Clayville Spring Festival -- tunes, tips ... and an unabashed sales pitch ... for the weekend

We're combining forces of the Prairieland Strings and the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music for this weekend's Clayville Spring Festival ... I'm hoping we can have three or four people playing and talking with visitors, both afternoons, Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19 ... but we can make do with one or two, and we welcome as many people who want to play with us. The more the merrier!

Plans now are for us to play somewhere around the Broadwell Tavern. I hope to have more details to share with you at the Prairieland Strings session from 7-9 p.m. Thursday at Atonement Lutheran Church in Springfield. That's right -- it's the third Thursday already! Doesn't feel like it, but it sure is. We can go over some fun- and easy-to-play tunes getting ready for the festival, but we don't have to do that much to get ready. Festivals are easy. Here are some more thoughts on playing festivals (click here or scroll down to Monday, May 6).

If you haven't been there before, Clayville has as nice a village festival as you'll find anywhere in central Illinois! Local church and youth organizations from Pleasant Plains will sell brats, burgers and soda, and it will feature "Demonstrations of Pioneer Craftsmanship and Skills," according to the blurb on Clayville's website, including blacksmithing, spinning, pottery, corn grinding, black powder shooting and tomahawk throwing, a Buck-Skinner Encampment, 1860's Baseball hosted by the Springfield Long Nines, Chris Camp ("The Whip Guy") and ... among other attractions ... us!

Festivals are our best way of getting new members. (Just ask us where and when we started playing the dulcimer. Odds are we'll mention a festival where we met some friendly people who enjoyed making music and welcomed us.) Some of us had a dry run for the Spring Festival last week, and it went perfectly.

On Tuesday of last week a couple of us from the Clayville "academy jams" played outside the barn as Clayville hosted a hundred volunteers from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

It went splendidly!

Two of us were newbies from the beginners' sessions in January and February, and I was there more to fill in chords and harmonies ... and to hand out our flier to interested ALPLM volunteers. For a bunch of beginners, we were absolutely fearless!

So we shared a music stand, and we played through the tunes we've learned at our first-Saturday-of-the-month Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music sessons. "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," "John Stinson's No. 2," "Skip to my Lou," "Bile 'em Cabbage Down" (with lots of repeats, harmonies and variations), "Farther Along," "Shall We Gather at the River," "Amazing Grace," "Rosin the Bow" (a.k.a. "Acres of Clams") and a really very cool version of "Old Joe Clark" by Sr. Margaret Mary on the Everything Dulcimer website that I hadn't seen before.

We tried other new songs, too (new to me, at least), like "Old Gray Liza," a medley by the Three Rivers Dulcimer Association of eastern Washington state combining "Old Joe Clark," "Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm" and "Little Liza Jane." When it turned out we were trying to play a tune from the Internet that was tabbed out in G (I forget what it was, maybe "Ode to Joy?"), we tuned down to DGD and played right through it. When I started playing the dulcimer back when Old Joe Clark was still Young Joe Clark, it was several years before I felt gutsy enough to retune my instrument.

And all the time we had ALPLM volunteers milling around and chatting with us before they went off on tours of the Broadwell Tavern. It all came down perfectly because we weren't aiming for perfection, we were just demonstrating what we're learning in our sessions and publicizing our beginners' jams at Clayville and the Prairieland jams at Atonement.

Which is what we'll do at the festival. It ain't a concert, folks. We're out to show how much fun it is to play a musical instrument. Call it outreach. Call it marketing. Call it anything but a high-pressure concert performance. And, most of all, call it as much fun you'll ever have playing a musical instrument.

In the meantime, at last week's meeting of the Prairieland Strings, we came up with a tentative list of tunes we're comfortable with. Again: The festival isn't a concert, and the tunes we identified aren't a hard-and-fast playlist. They are:

• Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm
• Coleman's March
• Amazing Grace
• Lee's Waltz
• John Stinson's No. 2
• Happy Land
• June Apple
• I'll Fly Away
• Angelina Baker
• Black Mountain Rag
• Boil 'Em Cabbage
• Mississippi Sawyer
• Nutfactory Shuffle
• Old Joe Clark
• Whisky Before Breakfast
• Wildwood Flower
• You Are My Sunshine
• Rocky Top

Here's how festivals always work: We probably won't play all the songs on the list, and there are no doubt songs that aren't on the list that we will play. Last year we went out to Clayville with set lists, assigned intros and segues -- and we just sat in a circle under a shade three and played whatever we wanted to on the spur of the moment! And the festival-goers loved hearing a group of people having fun with music, whatever we played.

