Forum Activity for @dusty

Some loss of volume when employing multiple slides or hammer-ons consecutively is inevitable.  A pickup goes a long way to solving that problem, and some dulcimer fretboards are more responsive than others.  So a lot of this is out of your hands (so to speak).

However, if you slide more deliberately and sharply from one fret to the next, you can create some extra pressure that will increase the volume and make the move sound more like a hammer-on.  That is hard to do if you are sliding across several frets to get to a single note, however.  This is something to work on. 

In general, I do not consider the tablature indications for the left-hand legato techniques (hammers, pulls, slides) to be mandatory parts of the tablature.  Depending on your fingering, a slide may be more appropriate than a hammer or pull or vice versa, so you have to take the tablature as a suggestion and develop your own approach.  You might simply break up that long slide and pick the string again at some point to get the volume you need.  You might also reduce the volume of the rest of the tune so that the loss of volume from the extended slide is less noticeable. And since good artists deliberately vary the dynamics of their playing, you might embrace the loss of volume as an expressive part of the arrangement.

Here are Boo-Boo and Teddy chillaxin' on the couch. (with Teddy's little mini-me 'tiny teddy' stuffed cat peeking out from the cushions)

Bubba looks so comfy!!

I remember Sally Ann's little kitten pix.

Thanks all for responding.  Yes, Ken I am playing across the strings & the downward slide is on the Melody string. I've also texted Brett & based on what you & Brett are saying I need to work on my slide skills for this tune.  It's beautiful so now it's a simple matter of working to finesse this tune.

I only play with a noter and it is challenging to me to get the exact sound I want when sliding to a lower fret.  It is a balance of noter pressure with speed (I'm talking getting a nice "falling away" sound on a slower tune) to get the sound I want.  I don't do it well consistently-- it's hit and miss for me. 

@jimws --   The effect you describe is not related to the dulcimer or it's maker.

I assume you're playing Chords or Fingerdance style rather than Noter&Drone. 

Have you listened to Brett's rendition?  Or just read the tab/SMN?  Are you certain that the volume reducing to zero is not intentional? 

Are you sure you are maintaining the same downward pressure from one end of the slide to another?  As Nate suggests, maintaining the volume of a slide is easier with a noter than with fingers.  

I dont know much, but from my experience, moving the noter across the frets as fast as possible makes the note noticeably more pronounced than moving it slower, when you are hitting each fret along the way. I think one technique tries to give the intermittent slide where each fret along the way is heard as it slides into the next, while another technique tries to slide along the string without touching the frets for a more consistent sliding tone. I feel that denser noter material allows the sliding to be heard better. For example, a delicate touch  passing over the frets using an actual glass slide or ceramic slide seems to be the loudest for me. When pressing down to 'bump' each fret along the way, I prefer to use a dense piece of wood hitting each fret hard to excite the string. I also will sometimes pluck the string mid slide, or will lift off and hammer down with the noter to accent the note I'm ending on.

Hope this was useful

Nate

I read these forums frequently and am immensely appreciative of the feedback and comments from many of the commenters.  Thanks.

I have a Warren May dulcimer with which I am very pleased regarding the looks, sound and sustain when sliding to higher frets.  However, I am playing Brett Ridgeways version of St Annes Reel and the 2nd half of the piece slides down multiple frets and the volume basically disappears.

Is there a trick I don't know?  Would it make a difference if I changed the string height?

P.S.  My dulcimer does not have any type of pickup.  Is that my only option?

Thanks in advance

@nate Bubba is living the life!  

Bubba

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Best wishes to all at FOTMD.

Happy birthday, FOTMD!

Hard to believe she is over 5 now.

She's a cutie, David. I remember when you got her. Nina

It appears Sally Ann is interested in what's in that cool mug. 

Sally Ann checking things out

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By my generation, popeye and similar cartoons didnt even play on boomerang. The full collection of betty boop, woody woodpecker, sailor mickey, wile e coyote, popeye, etc were DVDs at the dollar store.

So let me make sure I understand this...Popeye was once a Saturday cartoon?!  So there really is something to this "55 and older crowd"?  I am 52 and I only remember watching Popeye on weekday afternoons with many of the other cartoon show reruns.  I am too old for Nate's crowd, too young for the 55 and older crowd....where do I belong?

