Forum Activity for @carla-maxwell

Thanks,  @ken-hulme!

Another Aussie to invite is Richard Dunn, in Gold Coast.  At 86 he's recently built a large box dulcimer.  He's a member here  

@john-dunn

I'll PM you here his email address.

@ken-hulme  You're on the right track! Anne and Richard are friends and we are excited that they are planning to be here for the first Australian Dulcimer Retreat.

Great Carla!  Be sure to contact Anne Bowman and Richard Troughear!

I finally had a chance to listen to the latest podcast on Nina Zanetti.  What a great job you do capturing not only the mood and timbre of her music, but also her personality.  Nina was really helpful to me when I was first starting on the dulcimer, and that patient, helpful nature really comes out in the podcast. What a treat it is to listen to!

Would you travel to Australia for a dulcimer retreat?  

You might have noticed the Australian Dulcimer Retreat listed on this website's list of festivals. Adrian Kosky and I are hosting this dulcimer retreat at our place in Daylesford, Victoria, Australia. Our "day job" is to run our group accommodation business at  Tasma House and Gardens . We aren't normally involved with the groups who stay on the property....we just prepare it for them and clean up after them.....we appreciate the business, but we don't have much fun doing that. We live in a small cottage on the property and come-and-go separately from "the main house."  So, we have decided to create our own event and reserve the whole property for our own use: the first Australian Dulcimer Retreat! We have the wonderful Australian musician/dulcimer player,  Lucy Wise,  lined-up to be the main instructor for the event, August 28-30, 2020. (September 1st is the beginning of Springtime in Australia....it should be beautiful!)

I know a lot of people might want to and think they could never travel all the way to Australia. I'm just wondering if our hosting (in our home, basically), the focus on the dulcimer, and a reasonable cost for our event, would make the idea more doable. Adrian and I live half the year here in Australia and the other half in Clarksdale, Mississippi; we do the long travel a couple of times each year. It IS a long commute, but we are physically able (and thankful for that) to do it! 

We don't travel with our dulcimers, to protect them. We have quite a few dulcimers here at Tasma, and we would be happy for participants to borrow one for the Australian Dulcimer Retreat. Especially, if they're flying in from overseas! 

And...if you don't mind....I am going to be building an event page and/or website to provide details about our first Australian dulcimer retreat, and I would appreciate input as to what information you would like or need to know before booking your ticket(s). Questions about accommodation can be answered by looking at  Tasma House on Airbnb.com, disregarding the cost shown there, as there will be a minimal per-person accommodation charge for participants for this retreat. (Normally, we rent to one person who books the property for many guests, so the price might look odd.) The cost for the retreat will be shown on the website and/or Facebook event page that I create. Although it's not confirmed yet, I think the cost will be between $300-$400 and accommodation would be included on a first-come-first-serve basis, according to registrations.

It would be great to hear what your ideas are.

Here are a few photos to get you thinking....

 IMG_0176.jpeg - 524KB

Anne, Biddy is adorable. Sure looks like the cat is keeping an eye on him. Thanks for the photos.

Photos as requested, and promised! Biddy is such a mad, active dog outside, it's hard to get a photo without even a little blur, but I think I've managed it!

The settling in is going well, I think. The cats are still unsure, and there is a little bit of 'spit & hiss' going on, but in general the boys will move around the same room, keeping an eye out for danger. 

Biddy is lying at my feet at the moment, having had mad gallops around the yard, which will become, I think, her own personal racetrack - whizzes around and around - fortunately, it's a big yard with plenty of room!

 Pug & Biddy Introduction.JPG - 144KB

Cannot help with song title but I just love the little accordion in this video!  Makes me wish I had one like that.  Very pretty melody indeed.

Well, folks! It's solved! Joe Collins 'The Banks of the Catawba' It's on his new album The River Runs Through it and it's streaming on amazon music. Wow..

It was one of his free tabs in the past. A nice song!

Jim Stewart's original here:

I'll venture to guess that this is  a variation  of Jim Stewart's, "Lament for Owen Christy" which is in Anna Barry's book Soundings whose contents can be found in the Western North Carolina Library Network by searching for her name.

I agree with @Ken-Hulme. I would have used the word "active" rather than "complicated," but I think we're talking about the same thing. It sounds to me like a Celtic ballad in which the singing of any given verse might involve more notes depending on the specific lyrics.