American Union of Swedish Singers website has list of songs / misc. choral music links

Hans Almkvist "Singing as a Bearer of Culture" (First published in Nordic Reach, 2003) Nordstjernan May 2009

Today, AUSS is a nice group of people with a median age of 60+ years, half of whom have a Swedish heritage. However, very few speak Swedish or understand the language. Most members are also lacking the Swedish singing from their early years.

This is a big difference from 100 years ago. At that time, all members understood and spoke Swedish and had a large repertoire of Swedish songs, most of which they had memorized. That, along with the need to create a new Swedish base, made it easy to bring people together in various Swedish choruses.

So the conditions have changed dramatically in 100 years. Has AUSS adjusted to the new situation? I don’t have a good answer to that question, but other than the reality of an overall dwindling membership, I have made one interesting observation. The music selection used today is almost the same as 100 years ago. The 2004 convention selection could qualify for a program from 1904 with a few exceptions, at least in regards to the male choruses. The women choruses, being much younger, generally have a more contemporary selection.

in Sweden

The Swedes are probably some of the most singing-minded people in the world. In a population of 9 million, over 500,000 are organized chorus singers. However, chorus members are not the only ones singing. At every wedding, birthday party or other similar celebration, sing-alongs are organized involving everybody, very often with original lyrics written for the occasion and sung to well-known tunes.

Swedes begin to sing early in life. Within homes, schools and churches, children are introduced to singing, both as individuals and in groups, everywhere. And the tradition continues. Once a week throughout the summer, Swedish Television airs an outdoor sing-along program called “Allsång från Skansen” from the amusement park Skansen in Stockholm. The show draws more than 10,000 audience members each week regardless of weather and has record viewers when televised.

Swedes bring the sing-along tradition with them when they move abroad. I have been invited to many “Swedish parties” in Connecticut that have turned into long nights of singing.

headnote by Ulf Mårtensson /ED Unfortunately, the situation of Almkvist’s group, like that of other groups within the AUSS, a member Swedish Council of America, is far from unique.

The point the writer makes is not that every organization should or has to do everything and anything in its power to survive into a new age. Times and people change; even well-established fraternal clubs such as the Rotary, Lions and Round Table are facing diminishing membership. The point the writer makes is solely that any organization with the means to change and the resources to do so should do so, not just for the sake of survival but to fulfill its honorable mission and resources.

Nordstjernan followed the Connecticut choirs during preparations for the Tjugondedag Knut Concert at Connecticut's Scandinavian Club in Fairfield... October, 2011 through January, 2012 ..the North Star Singers men's choir under the direction of Ernie Gunn and the Northern Lights Singers women's choir under the direction of Cameron Phillips.

repertory is almost entirely American light popular Christmas music

AUSS website has a page of English translations of Swedish songs Alla fåglar kommit re’n Gärdebylåten (which I didn't know had words!) Hosianna Joachim uti Babylon Vem kan segla förutan vind? at http://www.auss.org/translations.htm ... Click on the first letter of the title below. Remember that, in the Swedish alphabet, Å, Ä, and Ö come after Z.

Also worth checking -- YouTube Channel of Waukegan Swedish Glee Club at http://www.youtube.com/user/SwedishGleeClub ... lots of clips, some in Swedish.

Choral singing and socio-musical attitudes. A pilot project on choral singing under change -- research project description at Lund University -- abstract: In the first decade of the 21st century, there seems to once again be a social consensus that choral singing supports individuals’ musical and social development and that it creates a sense of community, which benefits the development of society as a whole. However, attitudes to choral singing have varied over the past century. While in Sweden people were speaking of the ‘Swedish choral miracle’, Theodor Adorno in Germany claimed that the Nazis’ use of choral singing had discredited the genre for a long time to come. ... The aim of this project is to investigate how the view of choral singing has changed over the past century. The positive views of choral singing in Sweden today are not a natural phenomenon but rather have developed through various debates since the 1930s. Content manager: Ursula Geisler. Page content last modified 17 Feb 2010

Prairieland Strings May 7: Getting ready for Clayville Spring Festival

Here's how plans are shaping up so far for the Clayville Spring Festival Saturday, May 18, and Sunday, May 19. Our Prairieland Strings group in Springfield and the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music folks will play on the porch of Broadwell Tavern ... that may sound like a lot of people, but it isn't since a lot of the same people are in both groups. I've committed us to be there both afternoons, and left the details to be worked out later ... so we'll need at least two or three people there all the time. The more the merrier, though! Please let me know when you can come.

