Forum Activity for @jost

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

@venni Go to the hospital as fast as possible. Covid-19 can get seriously dangerous very fast, very soon. Take care and I hope you get better soon!

The Positive Thread...

OFF TOPIC discussions

A sunny spring day in Bonn and I got out of home office at 2 pm. I spent the afternoon on the grass near the Rhine promenade of the Beuel district playing dulcimer. Some people even asked (while maintaining social distancing) what kind of instrument I played and asked "So you play it like a guitar?" 

So this was quite cheerful, wish you all have a good time

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

Great news Ken.

Venni: I wish you a good and speedy recovery

Do you know benjo ?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

According to Ulricus the japanese instruments are actually examples of good craftmanship, the indian not so much. The idea to use piano keys and make them portable by making them their own suitcase is quite nice though.



Thanks, thats a cool video

Do you know benjo ?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

That's cool. Thanks for the video. Some photos of these instruments and it's japanese precedessor can be found on the page  of fellow FOTMD member Wilfried "ulricus" Ullrich: http://www.ulrich-instrumente.de/die-hummel/

According to him in 1906 japanese luthier/musician Goro Morita got funding by the imperial government for a research trip in Europe for western instruments (imho some kind of musical industrial espionage ;) ). Back home he started to build a kind of hummel/dulcimer by using typewriter keys: The  Taishokoto. Later these instruments came to India and Pakistan and evolved to the benjo and after second world war  to the bulbul tarang (sounding nightingale, these instruments have piano case and an integrated suitcase, quite handy, sadly the sound not so good according to ulricus).
If you can read German you find the details on Wilfrieds website with many photos.

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

My sympathy goes to Kusani and everybody else who lost somebody because of the virus.
The problem with different local government sounds familiar, it's the same here in Germany and also quite frustrating. At least some learnt the hard way after the numbers in their state sky rocketed. 
Still quite sad and frustrating for everybody who lost somebody because of this mess.

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

A word concerning reactions to vaccines: They are annoying but actually a sign, that the vaccines is working. The reactions are a reaction of our immune system, so they mean that the vaccines managed to provoke the immune system to do something about the potential threat. Ergo: Building anti-bodys. So they shouldn't be anything to worry about.  And quite tame in relation to the real virus/sickness. No reaction doesn't mean however, that the vaccine is not working. Probably your immune system was quite good at the start, but will profit from the shot non the less.

As I wrote here multiple times starting to play guitar again and starting to play dulcimer the first time at all :)

And it seems I'm not alone in this regard. The owner of the local instrument store told me  after the first lockdown that he got a lot of new customers as a result of the lockdown.
I guess people missed live music and decided to do it on their own.

Sadly not enough to compensate his losses from the first and later lockdowns but it's a start at least.
updated by @jost: 02/09/21 03:58:07PM

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

The father of a friend of my brother just died from COVID. He got it on work (he was a MD at a rehab hospital). The sad thing is, that he would got his first vaccination shot two days after his test result was positive

I didn't know him and neither his family (friend of my brother not mine) but I can imagine this must be quite hard on the family.

How is the COVID-19 coronavirus affecting you?

OFF TOPIC discussions

I'm quite lucky since I'm working in the IT department of one of Germanys workers compensation agencys. Thus I'm not affected by the economy crisis (due to being public servant) and I'm also quite lucky that I'm able to work from home. It's quite a privilege since many people suffer from the economic impact of Covid-19 or need to work every day in factory halls or crowded open plan offices (even as public servants, we are just lucky that our agency is a kind of early adaptor in terms of E-Government).

I was never a big fan of home office (since I prefer to seperate work and private life), but actually I prefer it now not just because of Covid. Less time in rush hour traffic and I'm getting more things done due to having no interruptions

During the first lockdown last year I started to relearn guitar (since my first try as a teen wasn't so good due to not practricing) and ended up with getting a dulcimer too. So that was actually the one good thing I got from this mess.

Playing the instruments now also keeps me from going cracy because frankly: I miss family (christmas was an exception, I visited my parents then)  and friends a lot.  Two  friends of mine and I use to go together for a walk from time time but it's not the same. We need maintain the safety distance and we don't see anyone else, so the situation is  quite annoying.

I'm really looking forward when we can go see each other again.

It will take some time though since vaccination rate is quite low in Germany at the moment. Some vaccinces are still awaiting for their approval. And the manufactures can't produce as much as were expected.
So we are in a long run too here
At least there is a good chance my mother might get it soon, since she is working in the administration of a hospital. I'm quite relieved

@strumelia This board game might be something for your next gaming sessions with your husband: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic_(board_game)
The players need to cooperate to wipe out a pandemic. If they win, everybody wins, if they lose, the pandemic (aka the game) wins. I used to play it with friends on university. It's quite a challenge but big fun.
And it's kind of fitting for the current situation in our lives :)

What Are You Working On?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Thanks Ken. I already wondered why their guesses for modes and tunings seemed quite odd. Luckily their dulcimer tabs have a function to enter your own tuning for "melody, middle and bass string". I'm sticking with that for now

Thanks for the hint to www.contemplator.com.

