Forum Activity for @lisa-golladay

Kala makes some really nice ukes.  I have a mahogany-laminate bari with a fine deep voice and I've been sorely tempted by their cedar/acacia models which are lovely for fingerpicking.  Ohana, Pono and Mainland are other good mid-priced brands.  As if we needed more ukes!?  But above any of those, I firmly believe every uke player needs and deserves a Fluke .  USA-made, nearly indestructible and astonishing tone for the price.

Alas, I made the mistake of joining a uke club full of enablers who play high-end ukes and allow me to try them out.  Mostly I can resist but sometimes...  Well, let's just say I love my Blackbird Clara, I got her used, and she was totally worth it. 

But in my heart of hearts, I love my 17-year-old Fluke the best.

We're lucky we don't like guitars!

It gets worse. I started with a no name soprano uke a year and a half ago. I had given up guitar 20-30 years ago due to fibromyalgia hand problems but wondered if a tiny little instrument might work. Well it did but I now have a virtual petting zoo of stringed instruments.

The ukes will always have a special place in my heart. They can be toys, nothing wrong with that! but you can also play some of them like little classical guitars and on some instruments achieve some really nice sounds.

I started exploring them at my local Guitar Center. My favorite lower priced brand is Cordoba, higher priced is Kala. You may be able to try some out at the store. On line, Guitar Center has a large selection of new and used ukes and other stuff. One advantage is you can return them to the store and get a refund if you are not happy. Another advantage is you can flip your instruments if you find you really like ukes and want to upgrade. 

To learn uke, there are lots of You Tube videos. Marcy Marxer is good and you can get more complete lessions on True Fire if you decide you like her style.

Sorry, probably more than you wanted to know!

Barb

(nods sadly in agreement, looks at credit card statement, crawls under desk to hide)

So, I am now on my third ukulele... Apparently Ukulele Acquisition Disorder is as much of a thing as DAD.  I now have a Fluke style concert, my original Kala CEM and a Kala tenor. Can play some chords now but strumming still a bit of a challenge.  I was a slow learner on the dulcimer and will undoubtably be so on the ukulele as well.

I'll see what I can do about recording Lay The Bend...   and post it here.  I got the tune from Mark Gilston, who posted it on YouTube a few months ago; it's in Ionian Mode.

I've gotten a lot of mileage and fun lately out of a tune that I learned from an 1800s banjo instruction book-   Old Dan Emmett's Waltz .  It took me forever to learn to play it on the banjo- has three different parts and the 3rd part is wildly syncopated on banjo... Brian learned to play a fiddle part he made up, and it took us months to get the tune together on fiddle and banjo, but it's sooo fun to play and so pretty.
And now for the past couple of weeks I'm trying to learn to play harmony parts for it on my epinette, with Brian playing the melody on fiddle.  It means a whole NEW bunch of learning, like a whole different tune to learn now, on epinette as harmony.

But again, it's such a pretty 3-part waltz, and when we manage to play it without too many mistakes, it's a grand feeling. 

Between my playing it on the banjo in melody, and playing it on the epinette in harmony, I'd say this particular tune is giving Brian and me a whole lot of fun !

KenH- that sounds like a song I would really enjoy hearing.  Very old fashioned.  Modern songs would just have it that the person "locked the door"... but the old songs always made things unusual, with special meaning or emphasis-  she "locked the door with a silver pin".  To me it implies that the door was a metaphor for her heart or her favors.  I really love that they would put such wonderful rich details into little bits of the story.

I read this early this morning and got right to my dulcimer and played it right smack up.  I love that song and had not sang it in years.....I used to have my pile of kids in a big van and we'd sing going down our bumpy, muddy road to Kamahamaha Hwy.  Kids can't argue when they're singing so we sang all the time in our big van.  aloha, irene

Dulcinina, about 5 years ago I started a dulcimer group from scratch. I had perhaps three or four email addresses that I collected at a dulcimer festival about three hours from where I lived. One of those original people agreed to host the event at her house.  Initially I recruited pretty heavily, looking through the member lists here and at Everything Dulcimer to find anyone within a few hours and invited them.  The first gathering we had perhaps 5 people, but we met every month and now the only times we've skipped a month has been when our meeting date was too close to a major holiday.

