Indian Territory Dulcimer Celebration E-Newsletter
"Practice, Practice, Practice"
May 2004 Volume 24, Number 5Sections:
| This Month | From the Prez | Practice |
| Last Month | Lucille Reilly Concert |
How do you get a hammered dulcimer player to slow down?
Have them play from sheet music!
This Month
Meeting: Saturday May 15, 2004 5:30 pm.
Mothers day is just behind us, but moms are still important, how about a tune for mom!
From the Prez.... Upcoming Events and festivals
Well, gee, I've been to three dulcimer festivals since the last time I wrote something! Got so tied up having fun that I just flat didn't get anything done last month, and I'm liable to be late for this one! Dana's probably going to clobber me with some old reject guitar that didn't turn out right for him!
I can say one thing to all of you about the festivals: please find a way to go to some of them. We always have someone at the club meetings to help folks learn things, and we swap tunes and learn new ones from time to time, but there is just nothing like going to a bunch of workshops from really talented and knowledgable dulcimer folks "from away" to help us pick up on some things we've wondered about in the past. And the best part of all is seeing old friends and meeting new ones who quickly become old ones!
So where have I been? In March, I went up to Evansville IN to the Ohio Valley Gathering. This was my first trip to this event. Over 400 folks at that one, I was told. That was fantastic! They alternate locations, and next year it will be in Lexington KY. Then, in April, we went to the Dulcimer Jamboree in Mountain View AR. They have three-plus days of workshops and mini-concerts and evening concerts and contests, and it's really a treat to get over there to just get away and do the dulcimer thing. This year it was wet (really, really wet), but it didn't rain indoors. Let's see, this was the 23rd year that I've been to that one. Okay, just this past weekend, we went down the the annual LSSDS shindig at Glen Rose TX. Great weather, good music, lots of wonderful instructors and performers. I think we've only missed one or two of the 23 years they've held that one down there, and it has always been fun.
What's coming up? Well, not too much real close to Oklahoma, but I think that this weekend over on Indian Point Road south of Silver Dollar City, there will be a gathering for mostly MD people. Linda Brockinton is teaching, and the Cedar Creek people were putting on some building workshops. I had thought about dropping over there on Saturday, but can't do that! It's our club meeting night, so I'll see a bunch of you there. If you do take the trip over there, tell them howdy from ITDC, okay?
Dennis.
Lucille Reilly Concert ... Free! June 8, 7PM.
Lucille is a Winfield Champion of both the Hammered Dulcimer and the Autoharp. She will be playing at a free concert hosted by the Oklahoma Methodist Mannor on Tuesday, June 8 at 7PM. To find the concert, go to the main building closest to 31'st street, then (if nobody is at the main desk) at the hall just behind the main desk go to the right and follow the hall to the end. The concert is in the Flemming center, there is no admission charge.
Lucille Reilly, The Dulcimer Lady® and Music Associate of St. John's Cathedral, is a graduate of Westminster Choir College and a Melodious Accord Fellow, as well as an award-winning performer on both hammered dulcimer and autoharp (1997 National Hammered Dulcimer Champion, 1994 National Autoharp Champion, and International Autoharp Champion in 1995 and 2003). Her long list of performance venues include The Academy of Music, Philadelphia; The Governor's Mansion, Denver; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Ozark Folk Center, Mountain View, Arkansas; City Stages, Birmingham, Alabama; United Methodist Council of Bishops; Westminster Choir College; The Philadelphia Folk Festival; Sore Fingers Summer School, Kingham, England; Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, Newport, Pennsylvania; Original Dulcimer Players Club, Evart, Michigan; New Jersey State Council on the Arts; Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park; and on numerous concert series. As an instructor, she is dedicated to teaching dulcimer players and autoharpists how to sing through their instruments by increasing their technical facility through ease of playing.
The author of two instruction books for hammered dulcimer and a monograph series for autoharp, Lucille has composed several choral works and recorded one compact disc.
Gilcrease Rendezvous
It was great to have the original Gilcrease Museum Rendezvous back again. The efforts and work of the "gillies" and staff, for the many art presentations and activities around the museum grounds were very obvious. They all put out a great effort for this 25th Rendezvous celebration.
Attendance was not as large as hoped for, due to the many other area activities in surrounding cities and communities this past weekend. Also, the seven year lapse of the real spirit of rendezvous contributed to the loss of many past interested patrons and guests.
Becky, Jan and I spent about 14 hours Saturday and Sunday playing Dulcimer Music, and promoting the ITDC to a lot of interested people. It's astounding the number of people who own a Dulcimer but still have never played it. Hopefully about 20 of the visitors will come to some of our future meetings and learn "to pass a good time" with their Dulcimer.