Doesn't sound complicated enough for O'Carolan, but it definitely has common Celtic runs and flourishes

She suspects that the song came from Anna Berry's 'Soundings' dulcimer book. But she isn't sure. It definitely was a tab my friend was playing

That worked. Nice. What does it mean, her Soundings book? Maybe she was improvising?

My friend who played it, said it was recorded the day Anna Berry passed away and she is suspicious it came out of her 'Soundings' book. But it's packed far far away and she can't double check.

It's a very lovely melody, but I haven't heard it before.  Maybe it's something from Turlough O'Carolan's pen?  Could be...

It sounds to me like a blend of The Ash Grove and Ashokan Farewell.  Which, sadly, does not pin down the actual title.  Ash Grove is Welsh and Jay Ungar says he wrote Ashokan in the style of a Scottish lament, so those might be useful clues.  Sorry, it's all I got :-)

I just uploaded it to SoundCloud let me see if I can get it on here that way

Didn't work that way on my Mac - please do record it if it's so beautiful...whenever you get back. And thanks, have a good trip.

Cynthia, I could certainly learn the tune and play it for you . . . but I'm leaving in a little bit for a 2-day business trip.  If this conversation is still at a stalemate on Friday I'll give it a try.

For the record, I did not have to download it at all. I clicked on the link Dana supplied and then clicked on the song title and it played directly from Google Drive.

Dusty, can you play a short clip of it for us non-downloaders? Pretty please...

Well shoot! I've run it past Brian G., Linda B., Tull G, Billy A. No one knows it! Can someone who has Anna Berry (barry?) Soundings book check it? She thinks maybe it was hers.

Sure is pretty.  No idea what song it is.

Now you have me curious but I don't want to download it...hope someone IDs it.

Don't know it, but I want to!

A friend recorded this song and forgot to notate the name. I've run it past a few friends and instructors and so far, no one knows what it is. Hope you can help!  Dana

Here is a google drive link. I THINK when you click on it, your computer should offer you a play with music player for google drive. That's how i"m able to hear it. First 5 seconds is quiet. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6vTwCDi-ntaZFNaZzc2T1U4eXVkQ2ZDM1k5U1RUaEV5NTZv

My two boys.  Shep, the one with the mandolin, left us five years ago, but Riley is still enjoying the "Life of Riley."  Love them both.

 Riley Dulcimer.jpg - 219KB

Photos will be coming soon!

Yesterday Biddy - her new name is actually Bidelia, which means 'Strong' - discovered that life with a nice big yard, windfall apples and a tennis ball was a lot of fun, and she was galloping around the yard again today. Should be nice and tired by bedtime, I hope. Didn't take to the gardener - I think somewhere in her past is a bloke with whom she did not agree. She was eventually friendly enough, but with reservations!

Have no idea about her past life other than she ended up in the pound and was then rescued in the nick of time. I think she was baled out of the pound when Tumut itself was evacuated under fire threat. Not everybody left, but the animal rescue people did get the pound evacuated - I dare say the "prisoners" ended up in rescue centres all over the place. Biddy also had to be evacuated from her rescue home, so she will have had a fair bit of upset in her short life.

She is booked in to my vet for Saturday morning for a 'meet and greet' and to have her nails trimmed - nothing traumatic! She will, whether she wants it or not, be having a bath tomorrow - running with the farm dogs has done nothing for her coat!!

Marg, I've seen explanations for the differing directions of the hearts, but darned if I can remember them. Most of the early dulcimers had the hearts with the bottom pointing to the left. One theory for the change is that they looked better hanging on a wall with the hearts pointing down.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Ken, That is so special. Why do you think Thomas did his hearts up-side down or are they up-side down now?        I think I had seen some of the photos from the Berea gathering, not sure if it was the first.

Will do (check out the group).  I've seen Jessica Comeau's videos.  I have her book, and she says she usually uses bare fingers but also sometimes uses those fingerpick things.  That woman is from another planet, such beautiful playing!

@LisavB, I second @Ferrator's suggestion below.  There is a whole group here at FOTMD solely devoted to Fingerpicking . Why not join, peruse some of the conversations and maybe start one of your own?

Marg, I certainly do. This photo was taken by John Huron shortly after he finished restoring the dulcimer. Somewhere I have a video of Joe Collins playing it. I'll see if I can find it. There are photos of it from the first Berea gathering as well.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

 image.jpeg - 132KB

Ken,

it says, Thomas stopped making dulcimers 2 years before his death, so that is right at your date. Do you have a photo of this special dulcimer?