How I Got Here

Born in Tulsa Oklahoma, I grew up in a family of athletes. My father was a multi sport standout in college, and played Semi Pro baseball after. He even played competitive fast pitch softball until he was 55 years old. His sons, Gary, Les, and Don, not only took turns being bat boy for one of the 3 simultaneous teams he played for, but spent much of their recreational time in the back yard throwing the football around, having batting practice, or boxing lessons. As competitive as he was, Dad always was a giver…to his family and really anyone in need. At 85 years old he still is both..competitive and giving. He led by example in a quest for excellence and I must admit there was a lot of pressure on us to always do the best we could. And never leave ANYONE wondering if we had or not. There were a lot of times it would have been nice to just slack off and be a goof. And we did our share of goofing. But if it was an endeavor that was going to be measured in some way, then slacking was not an option. Fortunately he always instructed us with encouragement and praise rather than harsh critique. He also left no doubt that we should always conduct ourselves with integrity, never saying there was something we could or would do if we couldn’t or wouldn’t. If we were caught bragging, we better be able to back it up, and never tell someone you would do something unless you followed up and did it. He lived that way, and the respect for him I’ve heard others comment about is always of the highest praise. That’s my Dad. He’s a great man.

My Mother…what a hoot ! As you could imagine, living with such a strong personality as my Dad, she had to have attributes to counter-balance him. It was her sense of humor, wit, and creative take on life that did it. From puppets she wore on her feet, propped up on the back of the couch, to putting grapes coated in olive oil in a bag for a Halloween party for us (a bag of eyes don’t you know), to her artistic talent and the joy she gets from painting…if I have any creativity I know I got it from her. She’s the type that could…and has…told a story at a relatives funeral that would have the mourners laughing to tears as she recounted the loved one’s escapades. How often I was embarrassed when she went off on a story about me as a little boy to one of my girlfriends…but even then I couldn’t help but laugh along. Apparently I was a tad ornery. But the flow of her words and the twinkle in her eye made that seem like a cute attribute. I’m sure I didn’t feel that way when I was getting in trouble for it. Time changes perspective doesn’t it ? Dad was simply no match for her. Anytime he got a bit too edgy in her opinion, that wit would take over and about all Dad could do was give in and change that edge into a grin and a twinkle in his own eye. My Mom…she is a great woman.

My Mom and Dad will soon be married 62 years. They sure are a cute couple. We are the luckiest of sons to have them both as parents.

It only makes sense that the three boys would grow up influenced by the people their parents are. My youngest brother by 4 years, Don…Super Jock ! 5 A State runnerup wrestler, All State Baseball, and All Regional Shortstop in college. Made the cut in tryouts for the St. Louis Cardinals a couple years out of college, but finally the home office decided he was to old. Too Old ? 24 ? Yeah, well it’s a young man’s game and they’re looking for teenagers. The great Ken Boyer told him he should be playing pro ball and to go try somewhere else. He never did though. Life was already underway. He’s a scratch golfer too…man, he can hit that ball 300 yards. I remember coming home for the summer from college and we started rough housing in the living room….putting on a few wrestling moves. I thought I would just show him who “da Man” was. I ended up only showing him a big knot on my head from hitting the floor. That was the last time I ever messed with him. He’s had a career as a coach and Vice Principal. He exemplifies the attributes of my Dad the most of the three of us. I know he has influenced many of his students in the same way.

Les, my middle brother by 2 years, took a different tack. He was very athletic too. But as a kid in 6th grade walking home from school, he passed some guys practicing their little rock and roll garage band. That day he told my folks he wanted a set of drums. Dad told him if he would save enough money for half the cost, he would pay the other half. Les got a paper route soon after that and for over a year got up at 4 a.m, 7 days a week to run it. The very minute he got enough for half a set of drums he quit. Mom and Dad let him set them up permanently in the formal dining room. He really hasn’t been anything but a musician ever since. By the time he was 14 he was the drummer in a fraternity party band. Before he was 16 he was making money with music. I had the driver’s license, so it fell to me to haul him around to gigs. At the time we weren’t telling Mom and Dad that one of those gigs was at the 500 Club, a dive off the side of the road by the Turnpike gate. Rough place. The owners told him to hide in the bass drum if they got raided. He also took up guitar about that time. If Les wasn’t sleeping or eating, he was playing his guitar. To this day he is one of my favorite guitar players. Funny how that ‘quest for excellence’ influence made it’s way into the creative side. He also is a great songwriter…my Mom’s wit, you can hear it in his words. He has come up with some of the funniest songs ! I always envied him…thinking how great it must be to be able to do that. To make music ! As a result, my next younger brother is probably one of my biggest influences. I’m guessing that it’s not all that common to have an older brother use his younger one as a roll model. Well..it happens. After I started building dulcimers, I gave Les the 3rd one I ever built. It was tuned DAA, and I never showed him a thing on it. It hung on his wall for a couple of years, then he started messing around with it…still in DAA. He only knew 4 songs total when he entered the National Championships for the first time…all original compositions done in his innovative fingerpicking style. Even with a pretty severe case of the nerves he placed 3rd. The next year, 1990, he came back and won it, again playing all original compositions. I’d tell you how he does it, but I can’t explain it. You’ll just have to watch him on the YouTube videos I have posted. Remarkable musician.

