Midwifery

Carole is back in the wood. Gail, our clawhammer banjo player, is learning to play the dulcimer and needs an instrument. Luckily the supply of padouk in Carole's stash allows for her to have that best of all woods.

Got Us A Gig

The Shady River Band will be playing the "music of the season" soon at the Rogue Valley Retirement Center on "A" Street. The list of tunes we have chosen is as follows:

1. The First Noel

2. Silent Night

3. Angels We Have Heard on High

4. Go Tell It On The Mountain

5. Jolly Old St. Nick

6. Deck The Halls

7. Jingle Bells

8. Joy To The World

9. Oh Come All Ye Faithful

10. We Wish You a Merry Christmas

OBTW...Wendy called to report triumph in fixing her electronic tuner. She has a whole roll of black electrical tape, and is willing to take on any repairs involving non-functioning wires that you might have. We are certainly a multi-faceted group are we not??

Lynn is making the club house available to us for a Sunday night gathering. Mayilyn has emailed good directions to all. We look forward to meeting the new players, and learning how to play some chords so that we can "back up" a singer or instrument carrying the melody line.

Sally will be sending off our order for capos so please bring your money on Sunday eve if you have not already paid her. She figures with shipping they should run around $7.50 unless you are ordering one of the larger ones. We do not know how much more those will be yet.

Any of you observant enough to notice something special about the first image in this post? The peg box on this dulcimer has SIX tuning machines. The sound of six strings is, as you might imagine, much louder than the sound of three strings.

wild November

Wild November

Want a challenge? Think of another song that would fall into this minor tuning. See if you can ferret it out on the fretboard. We need to train our ears. Some of us are good at this already, some of us need to work on this important skill.

Wild November

Get yourself tuned to D-A-C. Remember to only change the pitch of the melody string. You will drop it one full step. You can use your electronic tuner....or sound the 6th fret on the bass string and make the melody string match that pitch. With these interesting tunings, accuracy is an absolute must. What should sound utterly lovely, will sound utterly awful-- if you are not tuned carefully.

So now you can play along with one of the devas on this tune. Wow--whooppee--we have become an interactive blog!!!

OBTW....on the subject of tuning...... after long lusting after the cord and contact mike that allows you to tune your instrument in a noisy room...today I bought one. Yup $12.95 at the local music store. They had one to fit my very old Arion tuner.

Sounds Heard Sunday

The Sunday group, that meets in Merlin, is racing through the book it seems. They have only three more songs to learn before they finish the book! Some are adding the bum ditty strum now too.




This is Dixie. She can read the notes as well as the tablature.

Sally's cockatiel sat on her granddaughter, Jessica's, shoulder and sang right along. So very good to see the next generation keeping the tradition alive. I will look in the back of the closet and see if I can find any more of the four cardboard instruments we had. If any of you still have a loaner out, let's round them up and have them available for visitors or beginners who don't have their own yet.

Suzanne is Sally's daughter. Her flute was a nice addition to the sound of the dulcimers. Did any of you tune to 1-5-7 and play Wild November again? The dulcimer can have so many voices. You are learning how to access them now. It was a real thrill to see and hear how you were able to sight read the new music last week.

Lyricist Amongst Us

Breda has written words to Southwind. Do you suppose it is her Irish heritage that enables such a poignant tale? The Irish do believe "There is Beauty in Tears." Nice job Breda. Adding voices to our tunes certainly does enrich them.