Space Oddity - live - on electric dulcimer

I performed this at the wonderful Colorado Dulcimer Festival earlier this month. David Bowie's glam rock classic, "Space Oddity," with an electric dulcimer and a "modeling" pedalboard.

What's a modeling pedalboard? Basically, any regular "guitar" effect pedal modifies the input sound in some particular way. For example, it might take a perfect sine wave and clip off the peaks - or it might emphasize higher overtones - or it might quicken the attack and lengthen the decay - or it might create weakening echoes every 1.2 seconds. In other words, you input the signal for a sound wave, and it performs a mathematical function on it.

So, instead of using circuitry to create those effects, it uses a fast mathematical model to create them. If you can calculate how the circuitry creates those effects, you can try to imitate them with a formula. And instead of stringing together several physical pedals, it rapidly strings together several of these functions. It's smaller and quicker to set up than a full, regular pedalboard.

Here, my dulcimer is plugged into a Headrush Gigboard that's stringing together an octave effect, a bit of overdrive, a "chorus," some reverb, and (once it gets into space) a delay. At home, in advance, I got the effects the way I liked them, and I saved the "rig" so I wouldn't have to worry about knobs accidentally getting turned.

That's the geeky tech talk. Translated into English, I selected a bunch of things off of menus until it sounded good, and then I played the song. I used my Rod Matheson electric chromatic, tuned DAD, in D major. I hope you enjoy it.