Towards the end of the first year I started a website to list tab for the songs we were playing and announce our meeting dates.  That website helped bring in a lot of people and I still get a new inquiry about every other month.  There are some tricks to building a website in order to get "hits" on search engines, so make sure you put the name of the town or at least a nearby city, the state you're in, the word "dulcimer" and any other obvious words on the home page of your website.

Eventually, a nearby music store heard about us and asked if we'd like to meet there instead. I thought people would prefer the privacy of a home, but moving to the store helped us get a lot more publicity, and we've been meeting there ever since.  We've had as many as 20 people show up (a lot for the west coast) but never less than 6.  For a while the music store was using the social site Meetup to announce our gatherings, and I'm sure we got some people that way, but we don't do that anymore.  I've thought about putting up flyers at other obvious spots, but we seem to have enough people so that kind of publicity hasn't been necessary.

One trick to keeping the group going is to make sure it appeals to people of all levels.  We begin our weekly gathering with a free beginners lesson. I think that's important if you want newbies to join.  Eventually people stop considering themselves beginners and skip that part, but it's good to keep it open. The second hour we devote to group play of our common tunes, a list that has been growing slowly.  Our third hour is a kind of song circle when people can play a song solo, call out a tune for group play, or just "pass" and sit and listen.  This third hour was created at the request of the beginners who wanted to hear what the more advanced players were playing, but it is a nice space for intermediate and advanced players to have an informal and friendly audience to work on new arrangements before they're fully ready for prime time. At the end we enjoy some finger food and friendly banter.  This organization, which evolved over time, has been key to keeping our gatherings interesting for people of different skill levels.

I'm in Somerset, KY, 75 miles south of Lexington.

Dulcinina- Where are you located?

I've been asked to head up and form a dulcimer group in my community.  I was part of one a couple years ago that someone else started and it folded after several months. 

What suggestions do you who lead groups have?  How did you advertise?  How often to meet?  What seems to kill a group once it's formed?  Thanks for any suggestions. Dulcinina

Jan, I got Steve Smith tab for Sarasponda.  It IS a Hoot to play!

Thx again @hewalker, got it!

Another one that I really enjoy playing--if people will play it with a lively tempo--is "Boatmen".  After all, they're dancing but I imagine it's a jig sort of dance, not an end-of-the-night slow waltz!

Getting ready for my "opening" concert on August 5th, and I'm having a blast playing the 17th century version of Child Ballad #1 -- Lay The Bend To The Bonnie Broom. The title is also the first of two refrains, and no one has a clue to what it means (well, there are several theories...).  Most think it's evolved into a nonsense line like Fa la la la la  lah lah lah lah.  The second refrain is equally obscure -- in the song is the women who beguile the man, not the other way around.  The old meaning of 'beguile' was "to help pass time pleasantly"...

There were three sisters in the North.
Lay the bend to the bonnie broom.
An they live-d in their mothers huse.
And you'll beguile an lady soon.

There came an knight one evening late.
Lay the bend to the bonnie broom.
An he came knocking at the gate.
And you'll beguile a lady soon.

The eldest sister she let him in.
Lay the bend to the bonnie broom.
An locked the door with a silver pin.
And you'll beguile a lady soon.

...  plus another 16 verses

This song is the forerunner of the late 1800s  The Riddle Song -- "I gave me love a cherry..."

 I can't get the link to post properly so here....wncdc.org/Tab_Index.php  Just search for this one and Sarasponda tab is there!

Thx, @hewalker, that would be great!

Jan, Yes, let's do it at Nicholasville!!!

Well, we've, my family, has had a lot of fun with the old 'bug the bus driver and chaparones song' called 99 bottles of beer on the wall; and I really enjoy playing 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I See' but retitled it, 'Nobody Knows the Trouble I'm In'.  On a more serious note, I really like playing 'May the Circle Be Unbroken', and 'Blowing In the Wind'.