I am very glad to hear about this development.  When I was originally starting learning to play dulcimer, I was researching over the internet and found DPN, I was completely bummed to learn that I couldn't subscribe and it was ending.  Now that this phoenix is rising from the ashes, I have already subscribed. 

Well here's hoping the people running DPN are eating their spinach!

Put mine in some spanakopita, a quiche, or veggie lasagna, or just cook it with a lil' ham or bacon!  Yum - o!

Lol john it does in fact make you strong to the finish. I was told once that the decimal point was misplaced on a study about the iron content of spinach, thus it was considered a miracle food with 100x the iron it actually had. Personally, I like it with some ricotta, or in a buttered curry with some squash and chicken!

So, Strumelia, are you, by reason of consuming so much spinach, now able to repeatedly punch big galoots into submission, bust loose from being tied to a chair by heavy ropes, and generally wreak havoc, trying to make the world a more just and equitable place?  There was a feller in the Saturday cartoons a long time ago that answers that description.  The carnage was always preceded by the playing of a jaunty hornpipe.

omg what is wrong with you people??  I luuuuuuuv spinach!!!  😂 😎

I grew up only tasting CANNED spinach in school lunches, and it was truly horrible.  BUT as an adult i was amazed to discover how tasty fresh and steamed spinach is... so completely different, and so yummy!!

This morning for breakfast i had a giant bowl of steamed radish greens with fresh picked snow peas.... and one pat of butter to rule them all.  mmmmm....

Haha, Gordon, we ate a lot of spinach and poke in Arkansas, but never without sweating it down in some lard or bacon grease. They dont call it soul food cause it's good for the body!

Strumelia, this has been such a good discussion so I thought I'd throw in a wee bit of humor Gordon style:  I don't understand your point regarding spinach and I quote:

"I see it as the difference between handing a young person a baby food jar of creamed spinach and saying "here, this is what spinach is"... and giving that young person some spinach seeds and showing them how to plant, grow, harvest, and cook it in various ways."

How disappointing it would be for a young person to go through the trouble of planting, growing, harvesting and cooking spinach only to find out it tastes as horrible as baby food creamed spinach, any way you cook it. As children, my siblings and I were forced to eat lots of spinach, one of the vegetables that grows well in northern Alberta, because "it was good for us" and the garden was full of it. My dear Mother even tried to hide it in lasagna. I firmly believe it was a preparation for us to be able to endure further ordeals as we grew up and left the nest.

I have really enjoyed this discussion even the spinach part.

Strumelia, the strange thing I've noticed is that my generation will gladly watch a 5 hour video as long as its divided into 20 parts.

In truth I definitely did imagine a tiktok style video telling three minutes of dulcimer history, with a part 2 and 3 and an endless stream of new minutes, since as you said, there is a LOT to cover.

Short condensed videos could help to reach a much broader audience, the way a magazine once could. I know it has been said a lot of times, but I think a dulcimer could easily replace the ukulele as the definitive beginner-friendly instrument for folk music/singer-songwriter music.

I value DPN as it is quite a lot. It is a deep, deep well of information at this point. I wouldn't want to lose that just to make the content more digestible, but if there were a high quality source of digestible excerpts about dulcimer content a la an Instagram video, I suspect that would really help dulcimer to become more culturally relevant. Again, I feel the instrument has so much potential that it blows my mind it's not more popular. 

PS, I hope you are right that people who value self subsistence and traditional skills will help to revive the dulcimer, the typewriter and vinyl people I could take or leave. Lol

Nate

Hi Nate. You have some great points!

The way i see it, it's almost impossible to condense such rich and in depth subjects and material into "short vlog style videos showing techniques, styles, tips, history, design, players etc" in a satisfactory or actually valuable way.  Even if done, it would present pre-digested info which the particular vlogger felt was relevant or important. In my humble opinion, there is no satisfactory shortcut for the accumulated knowledge gained through actual reading, researching, listening, looking, hands-on, and discussion. The closest thing that approaches what you describe is browsing through youtube videos about the subjects you were interested in. Goodness knows there are thousands of YT vids out there on every dulcimer subject you can imagine, presented by a multitude of players and perspectives both great and not-so-great. It's all out there free for the browsing already. And if one prefers info that is curated or condensed by a particular source, then there is nothing really better than reading some of the books out there or watching/listening to some of your favorite players. Or by talking to people directly.

