Forum Activity for @sheryl-st-clare

I loved it Cynthia, I really did. Thanks for sharing.

Great stuff Cynthia. Non stop fun at the Wigington Mansion :)

Easy to play along with and you've a good voice when you loosen up too.

On our new site, to add a video, you don't use the youtube "Embed code"or "Share This" code to add videos.

When you click the "+" to add a video, (Youtube in this example) --it asks you for the video's "ID or URL"   ....it means exactly that.

So for your YT vid in your post, you can either paste in your video's URL from your browser:  (looks like:https:// www.youtube. com/watch?v= G_BSxXwUCLc)..(i added some spaces to break up the link here)

OR......

the video's Youtube ID , meaning simply:   G_BSxXwUCLc

I believe it works the same way for Vimeo videos.

Thanks for the nice comment Oliver. New link for Careless Love on uke:

enjoyed very much, thanks Cynthia

Good idea Lisa, that sounds like a much easier way to obtain beeswax (and apply it) than I had imagined. I remember seeing beeswas candles at the farmer market... Thanks!

You can just buy a little beeswax candle- either a taper or a votive.  But make sure you buy it from a real beekeeper, cause lots of commercial 'beeswax candles' are only part beeswax, with lots of parrafin mixed in to be cheaper.  And parrafin doesn't have that 'sticking factor' that real beeswax has, that you are seeking for this purpose.

Jan, there were 3 Martin brothers, Fred, Edsel & Wade.  Fred made a lot of dulcimers all with a carved "Egyptian" head on the scroll.  Edsel carved all sorts of things on his.  Wade... well, not sure how many he made.  Fred told me, "not many."  

Novel idea Ken! Seriously, I’ll check the honey stand at our farmer’s market. 

Sheryl -- from bees   Your local Farmer's Market probably has a honey supplier who has beeswax for sale as well.  That's where I get mine -- from a beekeeper friend.

Just oredered a second pair of bones, went for the Minstrel style teak bones. Starting to rock the right hand, need to bring in the left. 

Jan, it wasn't me. Something about scroll heads staring at me while I play bothers me, LOL

p.s. Lisa, where is a good place to get beeswax? 

"Edsel Martin" dulcimer just sold on eBay today and I was interested in whether or not it was purchased by someone on this site and, if so, they might want to share photos, comments, etc. about this interesting dulcimer.  I think 3 of the Martin brothers made dulcimers and put interesting carvings on some of the peg heads.  The pegs were hand carved wood, as well.

One of my current solutions for storing cased instruments upright is to put them in one of those folding hampers with no lid.  This is the one I have...it's 14 x 14 and 22in. high, so depending on the size of your instruments and the type of cases, you should be able to get about 4 in here.  This is perfect for tucking away in a corner and for leaving the instruments accessible for you, but not in jeopardy of damage from a dog or child running through the room.  This one is 14.99 from Target, online, and you can pick it up at your local store and save on shipping....but they are not stocked IN the store. 

OK Sheryl, no vids for you ... Yet.  Strumelia, game on!  I'll be practicing. 

Here's a PDF of the article "I Just Got A Dulcimer, Now What?" that I wrote several years ago.  It's an illustrated glossary of dulcimer terms, plus answers to many beginner questions about tuning, playing, care and feeding of your new friend.

I Just Got A Dulcimer 2016.pdf - 1.1MB

Good to know, I'll give it a try!

Sheryl....yay!

I read that if you rub a piece of beeswax up and down on the EDGES of the bones only, it keeps them from sliding out or down.  I tried it and it works well.  doesnt take much, but may need doing periodically.

I got my bones in the mail yesterday; as I had hoped they are pretty mellow. Haven't had time to revisit Dom Flemons videos so I can start out right, but of course I have been "playing" with them. My ring finger bone keeps sliding down...but I have managed to do some clacking. It seems like the less I concentrate on them, the better I do. I tried them out in the car this morning, to the radio, and actually managed to hit a couple of beats on Hotel California. Fun times! 

Bob, before you ask, I am not ready to make a recording or produce a video. 

Only if the deadline is Sept 14th, and video doesn't have to be more than 1 min long.  And can be full of screwups.  

AND, that we can just embed the vids in this thread instead of throwing them the main video section.   lolol...  how does all that sound?

Bob I'm now suspecting that you are a secret virtuoso spoons player, unbeknownst to everyone here. 

Here's a challenge for you.  If you post a video of you playing bones, I'll post one of me playing spoons.  What do yout think?

Once I can get through just maybe a minute or two of rattling without totally screwing it up and falling on my face, i will try to make a little sample, Bob!  If only to help encourage others to be accepting of their beginner skills.      But of course as we know, I could do just great for a few minutes, then turn on the camera and suddenly I can't do a single thing!   -always a frustration...   ;D

Fun in the workshop!  I just got a package of Noter blanks that I'll be working on this weekend.  Two each of (left to right) Bloodwood, Purpleheart, Padauk, Yellowheart and Wenge.  All are much harder than the usual run-of-the-mill hardwoods.