I have a lot of fun with Arkansas Traveler.  It's ridiculously fun to play, in fact - a simple tune you can do so much with.  Great sections for hammer-ons and pull-offs, stumming, cross-picking...it's one of those tunes that can take a lot of abuse and still come out sounding really good. (And it's just fun physically to play.)  It also seems to be one of the first tunes to come out of any new dulcimer I pick up for the first time.  :)

Do you want to learn Sarasponda next Saturday at the library?

We're kicking off the beginning of our third year of the Hearts of the Dulcimer Podcast:

Hearts of the Dulcimer Podcast - Episode 26 
Mark Gilston: The Transcontinental Dulcimer

http://bit.ly/hotdpodcast

From the Balkans to Scandinavia to the UK and the US, Mark Gilston, the first place winner of the 2016 National Mountain Dulcimer Championship, tells us stories behind the tunes he plays.

Listen to the episode, see photos, videos, and more:  http://dulcimuse.com/podcast/resource/026.html

I  do....I will get it together and send to you tomorrow-I am not home but I think it is in my notebook of tabs

 @hewalker, Is that perhaps the old Sarasponda, Sarasponda, Sarasponda, ret set set that I remember so fondly from 4-H days?  Do you have tab for that?  I would love to play it!  I'm currently obsessing 'Old Yeller Dog' & 'Ruffles', but love John Stinson #2.  Also currently learning John Stinson #1-didn't know it existed.

This Fleming dulcimer is wonderful! It is missing one mechanical tuning peg--the outer part you turn--but sounds beautiful as a four-string! Definitely glad I got it and thank you for the recommendation that gave me the little push, Jennifer! And guess what--no buzzing! Once I got the bridge set correctly (and the strings, which, holy smokes, I'm not sure what  previous owner was thinking. . .!!!) intonation is excellent and tone is warm even with mostly old strings! Sigh. So lovely!

Don, feel free to also join our Beginner's Group  ...and ask all the questions you like!   Your questions there and the answers you get will help other beginners as well!   

The search function is at the top of the page beside your name (looking glass icon) and everythingdulocimer.com has a listing of teachers for MO and KS.  By the way, we are not bothered by a lot of questions, we are here to answer any and all.

Don, you might want to bring your dulcimer with the 6.5 fret to any dulcimer club/jam you go to.  Many dulcimer clubs play mostly in chord/melody style rather than noter style, and play from DAd tab that uses the 6.5 fret a lot.  If you bring your backpacker you won't be stuck trying to adapt on the fly to what they are doing.

I'm not sure that there's more options, just different ones. DAA is probably more useful to noter drone players because of the 'extra' notes below the 'D' on the 3rd fret but there's a lot more written data available for DAd. I imagine everyone starts by playing ND [noter/drone] style at first, it feels natural, and easy to do. Many folks never change to the chord style. It's one of the advantages of taking up this instrument, being able to play how, and what, you want and like.

VSL = vibrating string length. You can get the gauge from the builder or use a micrometer or vernier calipers. The gauge is the measured reading, ie., .011 [typical for melody strings]. Your string are probably close to; .018, .012, .009, so you can probably go down to DAd but the strings may be a bit slack.

Yep, or you can play one string at a time [finger pick or flat pick with a pick]. These can be done in any tuning. 

VSL= vibrating string length.  (the part of the string that vibrates freely, i.e. between the nut and bridge)

Up til now, have you been playing any chords on your dulicmer by fretting all the strings?  Or have you only been fretting the melody string so far?

The answer to your question depends on two things- the tune and arrangement (or maybe the TAB) of the piece you want to play or follow along with, ..and also the style of playing you aim to play in.  These two things (rather than just the tuning) are more what determine how you'll be strumming/playing with your right hand.

Maybe. What is the VSL [distance between the nut and bridge] and what is the string gauge [thickness]. You can try loosening them to DAd. The strings may be too small [thin] which will allow the to be too loose or floppy.

This site can give you a starting point for your string gauges, they will be a bit on the light size.

http://www.strothers.com/string_choice.html