New love

[kayre]

My church pre-recorded everything for Christmas Eve, so I was most oddly at home in my pajamas that night. I dropped in (online) on a couple of my past churches, and then a local church that I've been interested in... and in that last one, one of the musicians was playing a hammered dulcimer. I used to hear these occasionally as a teen and young adult, and loved the sound.

My birthday was two weeks later, and a slightly crazy friend gave me a very large check with instructions to do something special for myself. It was large enough to make a hammered dulcimer at least a possibility, but I didn't want to commit without trying one out. I reached out to a few contacts I have among the local folk music scene. After one dead end, I heard from someone willing to give me a demonstration and beginner lesson-- and he's the musician I heard on Christmas Eve! The next day I heard from another person, who had won a hammered dulcimer in a raffle and never learned to play it. She offered to loan it with possible option to buy.

Because of COVID safety, I turned down the intro lesson offer, and accepted the loaner. Within a couple of days I was in love, and offered what I couuld for her, and that was accepted. Her name is Val, short for Valery or valor or valium, depending on the day (and yes, she/her, though I'm not sure how binary she is).

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[cellio]

Congratulations! The hammered dulcimer is a fun instrument, and beautiful. (John McCutcheon was my introduction, and I once got what amounted to a private lesson from him, which was very cool!)

[gingicat]

Cool! I love the sound of hammered dulcimer.

And you continue to rock your hair color, too :)

[julian]

Awesome! Thank you for the video.

[hitchhiker]

sounds beautiful!

[otherbill]

I've been watching your Facebook posts with interest. :)

[sine_nomine]

1) OMG Hair color!
2) OMG you just started playing! Not fair that you sound so good already! :-)
3) OMG you're playing SEATED!!! Talk to me about angles of your stand and all.... because, as you know, one huge part of my not learning said instrument is that it is most often played standing up.

Wow thank you for sharing!!!

[kayre]

http://www.davidsdulcimers.com/hdstands.html

I've got the stand on the left, adjustable for sitting or standing. In fact I've got their complete Spinet package.

Do explore the difference between a traditional dulcimer tuning and a chromatic. Chromatic is like a piano keyboard-- but like a piano, if you are off by one string it can be very clashy. The traditional tuning is kind of strange, but things fall so that even wrong notes fit in the tonality, for the most part.

[amaebi]

Ahhhhhh!

[ranunculus]

That is very cool. Enjoy.

[kshandra]

Oh, I *love* hammered dulcimer. May you and Val have many happy hours together.

[amaebi]

*waves to Val and briefly dances a bell-and-kerchief dance*

[wordweaverlynn]

Oh, how very lovely. Thank you.

Full concerts always appreciated -- on whatever instrument.

[silkensteel]

That was delightful! I sort of wondered after the first few notes "I wonder what's more important, keeping the beat or pausing to get the right note?" and you demonstrated an answer pretty quickly. :)

[kayre]

That's actually a pretty complicated question! As a piano teacher my usual answer would be to go slowly enough to get the notes right within the rhythm. In performance I'd probably generally err on the side of keeping the rhythm steady, but as a beginner I'm cutting myself a bit of slack on that in favor of really learning, physically, where the notes are.