I spent most of the day doing not much of anything – I am so lazy sometimes!
This afternoon KRP and I went to Davis and I picked up a book that covers the basics of modes and dulcimer tunings. I have not played my dulcimers in years. I did remember that tuning the bass string to the key that the song was in and then the middle and melody strings to the bass string pitch at the forth fret. I know, I know, simple simon.
Sometimes I would just tune the melody string to the bass string. But now I think I need to figure a bit more out about it mostly because I have the time and all the free tabs assume you know what D ionian or mixukonin men . …
Yes I know that modes and keys are not the same thing.
So today I decided to figure out Aunt Rhodie as I know how it is suppose to sound and I figured that using a noter ( a stick of cut off dowel) and my old guitar pick I could thrash it out.
And just because I like to torture my readers I hooked up a tiny night vision security camera and an old microphone to the xp machine and made a video. Now not just any ordinary video mind you but one that I am sure I will regret sharing someday as right now I pretty much really suck at playing the dulcimer.
So here you go:
We’ll just consider this the before of a before-and-after series which you will post later after you practice. Mmkay,? lol
I shall drone on LOL
For every person who watches this video and thinks, “Boy, that’s terrible!”, there are probably 10 who think, “geez, I wish I could do that!”
If you can play music, any kind, on any instrument, at any level of skill, by all means do it. I regret every minute I didn’t spend playing music or dancing while I could.
I have to keep thinking Bagpipes – ha ha
but I am having fun. Using the noter is something I can do as I sure can not get my
fingers to cooperate to fret chords or notes most days.