Strummelia, we want to hear you play!

My dulcimer handbook, i revisited and went over it's info on tunings and it's starting to make sense.

Any idea how many tuning there are, or could be?

When I was playing a song in DDDG,  I notice the melody line tab was also DAd.  Haven't checked yet if it was just that one song or you can play with either tab.

I finally located a name for what I'm doing (using one tuning--DAd--but playing in different keys).  Gary Gallier refers to this as "Cross Key Tuning". If anyone wants to know more about that they can contact me or Google Gary Gallier and look up the topic on his website (it's one of the main tabs).  He even has 2 pages of all the scales for the different keys that work with the DAd tuning.  Note: many of the scales require a 1.5 fret.  'Nother Note: You will NOT, therefore, be playing in the traditional way.  But you will live and it will be OK.

I learned to play Ionian. Then I discovered Aeolian. It's my favorite.

Funny you should ask about ARRGH. Look up the song 'Key of R'.

once again Lisa...

Ken, just copy and paste the ENTIRE url from your browser window (not from the Youtube 'share' or 'embed'' codes).

For example, one of mine would look like this:

https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnwFWvErE

 (without the space after https: )

-that's the "URL" they are looking for.  The clue here is the error message: "unable to extract youtube id from url"...so it's telling you the URL is not correct.  You are trying to paste in a youtube share code, not an URL.  It wants the URL (web address of the video)

OR, to directly give it the "youtube id"..... i think you could also paste in the actual YT vid ID#,
which in the above case would be: okPnwFWvErE

Tom, I see you over on MinstrelBanjo site.   

That's a lot to learn all at once!

Anybody... When I try to add a vido, it will not accept the copy and past of the Youtube link, nor will it accept the link if I type it in.  I get the message "unable to extract Youtube ID from url".  Am I missing a step on this new site?

Cheers Ken

Thanks Rob. It's getting tougher to find any sweet spot. Glad you played along on dobro, it's the highest compliment.

Nice, Cynthia.... so you're in Bb?  it fits your voice well.  Got out my dobro.... played along.

New link to St. Louis Blues by WC Handy:

Good suggestions, Kristi!  I like to receive my instruments wrapped in cotton cloth (part of an old sheet or several old T-shirts will do).  Then, whatever packing material is used doesn't come in direct contact with the instrument.

Yes, all OK.

    I enjoy the dulcimer, the known and the unknown, the simple and the complex. I am different than I was and yet, I am the same. My playing was nothing and now it is something and one day will be something else, hopefully better than the day before. Much in music I don't know but I know it's warms my heart & soul and it draws me into it's web.

  I'm content    -     'and that's OK'

ps: I counted about 36 tunings mention in the post, yes we are all different and each very unique. It's been a good discussion and a new interesting discovery.

Playing the clappers or bones isn't easy to learn, because it is a psycho-motoric thing. Even when you have some success creating a roffle, the next day it is less or even gone. Your body needs a good night sleep 'learning it'. Most of the time an introduction to the bones is given during a gathering or a situation like that, during your body will get a lot of information to cope with during the night after. Better is to get the instruction, just only playing the bones, in the beginning of the evening and a couple of hours later to go to bed and take a good night sleep.

And, most important, the older your age, the slower and longer the learning curve...

Marg, I'm glad you can appreciate the variety of ways people make music with their dulcimers--the "many differences that can be achieved by eaçh person" as you kindly put it.  I have a friend who can not only not sing or play an instrument, but is also unable to recognize what tune is being played--even something as simple as Happy Birthday to You or Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  He can hear the music just fine, but his brain does not process it--does not assign any meaning to the different tones.  If I were playing Carnegie Hall and had a ticket for him, he'd tell me to give it to somebody else, because it would just be a long boring evening for him. 

Another friend has always loved music, but nothing about learning it made any sense to her.  She figured she would, therefore, never be able to play a musical instrument.  Then she encountered the dulcimer, which provides a variety of learning choices.  She discovered numbered tab and quickly realized that because the numbers made sense, she could play this instrument --and now, after just a few years, she is a VERY good player. 

Now, I carry music around in my being and in my soul--I expect to be able to pick up an instrument and with a little experimentation play whatever pops into my head--not proficiently, of course, but I can get the music from my head to the instrument (most instruments I've tried, at least) in a recognizable fashion without tab, numbers, standard music notation, etc.  For me, a lot of my learning involves finding out what it is that I'm doing, so that I can make sense out of things like chord charts, etc. Playing from tab is actually quite difficult for me.   I had someone hand me a sheet of tabbed out music the other day and in the midst of struggling to read the tab and get my fingers on exactly the right frets and move cleanly from chord to chord (with all the notes in between) I suddenly realized that I had written out that tab, years ago!  That sure made me laugh!

Yep, we're all different--and some of us are "differenter" than others!     and that's OK!