All of the vendors and exhibitors in the Vista Room enjoyed and praised our music so hopefully the club should be invited back again next year, or for some future events.
Gary Brunk
Practice
I think the biggest impediment to learning music is the idea that it has to be practiced. That smacks of work! This is supposed to be fun, so I strongly suggest keeping it fun. Play as much as it is fun, and as long as it is fun! One exception to my previous rule however: When you are first starting on the mountain dulcimer, stick with it for a few weeks so your fingers can adjust to the new pressure of the strings.
So in the vein of having fun, how are we going to just have fun and not practice? Well, one way is to play with a friend! That accomplishes several things to improve your dulcimer playing. Playing with somebody else requires timing. It is not as easy to work on our timing and cadence when we play alone. To do that alone some people use a metronome, but in my experience that stops being fun real quick! I never have been good at playing with a metronome, but playing with other people is much easier. Then playing with people always gives you the opportunity to blame all the wrong notes on them! A distinct advantage!
Whether or not you play with a friend, or a gang of em, I am more likely to play if I have a regular time set aside. Everybody knows when to get together. Just like a favorite TV program or club activity, that section of time is reserved for playing music. That helps me a lot with a group, or alone. With me I do most of my solo practice in the morinings in the winter waiting for the wood stove to heat the house. In the Summertime I play on the porch in the evenings and watch the cars go by. Although the time of day changes with the seasons, I try to keep some time set aside for playing.
I think of my alone time as experimenting time, not practice time. The idea of experimenting makes it more fun and desirable to me than practicing. Plus I give myself permission to make creative mistakes, often this is where new musical ideas come from.
Just spending time with an instrument doesn't make us any better however. So now the question seems to be: how can we have fun, and be more likely to get better at the same time? No two people are alike, but I can say what has worked for me. I try not to play the same way each time. Playing the same way as the last zillion times just makes it more difficult for me to play music some other way. One way of breaking up the repitition is to play different tunes each time. Another thing that helps me is to play in a different place. Outside, inside, the living room, porch, wherever. I personally have a musical instrument in my cubicle at work! They dont object either... I play at lunch sometimes if there is time available. That happens once or twice on most weeks. A way I change the experimentaion is to play with the lights out! The music sounds worse, because I cannot see to hit the notes optimally, but I play anyway, and listen more closely. That helps me spot areas I can work on later. Try it!
Memorize the music! It really helps. The sooner I get away from a written version of a tune, the better it sounds because I am just listening like anyone else hearing me play it.
Another thing I do is think of what I would like to do better. Either a new tune, a new technique, a new skill, or something. Whatever you need. Can you play chords? Try playing only chords and sing along. (I prefer to do this in private! -- my friends like it that way too!) Play the melody and the chords at the same time. Then try to keep the melody sonicaly seperate from the accompanyment. One thing I have tried doing is tapping my foot as a drum beat, not just to keep the rythem, but to add color to the music. Try to tap a rythem pattern while you play by yourself sometime.
Changing the volume has helped me get better. Playing softly and fast is very interesting, for some reason the music becomes more beautiful when it is played softly. More volume control and expression possibilities I suppose.. but be sure to experiment with it. Using variations in volume, try playing the chords louder than the melody just to get used to changing things around.
Then the next trick, which I personally have not mastered, is avoiding repeating my mistakes. Mistakes usually happen when I play too fast. So by playing fast when I am in my experimentation time until the mistakes disappear I know how fast I can possibly play that tune. When anybody is listening it needs to be about half that speed to come out without mistakes, due to the nervousness of having an audience.
Although I have spent time just doing some specific skill in a practice like repetition, by experimenting with the skill I can try to do it better without making drudgry out of the process.
To help keep my music fresh, I try to learn a new tune each month. In my case I try to write a tune a month! That is a whole seperate subject, but the freshness keeps my experimentaion time from becomming dull and something to avoid. I hope some of these ideas are helpful. Let me know if any of them work for you!
One last thing, I have heard of people playing while in pain. I think pain is my body's way of saying "dont do that". It is a internal warning I take if I possibly can. When I have a commitment to play in public, I may have to "work around" pain. When I have a sore muscle or joint and need to play , I switch my fingerings to rest the injured area. I try to keep the audience from knowing that I am not using the same fingers I usually do, it is none of their business. I just compensate, learn yet another skill, and it gives me something to experiment with.. By the end of a long gig, that may be happening a lot!
Dana
Last Month
Dana