Forum Activity for @marg

The dulcimer group I play with has someone who has been playing the hammered dulcimer for years, I forwarded your info to him. It is a beautiful instrument, I like the way the peg strings can be closed off.

Good luck

Hey @mascis, if you can drive to Blue Lion, you can drive to the Redwood Dulcimer Day in Santa Cruz in August. Perhaps I'll see you and your Ledford there!  I'd love to see this special dulcimer.

@mascis If you'd like to post the video here, that'd be cool!  

Thanks for the pointers, Dusty.  I'm getting together with a couple group leaders and getting their input as well.  Then I'll contact a couple possible location sites and take it from there.  You are always so helpful.  Thanks again, Dulcinina

I think uke is a perfect 2nd instrument for MD players.  Most of us start MD playing melody on traditional modal tunes.  While a uke is just begging you to strum chords and sing Leon Redbone songs.  Or maybe that's just me.  Anyway, uke makes us approach music from a new perspective.  That can't help but make us smarter all around. 

I used to worry about balancing time between instruments, but I finally realized they do not care (unlike my family, friends, coworkers and cats).  So I play what I'm in the mood to play. 

Colleen, my Fluke has friction tuners and they give me no problems.  Have you taken a screwdriver to the screws at the ends of the tuning pegs?  Mine need adjusting once or twice a year.  Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.  It does take patience to get used to the tiny movements (like a few ticks of a clock) necessary to get friction pegs in tune.  OTOH, when you change strings it's a whole lot faster!  Magic Fluke sells Peghead geared tuners, but they are not cheap.  Some people attach ordinary cheap geared tuners, but those are heavy and put the uke out of balance IMHO.  Search the Ukulele Underground forums and you'll find lots of tips for modifying Flukes. 

(Public Service Announcement: Do NOT look at the Ukulele Marketplace forum.) 

If you put a strap button on the bottom, the Fluke will no longer be able to stand up by itself.  Magic Fluke sells a velcro strap; I haven't tried it but I assume it works.  Try fluorocarbon strings on the Fluke.  I'm currently in love with a set of Oasis Warm strings, but if you like the bright ring of a spruce top then you might prefer Oasis Bright or Martin M600. 

Speaking of cats (I was a minute ago, wasn't I?) my avatar Nick was born in the household of someone I met at uke club.  As far as Nick knows, all human females play ukulele.  I would hate for him to learn otherwise.

Colleen, I understand how you feel about friction tuners. My Gretsch banjolele came with them. My fondness for the instrument (it was so darn cute!) made me play it a lot and I got used to the tuners. Now they are still not my first choice but I am OK with them. 

If you think ukes are fun, banjoleles are even better. The folks I jam with like having another instrument voice. Like all banjos, they are finicky little instruments so if you don't like to fiddle with your instruments, banjoleles are not for you. I also recommend getting a good set up initially.  

My favorite is my Kala ST-G spruce top tenor.  Found it used at a local guitar store.  I keep my original Kala concert in my office to strum on for a few minutes at lunch time.  There's a Kala soprano that I have my eye on too...And...my third is a concert Fluke that I got on Craigslist. Unfortunately, I have barely touched that one.  I'm thinking of finding someone to add geared tuners and a button strap.  Not fond of the friction tuners, but should probably give them another chance.  Lisa Golladay, does your Fluke have geared tuners?  I'm happy with my mid-range ukes right now as I don't play well enough to justify purchasing a higher end one.  If I progress well enough, I might start looking at banjoleles, but that is a ways down the line.

 I actually have learned more about music since I've had this. (sorry, don't know quote function)  Much to the no doubt despair of my uke teacher, I still haven't picked up any music theory.  I know that there is tons online about ukes, but I'm going for in-person lessons for now.

The downside is that the new instrument is exciting and my interest in practicing the dulcimer has dropped off quite a bit--it's like trying to divide your attention between two kids...

July... it's mid blueberry time in our garden!  Also now the first year we're getting substantial raspberries.  I've been picking string beans and making big bowls of green beans vinaigrette (adding varying other ingredients like black beans, corn, red peppers etc).  I gave the first big head of cabbage to my daughter when she visited, but now it's time to cut one for us and make nice coooool cole slaw!

I've been able to keep up with my new modest fitness walking goal-  twice a week doing a brisk 2.5 miles in the village fairgrounds, which has lots of nice paths with no car traffic.  Sometimes Brian comes with me which is nice.

I'd love to visit Blue Lion!  And you've got a treasure in that Ledford! 

Well I made the plunge 3 months ago and bought a Kala Ziricoat Tenor and couldn't be happier. I actually have learned more about music since I've had this. Yes I still put many hours on my Folkcraft, but what fun the Uke is.

$50?  The case itself is worth that!

You got quite a deal, indeed!  If you keep it, you've got quite a bit of interesting musical history there.  When old buildings were torn down, Homer was right there to reclaim the wood, as old wood with history--especially music history--makes the best instruments!

If you're not doing anything Labor Day weekend, fly into Lexington, KY and come attend the Homer Ledford Dulcimer Festival in nearby Winchester, KY.  On Thursday there will be a talk on Homer and his instruments at the local history museum with famed dulcimer player Don Pedi.  He'll have many old instruments for people to look at--and maybe try out--and there will be time to tour the small museum and see Homer's shop which was moved over from his nearby home.  You can sit in on some jams, maybe attend some workshops on Sat. and there will be a fantastic blow-your-socks-off concert with some of the country's finest musicians Sat. night.

I'm so glad you got to meet Bob and Janita Baker, too!  What a great immersion into the dulcimer world!

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!