. things are pretty complicated with some states not doing daylight savings time and other states being split between time zones. I was once an hour early for an online dulcimer concert from British Columbia because the time listed was Pacific Daylight Time when they meant Pacific Standard Time.  I think it best if organizers just list the local times and then suggest that everyone to use the link to a time conversion site to determine their own times.

But I do hope organizers of online festivals realize that people outside their time zone might be interested in attending.  When a festival on the east coast runs workshops on Fridays and Saturdays, those of us who work are already unable to attend half the workshops.  Then if things run from 9:00 to 5:00 local time, many of us are unable to attend half the Saturday workshops because they start too early (I don't mind playing the dulcimer at 6:00 AM, but I don't think my family appreciates it!).  So what is advertised as a 2-day festival is really a half-day festival for many of us.  There is no reason folks in New York or West Virginia can't have some workshops as late as 8:00 PM, and they'd get more folks from the west coast that way.

Thanks for sharing that, Lois.  I pointed out to my daughter that the title refers to "a" plant, not 15 of them.

Bubbles already had two sections of a friend's monstera rooting in water, which is how we knew she wanted one.  Her bedroom is looking more and more like a rainforest cafe.

Your cat seems to enjoy the monstera and the sunlight.

My daughter just got a very large monstera deliciosa for her birthday.  She is so excited.  It was not inexpensive.  Hopefully she can keep in alive.

If it sounds half as nice as it looks, you got a great deal on that dulcimer, Derik!  Michael Fluegge is a well respected luthier.

Derik, this is not a problem, at least not in the sense that there is anything wrong. What you have is a traditional diatonic fretboard.  I have not seen the video by Brett Ridgway to which you refer, but he was surely playing a dulcimer to which a 6-1/2 (or 6+) fret had been added.  There is nothing wrong with your dulcimer. That is how traditional dulcimers were fretted.

To find the major scale, tune DAA and start on the third fret of the melody string.  Going up the fretboard, it will be obvious.  Don't skip any frets.

Alternatively, you could tune DAd and start on the open string (which is what I assume you were doing). But instead of playing the 6th fret, play the 9th fret on the middle string.  Then complete the scale on the 7th fret of the melody string.

The traditional method of playing the dulcimer involves leaving the bass and middle strings to drone and playing the melody on the (you guessed it!) melody string.  In that style of play, you re-tune the melody string to get the right mode for the song you are playing.  So a song that uses the major scale (ionian mode) you would tune 1-5-5 (or DAA in the key of D).  But for other songs, such as Old Joe Clark or Going to Boston, which use the lowered 7th (mixolydian mode), you would tune 1-5-8 (or DAd in the key of D), and for others that sound kind of "minor" such as Shady Grove you would tune 1-5-7 (aeolian mode or DAC in the key of D). And so forth.

A lot of modern players (such as myself) play dulcimers with the extra fret added, but many traditional players prefer the original diatonic fretboard such as the one you have.  Theoretically, you could have someone add that extra fret to your dulcimer, but please contemplate not doing that.  What you have looks to be a stunningly beautiful instrument (I love the purfling and the ebony overlay!), and you may want to keep it in its original form.

Even if you decide not to limit yourself to traditional modal music and the traditional melody/drone style of play, you do not need to add that extra fret. As I've suggested above, the note you get with the 6+ fret on the melody string is found elsewhere, so there are always workarounds.

That's funny, but you have to quickly change the subject before you are asked to ID any other plants.  Many years ago I had a friend who was an expert in native Californian plants. We would go hiking and she would spend the whole time identifying plants.  Maybe in the two years we were together I learned three plants.  But there have been a few moments similar to Randy's in Mexico when in a group of people I was able to say something like "what a nice example of a zauschneria californica" to the amazement of those in attendance.  And yes, I then quickly changed the subject: "How about them Cornhuskers?"

Sounds like fun, @venni.  Stay safe.

That's a great story, Ken. Thanks for sharing it.  There was a similar program at a small town in Northern California where they also included math instruction in learning how to lay out the frets.