If you haven't played a festival before, here are a couple of thoughts based on our Prairieland Strings experience at Clayville and the New Salem bluegrass festival:

• It isn't a concert performance. We'll have a card table set up (or an instrument case) with a flier about the Clayville beginners' jams, and festival-goers will typically come up and listen for a minute or two. If they like what they're hearing, they'll stop and chat us up for a minute or two. I like to tell them how easy it is to get started playing the dulcimer, and how much fun it is.
• Bring chairs.
• Festivals are the very best way for newbies to get experience playing music in public. Most of the festival-goers aren't paying a bit of attention to you, but they like hearing music off in the distance. So we can recycle the same tunes through the day. I know people who have survived entire festivals playing "Bile 'Em Cabbage Down" and "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."
• Bring chairs.
• Since it's a festival, there will be distractions. We're sharing our space with the 10th Illinois Cavalry, a Civil War reenactors' group who have a nice skit with lots of shoot-'em-up, damsels to rescue and villains to rescue them from. And I'll do an impression of an old-time shape-note singing master.
• But since it's a festival, you should feel free to get up and walk around. There's lots to see ... click on this link for some ideas:
  http://clayville.org/clayville_spring_festival_2013

• Bring chairs.

Since we'll have beginners from the Clayville sessions and grizzled veterans (read "intermediate") from the Prairieland Strings together, here are some thoughts about playing with people who have different skill levels from the Small Circle Tune Learning Session in Colorado's Denver-Boulder metro area. They're a "friendly and supportive group of musicians," and they "welcome all skill levels to play at a moderate and steady pace." They're able to bring the beginners up to speed by stressing "aural learning" -- learning by ear. Kind of like us.

Especially for newbies --

A couple of tips from the Small Circle folks on how to "pick up tunes in a session, with everyone roaring away but you." There's more at http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/learn.html.

• "Well, first of all, remember that listening IS practicing in Irish traditional music. It's not unheard of to spend 75% or more of your time in a session listening rather than playing, and it's generally considered a good thing, because when you're playing, it's much harder to listen, and listening and paying attention to what's going on musically (and otherwise) is key to becoming a good session player."
• If everybody else is playing up to speed, start to join in softly, one or two notes at a time, "... try to pick up just one phrase in the part, or even just a piece of a phrase. Every time that piece comes around, play it. Once you have it solid, try adding a note or two to that each time it comes round. After a while, you'll have the entire tune."
• "Never, ever, feel uncomfortable about putting your instrument in your lap and just listening to the tune everyone else is playing. Nor should you ever feel uncomfortable about humming the tune along with them until you know it. (Don't sing so loud that you put off anyone, though.) In actual fact, many players will respect your evident ability to respect the music and learn the tune ..."
• "Most importantly, remember -- this is supposed to be fun! Relax, give yourself a break and some time to get used to this. It'll pay off big in the future!

Some tab we may want to consider --

These are just a couple of songs I like. You'll have others. Bring your suggestions to Tuesday's Prairieland Strings session:

• A very straight-forward arrangement of "Rosin the Bow," aka "Lincoln and Liberty Too," by the Three Rivers Dulcimer Society of Richland, Wash., who call it "Acres of Clams," at http://www.threeriversdulcimersociety.net/Music/Acres_of_Clams.pdf ... ("Acres of Clams" is quite a song in its own right. Wikipedia has lyrics and history.)
• If you want a more elaborate version of "Rosin the Bow," with lots of ornamentation and doodley-doo's, Ron Zuckerman of HMDA has a nice arrangement at http://www.hsvmda.com/sites/default/files/tabs/RosinTheBeau2.pdf ...
• Chord sheet for "Be Thou My Vision" at http://www.worshiparchive.com/song/be-thou-my-vision in D at the Worship Archive website. Prints out as a nice one-page HTML text document. Nina Zanetti has DAD tab at http://www.ninazanetti.com/freetab.html on her website. Both a simplified melody and a more intricate arrangement with lots of nice ornamentation.
• Dulcimer tablature of "Farther Along" in DAD and DAA by Steve Smith of the Western North Carolina Dulcimer Collective on the everythingdulcimer.com website at http://everythingdulcimer.com/tab/Farther_Along.pdf. Six verses in four-part harmony (in D, no less!) on the timelesstruths.org website at http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Farther_Along/pdf/

Svenska Psalm-boken af år 1819 w/ Koralbok

http://books.google.com/books?id=137fB2LUgmMC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Svenska Psalm-boken af år 1819: förenad med Koral-bok och Svenska messan med körer för sopran-, alt-, tenor- och basröster (Google eBook)

A very funky tribute to Alan Lomax and his Sounds of the South field recordings

D R A F T

"Trials, Troubles, Tribulations" by Sharon van Etten and Justin Vernon duet Sounds of the South musicNOW -- uploaded by YouTube user nosnah227

http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2010/09/16/duke-performances-reimagines-sounds-south-hayti The Chronicle - independent daily at DUke University

By Andrew Hibbard | September 15, 2010

Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s 1961 release of southern field recordings, Sounds of the South, is an eight-disc extravaganza of delta blues, gospel and southern folk music entrenched in a rich cultural history.