What Are You Working On?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

I try to play Cam Ye O'er Frae France on dulcimer. I discovered a site which has a kind of tab (although it's auto generated thus might be wrong): http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiCAMFRANC;ttCAMFRANC.html

Nontheless the tune sounds good, but I need practice, practice, pratice :)

updated by @jost: 01/26/21 05:05:41PM

Any body have an idea what this is ?

Adventures with 'other' instruments...

The look reminds me on epinettes but since they are basically in the same class as dulcimers that doesn't need to mean anything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinette_des_Vosges

My voyage to the lute guitar (and mountain dulcimer as well)

Adventures with 'other' instruments...

To give you an impression of the sound I just uploaded my take on Greensleeves on lute guitar:
Greensleeves on lute guitar

The recording is quite rough and my playing has room for improvement but it should be sufficient to get an idea.

Spambots on soundcloud

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Well I also share my noise on other social networks and I'm a kind of number nerd (no wonder I studied Computer Science) so I'm intigrued to find out how many of my Facebook-Friends etc actually molest their ears with them

For fotmd I just uploaded the files via Audio upload. A small inconvenience but it could be worse.

Spambots on soundcloud

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Thanks Robin, this explains a lot. I got 150 plays for my tracks during the first day. Would be quite flattering If it had any real meaning. So it just shows that sound cloud is better in attracting spammers then actually do something against them.
I changed the privacy setting to get more realistic stats. Sadly this resulted in invalid soundcloud links here And I can't change the url here to the new ones, so I will have to delete and readd them.
Thanks again for the answer

Spambots on soundcloud

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Hello everybody,

I don't know whether this forum is the appropriate one, feel free to move this to off topic.

Yesterday I started uploading sound files to Soundboard. Quite soon I got comments/mails from people who liked them/offered to give them more distribution.

Since the sound and musical quality is quite limited (due to my recording equipment and I'm just a starter) I got puzzled and looked on their profiles. Everybody of them belongs to a kind of spam network who offers "500 likes for free" or something like this.

So in my opinion they are spam bots and I reported  them to Soundcloud before blocking them.

I'm now considering limiting the message function for Soundcloud to save me the hassle in dealing with this crap. However I fear, that I might miss some legitimate messages.

So: Have anyone of you similiar experiences with soundclouds messaging? Or are people actually using the messages for communicating?

Best regards, jost.

updated by @jost: 01/09/21 10:53:08PM

My voyage to the lute guitar (and mountain dulcimer as well)

Adventures with 'other' instruments...

Hello Wilfried,

nice to see you here. I'm not just a big fan of your hummel videos but I remember now I saw your announcement of your master piece (lyra guitar) on the pin board of Musikschule Norden back in 2005. I was raised in Ostfriesland, but moved away for college and work 12 years ago.

I agree however I can't afford more instruments at the moment for lack of money and space in my appartment. The lack of money also means I can't move to a bigger appartment at the moment :)
This year I'l visit my parents during chrismast but not going anywhere else due to the pandemic situation. I plan another visist next summer though and will drop you a note then.

Best Regards, Jost.
updated by @jost: 12/06/20 03:41:59PM

My voyage to the lute guitar (and mountain dulcimer as well)

Adventures with 'other' instruments...

Well technically  many instruments are lutes (even guitars), to quote wikipedia:
"A lute ( / lj uː t / [1] or / l uː t / ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.

More specifically, the term "lute" can refer to an instrument from the family of European lutes . The term also refers generally to any string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system)." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute )


Actually I talked about  the  baroque lutes like in this video of Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman playing Dowlands Fantasia on it It look's a lot like the one on the album cover of Ronn McFarlane.

It was developed from the arabian oud,  youtube has a video of a player doing a cover of a russian folk tune on an oud , also covered by Pete Seeger on banjo.

You can see in both videos, that these instruments used double courses instead of single strings. I freak out every time I see Akkerman doing his delicate picking on the double courses.

Thanks Richard. I'm happy to be here.
updated by @jost: 12/05/20 08:14:01PM

My voyage to the lute guitar (and mountain dulcimer as well)

Adventures with 'other' instruments...

Hello everybody,

in this post I will talk how I got to learn my main instrument, what's special about it and how doing it actually led to purchasing my mountain dulcimer too.
It's a kind of a long read so I can't blame you if you are dropping out right now or later
As you can see in my profile I'm from Germany so English isn't my first language. I'm not very good in it, so I'm happy about any feedback If something sounds odd or just incomprehensible.

I used to learn guitar during my teenhood years. I had a quite good Ibanez classical guitar (used from my mother during her times as volunteer for church youth work) and good teacher, but lacked practice. I think I never practiced more than one hour a week and as soon I know a song I would take another one, forgetting the old one. I'm  feeling sorry for my teacher now to be honest and appreciate that he was always a kind, nice and patient man.

When I moved out to go to college the guitar stayed at my parents  home and I never bothered to continue. That was more than ten years ago.