I’m the oldest brother. I guess if I had to categorize where I fit in, I’d have to say I’m a blend of my two younger brothers. A blend of the influences of both my Mom and Dad. I played little league, but my niche was wrestling. I ended up going to college on a wrestling scholarship…unfortunately I could tell you how many lights were on the ceiling of every gym in the conference. Get it ? When I…finally…graduated, I got married and went to work in sales. I had two wonderful, beautiful daughters, Sarah and Rebekah. As the years have past they have changed their roles to be my best friends. At 30 years of age, along came the dulcimer. Until then I didn’t do anything musical. I went to Silver Dollar City in Branson MO and saw my first one. After envying my brother Les for all this time, I still remember the rush of feeling “I could do that !!” I didn’t have the money to buy it though so I went to the library and got a book “How to Build a Dulcimore” by Chet Hines. His plans were substantial…read that as the thing was built like a battleship. I was too excited to follow them, so I took the key things and designed my own. I made it in one day out of 1/4? exterior plywood. It would have been better in a street fight than as a musical instrument, but it DID make music. I was hooked. As my building improved, my playing improved. There were no other dulcimer players around so I had to teach myself. I must admit, I sometimes feel more like an inventor than a musician or craftsman. Those are nice by-products of this strange drive I have to make what I do different from what’s already being done. I think I have my Dad to thank (blame ?) for that trait (neurosis ?) . In 1982 I went to Winfield and saw the competition for the first time. That inspired me to work toward that goal, and the next year I entered taking second. Year two I took second. Year three I took second. Sheesh ! The next year I didn’t even make the cut for the finals. That’s where my prime advice to anyone entering the National Championships originates : Play one you know ! Finally in 1987 I won first, playing all original compositions. Les and I are the only two brothers in any instrument category to win on the same instrument. I believe we are also the only two contestants in any instrument category to win with all original compositions. Thanks Mom ! The dulcimer has changed my life in so many ways. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever dream I’d be building and playing dulcimers for a living, or that I would ever play music with my brother. It has made me a better person, like a gentle hand smoothing off the rough edges. It has given me so many moments of fulfillment, whether it’s the stack of raw wood that now makes music, or the birth and growth of a new song, or being amazed and touched that something I might play would touch someone else. And the enrichment I have felt from meeting so many wonderful people in my musical travels is hard to imagine not having. Thank you all…Kids,  Friends, Brothers, Folks…for being a part of my life.

awayintwomangers-dulcimer-d

The Tab is written assuming dAD tuning. If the key included more than one note in the scale that is missing on the dulcimer, then I did not include it as a practical key. With just one note missing, very often you can skip, fake, bend, or otherwise adapt it. But when two notes in a 7 note scale is missing it is generally not practical. I discovered that the most likely notes that you can NOT have in a scale and often be able to still play the song is the 6th or 7th note of a scale. More often than not it is not in the melody anyway, or is just a passing note that can be changed to work. So, I have also limited the listed scales to those that the dulcimer is missing only the 6th or 7h note of the scale. Other notes of the scale are more likely to be a melody note you can’t do without. I have also included a run of pentatonic scales in various keys. In the folk genre, many melodies and improvisations are built around the pentatonic scale and I thought this might also be useful. I have developed a workshop in cross key playing that I will be teaching at festivals, with tunes that use these scales. Several songs on my Tab Page also serve as examples.

