A little Music
December 5, 2021
My good friend, Bill Friel, in Indiana and I 'got together' on video and played a cover of Here Comes the Sun. Something he pointed out that I had noticed but hadn't thought much about - in the background, I have 49er things up on the wall, and he is wearing his Indianapolis Colts shirt while playing. So we both support our local sports!
I have been practicing which is a good thing. I should be a lot better than I am at this point but I found myself distracted. Background story here is that I recorded this on my friend's birthday and sent it off to him and he then made a video of himself playing along with the video and then I had an extreme crash course in Adobe Premiere to put them together and then Bill added some nice opening and closing credits to the piece. We are now working on a holiday piece which involves vocals (cringe) so hopefully it'll come out nicely and I'll post that here.
A shot from the video
I am trying to get over 'stage fright' when playing the hammered dulcimer. I have never had stage fright before on any other instrument, but besides the piano, I haven't really played anything that requires accuracy and the kind of muscle memory the hammered dulcmier requires. It is a strange instrument - a naked piano.
I first saw hammered dulcimers back in 1984 in front of Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston. I was on my honeymoon and there was a "core" of them and they were playing at the entrance to one of the buildings. My (first) husband, Al, said "When we get home, we'll look for one." He was always very encouraging and wanting to nurture my muscial abilities which were on fire back when I was in my early 20's. But, we completely forgot about it. I forgot about it until around 2016.
In about 2016, my husband, Eddie, directed my attention to a video on YouTube. It was a guy in Indiana, in his orchard, family gathered around, playing Tears for Fears "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" on a hammered dulcimer. Lightbulb. The memory came back and I told him all about it. I don't think a month even went by before we were building one from a kit from MusicMakers. The project started on a Thursday afternoon and I spent all day the following Sunday tuning. It had 66 strings so it took a while. When tuning, strings stretch, and you have to "rinse, lather, repeat" until they settle down and stabilize.
The first tune I picked out was The Sound of Silence, and I had a critic, named Oreo, watching and commenting. I was bad about practicing back then. I now have a hammered dulcimer set up in my office (was playing in my office in the video with my friend) so I can play whenever. One of the advantages of working from home!
So now we are working on a Christmas melody. I hope to have it worked out and posted sooner than later as the countdown to Christmas has really gone into full swing....
Until next time....