Good for you, Venni!  That's awfully fast progress.  I think my first song was Mary Had a Little Lamb.

@ocean-daughter, I don't want to ignore this comment.  It shows what an attentive player you are that you can so easily identify an area you want to work on that is not simply about finding the "correct" notes to play.  You should also feel free to ask this question in workshops, even if the workshop is on a different theme. Once the instructor has helped people through the tab, you should feel free to say "This is a pretty arrangement, but when I play it, it is not as smooth as your rendition.  How can I get the notes to flow together better?"  Better yet, make that request about a specific phrase rather than the piece as a whole.

Third, what is my advice? Without seeing you play and knowing whether you play with a flatpick or fingertips, I can't be that specific.  But let me mention some left-hand techniques to think about.

First, work on the left-hand legato techniques of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.  When you move from one note to another using one of those left-hand techniques rather than plucking the string again, the the notes sound more connected or tied together.

Second, keep your fingers down until they have to move.  This is important not only for playing the melody, but also any chording.  Let's say your are playing a 3-3-3 G chord in DAd, and the melody moves up the melody string from 3 to 4 and then to 5.  First, you might consider using hammer-ons or slides. Second, don't make the move to the next melody note until it is time. That is, don't let your concern about whether you can get to the next note encourage you to cut off the earlier note too early.  Give it the full duration it is due and only move to the next note when it's time for the next note.  And third, even if you pluck that melody string again, keep your fingers on the bass and middle strings.  Most of the time, you want those harmony notes to continuing ringing as long as possible, until the next chord formation is necessary.  That way the harmony creates a consistency of tone as your melody moves along.

Third, as you move from one chord position to another, try to keep at least one finger on the same string.  That way you can slide into position rather than lifting up your hand entirely and re-positioning it.  In the best of circumstances, you will have an open string that was part of the first chord position, and you can let that continue ringing as you move to the next position so there is no dead air.  And sliding your hand will facilitate its placement in the next position so you can get there quicker.

Best of luck to you, @ocean-daughter.  I'm sure just the fact that you're thinking about trying to play smoother will help you do so.

I'm totally ignorant of instrument design, Bill, so I can't help you.  But if you don't get good answers here, you might consider joining the Dulcimer Making Group and asking your question there.

When I've seen Celtic knots, they are more often rosettes that are set into a large sound hole rather than carved right out of the soundboard itself.

That's a good point, @art-s.  A lot of the people who come to my online dulcimer club each month say they play more when we meet online because they know no one can hear them, so they don't fear messing up. Even advanced players often feel free to play around and improvise and stuff because they can mess up with no consequences.

However, as a teacher I will say that it's hard to teach beginner students for this reason. Intermediate students know when they're not getting something and will usually speak up and ask for help. But beginners can't always tell when they're making mistakes, and without the ability to hear them, the instructor doesn't know either.  I remember once leading my dulcimer group through my arrangement of Shall We Gather at the River.  During the A part everything was great and I could tell that most people were playing along. But during the B part, when the melody goes up an octave, suddenly I was the only one playing.  I heard immediately that there was a problem and we stopped and went slowly over that change.  If we had been online, I would not have been able to tell that no one was playing along anymore.

I have so much to say about this, I'm not sure where to start.  @ocean-daughter, I will address your issue of "making the notes sound connected" in separate comments, since I have too much to say about virtual festivals.

Just last night was the inaugural event of the virtual dulcimer festival of the Dulcimer Association of Albany.  There were no workshops, performances, or jams.  Instead, it was just a kick-off Zoom session, when anyone who wanted to joined in to say "Hi." It was a two-hour event, and at its height about 40 people were in there just chatting away.  That is only a little more than 1/10 of the number of people registered for the event, but it shows, I think, one of the main reasons we go to dulcimer festivals: camaraderie.  We attend dulcimer festivals as much to meet other dulcimer players as to get formal instruction on playing. This is important to remember, especially for festival organizers.

