I learn so much from these forums.  Great advice from RobbScott and John P.  There is a lot to be said for feeling the notes as you play them.  Now if I can just remember that when my fingers won't go where I want them to go and the music doesn't sound as good as I think it should.  Slow down.  That's definitely the answer to many of my playing frustrations. 

Thanks for the post. I had forgotten that the song is a slow one. Maybe my favorite version (this week) is the one by Martin Simpson.

Good advice. I tell all of my students to "learn slow to play fast".

Bob, I watched that whole thing and still don't quite understand how it works. It sounds pretty cool, though, like magical bells.

 Great!  Now I have got Stephen Seifert and Dusty running around in my head!  I think I'm going to give up dulcimer and switch to glass armonica. 

I don't have an answer to this question, not because I nail every tune I attempt, but just the opposite. I try to play a lot of tunes on the dulcimer, and most don't work out. Some I have never gotten (at least not yet) and others were put on the shelf for a while only to be resurrected successfully later on. 

There was one tune that I worked on really hard and could not get it at all.  I got frustrated and just threw the tablature off my desk.  But about a year later I was cleaning up and found that tab behind a bookcase.  I sat down and tried to play it, and lo and behold I was able to do it!  What had seemed impossible was now easily approachable.  The lesson for me was to never give up, but also not to get frustrated. If something is not working, put it away for a while and come back to it later on.

I also want to comment on Bob's remarks at the beginning of this conversation. I first discovered the mountain dulcimer from Stephen Seifert's video of Whiskey Before Breakfast, which had long been one of my favorite fiddle tunes.   I was entranced by Stephen's soft but quick fingering and the beautiful woody sound of the dulcimer.  Of course, I wanted to play that song and worked on it for a while.  Eventually I posted a version on Stephen's Dulcimer School, expecting to get some tips from him.  And he did offer some helpful comments. But others commented at how good it was, a couple suggesting it was ready for public performance.  That experience taught me not to measure my playing by the abilities of someone else, but only by my own desire to present my own musical ideas.  Nowadays, I only play the song a little better than I did three years ago when I posted this video , but I don't let the fact that Stephen blows me away to stop me from offering my own version of the tune.  

There are a lot of ways of being musically expressive, and even if you can't play as fast as someone else or with as many notes as someone else doesn't mean you can't find a way to say something with a song.  One cool lick might say more than a whole verse of virtuoso improvisation.  I have learned to play within my limits and to still find ways of inserting my own musical sensibilities into the tunes I play. As I've said elsewhere, if you start with a pretty tune and play it on a beautiful instrument, the real trick is to stay out of the way and not mess things up.  If I tried to play as fast as Stephen Seifert, I would mess things up for sure.

Hi Sean,

Here's a somewhat eccentric performance, but it's all good :)

Thanks to all for the responses so far.

John, I'll have to look up "The Green Linnet". I remember hearing it years ago, but can't call it to mind. 

There are a few tunes I'd thought I'd never play. . . Black Mountain Rag was one of them.  Surprisingly, when Mark and I were just jamming over the weekend, BMR just started to fall into place.  

St. Ann's Reel is a tune I've never gotten worked out to my satisfaction.  Maybe someday! 

For me its Angeline the Baker or Angelina Baker (see I can't even work out whats its called!!)

I just never seem able to get it bouncing along the way it should do - even on those rare occassions when I actually play the right notes in the right order!

But I am not defeated yet!!

I've been trying to get down out of the mountains a bit more lately and take up some of the old stuff I used to play from the British/Irish tradition.

'The Green Linnet' is an old bete noir , and one I still haven't got completely to grips with.

However, there are some I thought would never work N/D style that I can handle pretty well now.

So, some progress

Whiskey Before Breakfast.  My mind gets totally wrapped around the Stephen Seiffert version and I just can't face it because I'll never get it that good.

What is the one tune or song that eludes you? The one you always think, "I'd like to work that one out some day" but somehow you never get around to it, or when you do it doesn't quite come out right.

For me, it's "The Lost Girl" a tune in G from Emmett Lundy, though I think I first heard it played by Geoff Seitz here in St. Louis. It's a beautiful, circular kind of tune that I never can manage to make as smooth as I hear it in my head.