This year during the first lockdown I got kind of bored so I thought about learning guitar again, this time with a instruction book and an own instrument. Thus I went to a local store, got a student classical guitar and started. Since this time I actually practiced (comparing my play to the CD/DVD from the book) it worked somehow. I'm still not a very good player, but my neighbours are not complaining so I think it's bearable

However somehow I encountered a strange instrument, the so called  lute guitar (also called German Lute or Bastard lute) in some youtube videos.  It looks like a lute, but it's played like a guitar. And it has a quite unique sound, as can be heard t his medley a youtuber uploaded some years ago.

I quickly learned (some nice guy from Germanys musiker-board.de forum with nom de guerre "El lute" wrote a whole essay about it's history, how to get one and how to repair old ones) that it's actually not very old but a quite modern instrument, bending elements of guitar and mandora. The first lute-guitars first were actually built in the 1850's.

It was quite popular in the German youth movement Wandervogel at the beginning of the 20th century for it's look (just like a old lute) and sound (not quite lute, not quite guitar, something between).

It's easier to play than a real lute (since it lacks double courses),  much cheaper and louder than classical lutes (they were mainly for chamber or court music). Since the Wandervögel did a kind of early medivial reenactment (like todays Renaissance fairs)  they actually didn't realy recreate the medival age but their own version of) and thought of themselves as traveling scholars (like medivial students) for their love of camping, wandering around and collecting and singing old German folklore, this combination greatly appealed to them. A part of their song collections also included a lot of soldier songs, thus when world war one started they saw it just another kind of adventure, volunteered,  taking their guitars, lute-guitars and songbook Zupfgeigenhansel with them ( called "Der Zupfgeigenhansl" ). Many fell, including the editor of the Zupfgeigenhansel.

Although I have no interest in going to war any time soon I also got hooked by the look and sound of the instrument. However according to el lutes essay getting an used instrument via ebay can end with  a lot of trouble or loss of money, since it propably needs some work. Either by the buyer (if he is good in woodworking or from a luthier).  
This was out of question, I was never good in woodwork and I didn't wanted to buy a used instrument and pay even more money to get it working.
In the essay el lute recommended to go to an luthier for getting a playable used (the ones from the former GDR are surprising cheap since they are not so antique, but often actually more playable then the older from Wandervogel times) or commission a custom built.
Again: Out of question for lack of money and patience (you need to wait until some affordable appears in the online offers of luthiers)..
However: As a kind of compromise there are also new ones from companys, although el lute thought of them not so high "They are ok  for beginners, but if you want a good instrument you will need to go to a luthier" (roughly translated by myself)
I can  unterstand his point of view (he repaired  around 10 of older instruments including a beautiful ones with additional bass strings for drone sounds, these Basslauten used to be quite common but were never so popular like normal lute guitars. Some spanish (?) guy did  a nice video featuring one ). but since actually I'm still a starter in playing  I decided that one of these "beginner instruments"  should to.

In the end I bought  one from the German music store Folkfriends and I'm quite happy with it. The wooden head in my avatar is actually a part of the instrument. Here a full view:

I love the sound and look of it. And it's true: If you can play guitar, you can play lute guitar too after getting used to the lute corpus. I'm still struggling with holding it so I got myself a leather strap which fit's well with the pseudohistorical look of it

So I think I will have a lot of fun with it, as long as I don't do two things:
1. Using picks since (like classical guitars), it lacks a pickboard
2. Using steelstrings (again same like classical guitar). I kind of cringed when I read a review of my model at the store before buying it. A  LARP-roleplayer replaced the strings with steel strings and wrote something like "It's a great instrument, but has some damages. But that's ok I'm quite rough"  Poor little thing

Since I mostly try to learn folk tunes (mainly Irish and british folk but some american too) I look a lot of youtube videos. Somehow I encountered Jean Ritchies version of Nottamun Town and loved the drone sounds. I learnt, that she played a so called mountain dulcimer. I also learnt, that this instrument had it's origin in older ones, even one used to played in Northern Germany (Hummel). I was hooked by the drone sounds , even more when I saw more videos ( my favourite so far is a rendition of a poem by German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe on a hummel ).
Now the question was how to get one? I didn't wanted one cheap for 80 Euro (since I guessed that it propably woudn't be good in a long term).
I found a  forum thread, where somebody  recommended building one in a building workshop of Bavarian luthier André Schuberth. It turned out, that Schuberts workshops are on hiatus due to Corona, but that he offers prebuild versions of his workshop kits. So I commisioned one, he said it would propably take to new year. Fine with me, a nice late christmas present.
So I was kind of thrilled, when this monday  I got a mail from Mr Schuberths wife, that my instrument is ready and she just sent out the delivery package.

You can understand how happy I was when it arrived yesterday and I opened the package:

So now the hardest (but most fun) part begins: Learning how to play the dulcimer in noter/drone style. The instrument came tuned to DAAA tuning, I changed it to CGGG according to Jean Ritchies Dulcimer book.  

I'm happy to be part of this community (got some welcomes on my profile already, thanks guys!) and looking forward to learn from.

Thanks for bearing my babbling, have a nice day