I had the good fortune of being part of the first ever online dulcimer festival, the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering. That event happens in May, and it was the first festival last spring to choose to go on Zoom rather than just cancel.  Although I would like to think that the workshops were successful (especially the couple that I taught! ) our main success, I think, was structuring in lots of time for people to just hang out.  There was a homeroom (meaning a Zoom link) where we all met in the morning just to chat and go over some festival logistics, but it was consciously treated as a social experience.  The "homeroom teacher" was Erin Mae, and two or three times she broke us into small groups of 5 or 6 and put us in little breakout rooms so we could interact in a more intimate settings. We talked about where we were from, what instruments we were using that day, and so forth.  After the morning workshops we again met in the homeroom for a lunchtime Q & A, when people could just ask questions of others.  Some asked questions specifically of certain instructors and some just posed questions to the group at large.  But some really interesting conversations ensued.  At the end of the day of workshops, we met again in the homeroom for a song circle. And throughout the day, the homeroom was open for anyone who wanted to pop in.  During one slot when I was not teaching I joined the homeroom to see how Erin Mae was doing and there were a handful of people there just chatting.  One of them asked me a question about a particular technique I used in a video I had posted, and rather than inflict our conversation on everyone else, Erin Mae put us in a breakout room where we could have a private conversation, after which we just clicked into the homeroom again.

These kinds of informal interactions are an essential part of the festival experience, and we have to work on ways to incorporate them into virtual festivals. It takes a little work, and it is not exactly the same as sitting next to someone, but if virtual festivals are going to strengthen the dulcimer community and not just help us become slightly better players, they are essential.

So that community building, that room for social interaction is, IMHO, what's missing from many dulcimer festivals, especially the biggest ones.

What do the virtual festivals do well?

First and most obviously, the virtual festivals provide support for dulcimer teachers.  How many of them freaked out a year ago when all their gigs got canceled? The online festivals have allowed dulcimer teachers and performers to continue as musicians and not take jobs driving for Grub Hub or whatever other jobs might exist in the middle of a pandemic. Many of them have adapted quite well to the virtual world and have started offering a range of different kinds of workshops and interactive concerts and stuff.  Just last night night, Aubrey Atwater, who had never used Zoom before the Dutchland DulciZoom festival last summer, proclaimed "I will never be without a gig again." When she has an open date, she can just prepare a workshop or concert or some other kind of online event, put the word out, and easily get enough people from around the world to make it worthwhile.

And that brings up a second great benefit to both teachers and players: the lack of geographical boundaries.  I have a job.  And I have a family. And I don't have a lot of time or money.  I would never have been able to drop my responsibilities and fly to Albany, NY to join the Dulcimer Association of Albany for an in-person festival. But I can click a Zoom link and join with others from around the world.  @ocean-daughter has joked that she has "been" to Florida and Georgia for virtual festivals. I, too, have "been" to Pennsylvania and New York and LA and elsewhere for virtual festivals.  I have been able to meet dulcimer players that I would never be able to meet any other way.  

My own local dulcimer club is also no longer local.  Although we started with those who had been meeting in person, more than half people of those who join my online group monthly come from some distance away, from Tennessee and Oregon, Texas and Maine, Ireland and New Zealand.  One woman told me that she lives in a pretty desolate area, is not fully mobile, and had never been able to attend a dulcimer group or festival in person.  But she joins our group every month and is having a blast.  And when the North Georgia Foothills folks asked me to teach at their next virtual festival, they explained that many of their 400+ members have "aged out" of in-person festivals, meaning they have reached an age when traveling to a state park or other location, carrying around their instruments and music stands, and so forth, is too difficult. But they can sit down in their living room and turn on their computers.  So a third benefit of virtual festivals is that they include people who could never attend in-person festivals.