I see the DPN magazine as a venue for allowing for the examination and 'expanding upon' of all interesting things dulcimer, rather than as a media whose purpose it is to condense concepts and information about dulcimers and music.

I'm aware that young people now prefer to get all their information (even their world news) in ultra short videos such as we see on tiktok. They don't like to read all that much. However, such an instant vlogging medium has very real limitations. In my admittedly 'old' mind, I see it as the difference between handing a young person a baby food jar of creamed spinach and saying "here, this is what spinach is"... and giving that young person some spinach seeds and showing them how to plant, grow, harvest, and cook it in various ways. If a person is actually interested for more than one hour of their life, perhaps they will want to investigate something in a more active way rather than being spoon fed quick information. You've been here for almost 3 1/2 years now yourself, Nate. I've seen how you positively devour information, innovate, and add to your knowledge!

I hear there might be some talented young folk out there who enjoy 'discovering' typewriters, fountain pens and script, reading bound paper books, spinning wool, making sourdough bread, collecting vinyl records, and crafting obscure musical instruments out of old bundt cake pans!  😁  They will lead the way forward when us older ones are gone.

Wow Ken, I'm envious! Sounds like you've put them to about every use under the sun. My grandfather had a few mango trees on his farm and they always seemed to grow more than the whole family plus the neighbors could use!

Our mango tree started dropping ripe fruit the first week of April, and is finally winding down.  We'll probably get fruit for another couple weeks.  I have been harvesting 10-20 per day.  I've made Mango Salsa, Mango Jam, Mango Lassi, Mango smoothies with backyard bananas, Mango bread, Mango Frozen Yogurt, Mango Shrimp dinner,  Mango-topped oatmeal for Sally every day, chilled mango by the bowl, and dribbling over the sink.  No to mention I've frozen 20 quarts of mango filets for once a month mango treats until next season, and given away at least a hundred to friends who love mango but don't have a tree,

@nate, I think your observation is correct, reflecting current reality..  

I wish DPN all the best and will continue to support.  When the 55 and older crowd is no longer around to purchase, the publication may evolve further and thrive-- I hope so!

To the conversation about getting young people to engage, I myself am a young person (just turned 24) and I think it would be a huge challenge to get the broader audience of young people to read any sort of printed magazine, digital or physical. Most young people prefer short videos to written text. If dulcimer had an ambassador who could output short vlog style videos showing techniques, styles, tips, history, design, players etc, that would probably be the best bet. It would be a massive undertaking for DPN or anyone else, and probably wouldn't end up worth the time.

Our blueberries are due to start getting ripe soon... ooooh boy!

Right now I am picking lots of fresh snow peas... love them!

What a crazy week.

The everythingdulcimer.com goes down in flames while DPN magazine rises again from the ashes! 

I'm glad the plans for the transfer of DPN ownership is finalized. Ashley shared this news with me about a week ago and it has been hard keeping the secret. I've been waiting for her to make It public. Best wishes to Fiona and Bill as they take over the reins at DPN.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Wow, that's unexpected!  How nice!

This is the breaking news from Ashley Ernst on Facebook (a posting which included a photo of Fiona Potts and Fiona's father) regarding DPN: 

I have been busting with excitement to share this news! Dulcimer Players News is under new stewardship! Meet Fiona Potts publisher/editor of DPN and her father, Bill Wake, tech guru. Subscriptions for the print magazine are again open, so visit dpnews.com to subscribe or renew today!!

But even if they accidentally let the domain expire... If they knew their stuff, they would have had some sort of backup of the email addresses of all their members. They could have then emailed everyone to at least let them know they were ending the site. If they cared.

I wondered about that too Ken.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

I dunno Ken...  I check there every day and have noticed it Unavailable for at least the last week and more.  No notice...nada.

I wondered if the nominal owners had neglected to pay the periodic name license fee.  

NOT GOOD.  The "revived" ED has never been busy.  The owner never identified him/herself.  Never been welcoming or active.  Only 3 or 4 people every posted regularly -- Ken & I and someone named "Carolina Rockman" who I've never run into anywhere else in dulcimer media.  

Yes, and when Bruce went out on sea duty he had a few us looking after the site.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."