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.

Spontaneous Exploration

Getting to have Nora with us is a rare treat. She liked the new tuning so very much she just would not quit playing the two tunes we worked on........over and over and over and over....hhhmmmmmmmm.......

Since Madelyn retired we have noticed a quantum leap in her playing abilities. GO Madelyn!

Carole found two 1-3-5 tunes in a book we have had for a very long time actually. The book is called Early Music for 3-string Dulcimer by Carrie Crompton. The book contains 23 pieces from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque periods. This style of music sounds very "right" on the dulcimer.

Sacajawea, (aka Carole) guided a small band of intrepid explorers into previously unknown territory. The 1-3-5 tuning has catapaulted the diatonic dulcimer to a place as close to chromaticism as it will ever have (with the present fretboard.)

There is a very ambitious web page that will keep you busy for a very long time reading and digesting a great deal of information on this tuning: www.mountaindulcimer-1-3-5.com/ There are 5 or 6 Christmas tunes offered in tab amongst those in their archives.

It has been suggested that this is the most important innovation in dulcimer playing in 50 years.

The usual 1-5-8 of D A D ....Myxolydian -- key--of D..... becomes 1-3-5---D F# A. You remain in the Myxolydian mode and the key of D but are now given many possibilites for using accidentals and creating otherwise not possible lush chords. In this tuning you are able to play in B minor, D major, or A major without retuning or using a capo. It certainly is worth our time and effort to see how it works and how we can use it.

Happy Halloween

These musicians are multi-talented. Their feet as well as their hands make music. Wednesday is the day that this group clogs before noon and then --- most of them----after sharing a lunch out---move on to wherever the group is meeting to play their dulcimers.









Marilyn has hosted the group at her home for quite some time. Madelyn has also had the group at her place, and now Mary has been so kind for a couple of weeks. Sally has the beginners group at her home on Sunday evenings. It would be nice for all of us to get together once a month or every two months to put that combined dulcimer energy out into the universe. Call Madelyn if you have a line on a meeting room large enough to house us all.









Maybe the Christmas music books we have ordered will arrive by next week so that we can start playing the list of songs we decide to work on. Be ready to speak up with your favorites.









Carole and Sylvia are preparing a couple of workshops on specific skills. The first one will be "Learning to use the basic chord positions in the key of D." The chords move up the fretboard in groups or "clusters." I do not have a scanner, so hope these pictures are clear enough that you can get started on becoming familiar with the patterns. I will have a hard copy hand out when we get together.

Don't forget that last 10 minutes of every class for solo-duet performance practice.

Do you have that extra set of strings yet? Carole says------melody----012

middle-----014

bass-----wrapped nickel 022