By the same token, they can allow workshops on pretty esoteric topics, a fourth benefit.  At a local or regional dulcimer festival, workshop teachers have to come up with topics that enough people will find interesting.  When I proposed a workshop on Songs of the American West (I thought I was clever and called it Dulci-Ki-Yi-Yo), Neal Hellman, the festival organizer, expressed skepticism that I would garner enough attendees.  But once the decision was made to go virtual, the question of popularity disappeared.  In the end, the workshop got plenty of attendees to run (although my workshop on Irish ballads had twice the enrollments).  That concern Neal expressed does not exist with large virtual festivals since the pool of potential attendees is so much larger.  I took an advanced workshop taught by Bill Collins on Icelandic tunes.  The music was pretty strange, I have to say, and I doubt that such a workshop would draw many people at a regional dulcimer festival.  But we were online, so he was able to garner enough people from around the world to make it worth it. Workshops on bizarre tunings (beyond the main 4 or 5) or specific, niche techniques, or some little known corpus of music might be hard to justify at regional, in-person festivals, but they can thrive online.

A fifth and final advantage of online festivals that I'll mention now (the list goes on, of course), is that everyone has a front-row seat.  Perhaps you've seen how Stephen Seifert teaches his online workshops.  He uses three separate cameras. One shows a line or so of tablature, and one shows a close-up of his face.  But the main part of the screen shows an overhead view of his dulcimer fretboard, so you can see exactly what his fingers are doing.  If you've taken an intermediate workshop with him live at a big even such as Kentucky Music Week, you most likely had to sit so far away from him that you could barely see his fingers. I only use two cameras when teach online, one on my face and one angled from above on my fretboard, which I also flip around so you get the "player's view."  I made that last adjustment at the request of students who love to see the dulcimer on the screen exactly the way it looks on their lap. The wonders of technology make it appear you are behind me with your head resting on my shoulder with a close-up view of the dulcimer, and yet, you might be thousands of miles away.  What a world we live in!

I'll stop now. I've outlined a major piece missing from the large festival (the social experience) and highlighted several of the obvious advantages of virtual festivals.  A big question confronting us all is what things will look like when we can gather together again.  How can we enjoy gathering in-person without excluding those unable to travel to the location? Will regional, in-person festivals disappear as they're getting used to the extra registrants and the lack of venue costs? What will hybrid dulcimer festivals look like?  Will our venues change from churches and community centers to conference settings better equipped with wifi?  Will workshops join together people live and people online or will there be separate in-person and online workshops at each festival?  

Good idea. I think it will be an active discussion.  I was tempted to do start one myself, but it was your idea!

That's great news, Ken.  We're all delighted to hear it.

So can you help me move this weekend?

Lisa, this YouTube video shows a Mize dulcimer purchased in 1992 that has the same tuning pegs as yours.  I think they are original. 

About twice a year I treat my dulcimers to a rub down with Howard's Feed N Wax. The stuff is inexpensive and you can get it at any hardware or home improvement store.  Here is Bing Futch demonstrating how he treats his instruments with the stuff.

If this were my instrument, I would clean it up, add the Howard's, and then put on new strings. I bet it will sing!

I agree with John.  Those cracks do not look serious at all. They might have been caused by excessive aridity.  Does the wood feel dry to you?  Perhaps you could treat the whole instrument with some Howard Feed N Wax.  I bet you it will help rejuvenate the wood.

Good point, @strumelia.

@ocean-daughter, you might want to check out the Festival Directory maintained by Dulcimer Players News .  It lists nearly all the upcoming dulcimer festivals, most of which are online at the moment.

Once again, Ocean Daughter, I want to commend you for thinking about this issue rather than just posting somewhere arbitrary.

You are right that FOTMD works very differently than Facebook, which often centers on a constantly scrolling stream of recent posts.  We do indeed try to organize things here so that people can find material (hopefully) rather easily.

There is in fact a listing for the DAA virtual dulcimer festival in the Festivals/Gatherings area. You can find it here .  However, you'll notice that other than a few comments I made, little discussion is found there, and that listing will disappear a few days after the festival ends.