A little direction….if you don’t have a 1.5, or you are attempting to play a song in a scale that has a note missing on the dulcimer, you can try a number of things to make it work. Take a tune that has a 3+ fret in the melody line….and you don’t have one. You still may be able to play the song by replacing that note with something else. First place to start is play the “non-plus” fret on either side of it….IE, the 3 or the 4. True, in some songs the 3+ might be a highly necessary note to the melody of the song, and this won’t work. But, you would be surprised how often it does not detract from the integrity of the melody to replace it with a note you do have. For example, a run that reads 0 1 3 3+ 4 might sound just fine as 0 1 3 3 4 or 0 1 3 4 4. You can also try a harmony note of the 3+. I’m not adept enough to talk about harmony theory…but you can noodle at notes a step or two above or below the 3+ and see what that does to the melody at tempo. Many times the harmony note works and still maintains melodic integrity of the song as a whole. It’s just one note…and it harmonizes. Next, try skipping the 3+ all together. And example is that the 3+ is an 8th note that follows a 3. Instead try holding the 3 for a 1/4 note duration and skip the 3+. Many times the 3+ gets “insinuated” by it’s absence. You can also bend up from the 3 to get the 3+, but this is a highly developed skill to get accurately and to tempo. Why so many options ? Well, because in any given song, one will work better than the other. Again….sometimes it won’t work at all and you can’t play that song But it’s less often than you would think. Feel free to write if I can help as you study this. You can find the Tab for this exercise on my Tab page entitled Cross Key Scales .

Ready for a detailed list of rules ? Well, there is only one.

Rule - In counting out 8th notes in a measure, such as 1 and 2 and 3 and…. the numbers are all out strokes, and the “ands” are all in strokes.

It doesn’t matter if the note in the Tab is an 8th note, or a quarter note, or a dotted note, if it falls on a number in the count, it’s an out stroke. If it falls on an “and” , it’s an in stroke. It doesn’t matter if it is on one string or multiple strings either.

A quick and dirty visual approach that roughly tells what pick directions should be for multiple measures at a glance is to Alternate out/in the 8th notes, Always make the first 8th note beat of a measure an out stroke, Make any note that follows a quarter note an out stroke, and Treat hammers, pulls, and slides between 8th notes like you would a quarter note. This doesn’t account for dotted notes or hammer/pull 8th note trios, but you don’t have to count.

HERE is some tab to Illustrate. Requires TabLedit. Be sure to display both notation and tab. Or PDF version.  Count is above the Tab, Pick Direction is Below the Tab. Note that numbers are out, and “&” is in.

That’s pretty much it ! Simple huh ? As simple it is, it takes plenty of practice to be consistent. And you do need to reach a level of unconscious consistency . The word ‘mechanical’ is a threat to sound like a negative, and it is if it’s meaning is lifeless, dry, sterile, etc. But mechanical can also mean precise, smooth, clean, and fast. That is what reaching the unconscious consistency in your pick direction will bring you. You prevent the negatives with dynamics, syncopations, embellishments, touch, and arrangement.

Good Luck ! Please do email me if you have questions as you work on this.

This one comes from a user, with help from a Mac expert.

TABLEDIT: STEPS TO DOWNLOAD FROM DULCIMER CENTRAL FOR MAC.

1. OPEN TABLEDIT,  then click TABLEDIT CARBON, then click HIDE TABLEDIT CARBON.

1. CONTROL-CLICK ON TITLE

1. GET MENU: SELECT DOWNLOAD AS OR SAVE AS LINKED FILE

1. SAVE IN A DESKTOP FOLDER…IE: TABLEDIT FILES

DELETE TXT EXTENTION FROM TITLE : you will get warning (do you really want to do this. Click on DO NOT APPEND

From Aaron O’Rourke

Hold control and click on the file once. This should display a
few options. One of them should say “Open With” and have an arrow.
Tabledit should be one of the programs listed. If not then select
“other.” In the window that opens up I have to choose Desktop on the
far left to choose Tabledit. That should do it.

From Steven K. Smith

Work-around that seemed to work for me:
ctrl-click on the file name and choose “Download Linked File as…”
Choose the location to download to. I just put them on the desktop,
but I suppose you could put them anywhere you like. For reasons that
are unclear to me, my computer insists on adding a .txt extension to
the file after the download.
Click on the title to edit the name and delete the .txt. You’ll get
a “sure you want to do this?” requester. Click on “use .tef” On my
computer, it would now successfully open in the tef-viewer program.

The udu is a vessel drum originally from the Igbo people of Nigeria. Traditionally it was a water jug with another hole in the side, played by women for ceremonial music. The udu has become a very popular instrument in the West, and can be heard at least once a week on a television or movie soundtrack, if you know what to listen for.

Traditional udus are very hard to come by, but there are scores of contemporary makers in North America alone. Pictured is a traditional udu made from a porous clay. Although many udus are made from stoneware, more porous clay seems to give a better sound, but is unfortunately quite fragile.

Modern innovations of the udu are common and contemporary instruments have a much wider range of tones to traditional instruments … description from asza.com

http://www.soundjunction.org/whatisanudu.aspa?NodeID=1 this is a great site with photos and sounds