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mountain dulcimer
The 3 P's of Practicing
It’s obvious. I preach (teach) about this all the time. If you want to make any progress in your playing, you’re going to have to practice. It’s unavoidable. It has to be done. But to see nay improvement, I think you also have to have the right attitude. And that’s what we’re going to look at today … the 3 P’s of Practicing.
- Perseverance: There are going to be challenges. At times we’re going to feel like giving up. What separates the people who master playing an instrument vs. t…
Practicing as a Child vs. an Adult
I am a senior now (our son calls my husband and I the “geriatrics”), and there are a lot of things I didn’t like to do as a child that now I crave time to do as an adult. For example …
- Reading: Some of my grandchildren find reading boring, and their parents have to insist they get their noses out of their devices to read a real book. As an adult, I never go anywhere without making sure the Kindle app on my phone is loaded and ready to go with my latest mystery.
- Eating My Vegetables: Well,…
+Extra Frets+
The question about whether to add extra frets to a standard diatonic mountain dulcimer does not elicit as dramatic a response as it once did, because so many players and builders have already made the 6+ or 6 and 1/2 fret standard on their instruments. (The 13+ fret is an octave higher of the same fret.)
These days, more and more people are requesting and delighting in the addition of the 1+ or 1 and 1/2 fret to their instrument.
What is the deal with these extra frets? What do they give me …
Teaching a Dog New Tricks
In the past, I wrote a few newsletters about our cocker spaniel named Keyla, but she has been gone for two years now. And so, last week we finally got a new dog. Her name is Peaches. She is a cocker spaniel, and we “rescued” her from a breeder.
Since Mike and I are older and more prone to falls, we need to be able to walk Peaches without her jerking on the leash and lunging forward. So I have been consistently trying to teach Peaches to “heel” on every walk, and while walking today (and sayi…
Expectations vs. Reality
Back in the day, long long ago, I taught a combined classroom of 6th,7th, and 8th graders and I was also the volleyball coach for the school. Boy, were we pumped! We thought we had it going! We expected to win the city championship.
But as the season progressed, we had to face reality. I actually don’t remember winning a single game (but that was a lot of years ago). The reality just didn’t match our expectations. Now I wasn’t a very good coach, and we came from a really small parochial schoo…
The POWER of Your hands
What if someone were to create a YouTube video on your hands? What if someone wanted to tell your story based on the life of your hands?
What would we see?
Like all of us, the story would begin with the shot of an infant’s fist, followed by a close-up of your tiny hand wrapped tightly around your mommy’s finger. Then what?
I would look through the photos in an old album your mother saved, and crop a picture showing your hand hanging on to a chair as you learned to walk. I might showcase your …
Create a Portable Practice Space
Once you have established the perfect practice space in your home, it becomes difficult to envision practicing anywhere else. However, life occasionally necessitates being away from your designated space for extended periods of time (Steve can vouch for this!). In such situations, it is crucial to maintain your hard-earned and well-established practice routine. This is where the concept of a portable practice space comes into play.
Whether you find yourself needing to practice at work, school,…
The Value of Journaling
Throughout high school and college, I filled scrapbooks with souvenirs from the fun times I had. It held pictures, tickets, programs, and mementoes from my adventures. It was a treasure trove showing not only my exploits, but also the milestones in my life as I grew into adulthood. My scrapbooks served as tangible reminders of my favorite experiences and the joy I derived from them.
I don’t do scrapbooks any more. But I believe in journaling. It’s a fantastic way of documenting progress and r…
Why Don't I Practice More???
Weren't you totally excited the day you brought home your first dulcimer? I imagine you practiced 'til your fingertips were sore, or your arms felt like they were falling off from wielding those two hammers. But then, as days or weeks went by, the time you invested in practicing decreased ... maybe even stopped altogether. You found excuses to push practice time to the back burner. I wonder why this has happened to so many of us.
Well, I have some thoughts about this (of course). Let's …
How to Memorize
As I’ve gotten older, I’m finding it more difficult to memorize music. And I need to memorize the music, because my eyes don’t work like they used to … and it slows me down when I'm trying to read the music. So I began to search online for techniques that would help me memorize music more quickly and easily. Here are some suggestions I found.
- Stop telling yourself you can’t memorize music. Our brains are an incredible machine that have the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of digital me…
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