If you want to start a a general discussion about the good and bad of online festivals or something like that, I would suggest using the General Mountain Dulcimer or Music area in the Forums. But if your question is really specific, like what kind of equipment you need to be able to take part, you might consider joining the Technology/Software/Amplifying Group and starting a discussion there.  Note in general that we have lots of groups on specific interests, but you can only see the full discussions there if you join the group.

And just to warn you, I have taught at a few online festivals and attended a few as well, so I will likely join your conversation wherever you post it.

Hi Ocean Daughter.  Many people--especially those new to the site--would just start a new thread, not bothering to look to see what people have already discussed, so I applaud you for even noticing that there are many older discussions that are still relevant to our concerns today.

My suggestion would be to tag onto an older thread if that discussion is really close to your own. We don't need a dozen discussions all about how to avoid pick clack, for example; one will do.  And one advantage to adding to an older discussion is that everyone who took part in that original discussion will be notified about your comment, so you are likely to get responses pretty fast.  And don't worry about how long ago a thread was active. You can rejuvenate it!

But if your topic is is just loosely on the same general subject as an older thread, then you might start a new one.  Too many discussions start on one topic, a topic clearly identified in the subject line, but then people tag on semi-related comments, and the discussion meanders too far from the original idea.

Either way, once you post your comment will show up on the main Activity Feed so people who log on will see it.

Wayne's a lefty! Patricia, I've been looking at the picture of your McSpadden "courting" dulcimer and trying to figure out why you don't just call it a double dulcimer since both fretboards go in the same direction.  Then I remembered: Wayne's a lefty!

That looks like a beautiful dulcimer, by the way.

And I've really enjoyed the last couple of episodes. Each one is a gem.

No surprise that the daughter of a beekeeper became an entomologist.

I like the gnarly roots of the Ginseng ficus, too, but I wasn't sure my daughter would. And yes, that was Bubbles's favorite gift this past holiday season, although she thinks that makes her a nerd.

The one I got my daughter is also a ficus, specifically a Golden Gate ficus, which is a variety that does well indoors.  It came in a ceramic pot and was packaged in a remarkably careful manner such that not only were the plant and the pot protected, but the soil was held in place as well.  I got it from an outfit called Brussel's Bonsai.  I see they sell a Ginseng grafted ficus as well.

My teenage daughter has filled her bedroom with plants during the pandemic.  She currently has over a dozen in there. And its a small room.  Some are on the floor.  Some hang from the ceiling.  Some are on her desk.  Some just sit on top of books.  Since she attends school via Zoom from her room, I think they offer some comfort to her and liven things up. 

Although we complain about going stir crazy, it's nothing compared to what folks have to deal with in places that get a real winter. We still go outside nearly every day to do yardwork, walk the dog, or just go jogging.  But still, the houseplants help brighten up the space where we all go to work and also enjoy our life.  One of the plants is a small bonsai I got her over the holidays.  It seems to be doing well so far.

The noise from straps might be as much a function of the instrument's finish as it is the strap itself.  My main dulcimer strap makes no noise on most of my dulcimers, but the one I'm playing right now has all kinds of squeaking from both ends.  If I want to record something I have to shove a piece of cloth in between the leather strap and the dulcimer to quiet the noise.

Venni, how to start will depend on a few things, most notably whether you have any experience playing music.

I would suggest you start by tuning to either DAA or DAd (check out Get Tuned for help) and then just trying to pick out melodies on the melody string (the string closest to you when you lay the instrument on your lap.

And yes, the Beginner Group that Robin points you to is the place to start here at FOTMD.

There is tons of beginner stuff available here at FOTMD and elsewhere online, and there are also lots of beginner instruction books available.  If you want formal lessons to help you get started, there are lots of folk who give lessons via Zoom or similar platforms. But nothing can beat just exploring the instrument on your own and watching lots of videos of other people playing.

He describes what musicians do as delivering 'the pleasure of sound."  That's a nice concept.

Thanks, John.  I like that a lot.  Did you come up with that yourself or is that some ancient Chinese saying or something?