And almost 50 years after its initial release on Atlantic Records, the project has found a new life in the hands of Durham band Megafaun and Richmond jazz collective Fight the Big Bull’s Matt White. With the vocal assistance of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and musician Sharon Van Etten, this supergroup of sorts is reinterpreting Lomax’s recordings, filtered through the present day.

* * *

But, if not odd, the reality of the project is certainly disparate. How does Fight the Big Bull, a contemporary, brassy jazz big-band, fit in with so-called indie folk trio Megafaun and two disarmingly beautiful vocalists, Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten? Moreover, how do they come together under the concept of recreating southern field recordings?

For White, the answer is simple.

“In the public point of view, we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum, but we’re informed by a lot of the same things,” he said.

Indeed, what inspires all of these musicians is an incredible awareness of and engagement with historical tradition. What separates them in all of their different form and genre-bending impulses is the trajectory the history takes them on.

“They’re totally willing to experiment. Lots of things sound right to their ears,” Greenwald said. “They’ve listened to an enormous amount of stuff…. There seems to be a totally sincere interest in all sorts of different sounds and all sorts of different ways of thinking about music.”

To be sure, the character of the Sounds of the South performances will be avant-something. But what fuels this impulse is the sense of tradition.

---

http://belatedbaby.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/in-case-you-missed-it-megafaun-justin-vernon-sharon-van-etten-do-sounds-of-the-south/ Belated Baby - by four duke students -- "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations" and a cover of Mississippi Fred Mcdowell's "Write Me a Few Lines" w/ links to reviews

Clayville beginners' jam Saturday -- "Amazing Grace" and "Rosin the Bow" -- WATCH THIS SPACE for links to some other songs we've learned so far ** plus a very cool African American variant of "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" **

Editor's (blogger's?) note: After trying the dulcimer tablature for a couple of arrangements of "Rosin the Bow" below, I've found one posted by the Three Rivers Dulcimer Society in Washington state that I think will be easier to learn, especially for beginners, so I am linking to it here

http://www.threeriversdulcimersociety.net/Music/Acres_of_Clams.pdf

... and revising some of the discussion below to incorporate the new tab (with my revisions in italics). It has a different title, "Acres of Clams," but it's the same tune. -- pe

New for next month's session of the Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music tune learning circle and teaching jam -- from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 4, at Clayville Historic Site, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains:

"Amazing Grace"

By request. There's dulcimer tablature in DAD, by Ron Zuckerman of the Huntsville (Ala.) Mountain Dulcimer Association, available on line at:

http://www.hsvmda.com/sites/default/files/tabs/AmazingGraceDAD.pdf ...

Here's a nice finger-picked version by YouTube user JustDulci, playing it as a memorial to her father on a mountain dulcimer that he built:

And here is a very traditional rendering by YouTube user LewDite, playing with pick and noter in DAA:

You don't have to be a Luddite to think an Anglo-Celtic folk hymn like "Amazing Grace" sounds best in open, modal tunings like DAA. It's best to learn it in DAD, however, since most dulcimer clubs nationwide play in DAD and most instruction books are written for DAD.

"Rosin the Bow"

This is a versatile tune. It was first published in the United States in 1838 as a drinking song for a young men's rowing club in Philadelphia, and it has popped up as an English morris dance and a fiddle tune in Scotland, Ireland and America. In Springfield the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club plays "Lincoln and Liberty" to the same tune, and on the west coast they call it "Acres and Acres of Clams."

Since Clayville was the scene of Whig Party rallies during the 1840s, I'll have lyrics and suggested backup chords for a song I'm adapting from Whig candidate Henry Clay's 1844 presidential campaign ready for you by Saturday. There are many other versions, too, including some that are not for polite company (click here for more about the song's checkered career). The melody, one of the grand old Anglo-Celtic tunes, is the same for them all, however.

Here's a very straight-forward arrangement by the Three Rivers Dulcimer Society of Richland, Wash.

http://www.threeriversdulcimersociety.net/Music/Acres_of_Clams.pdf

("Acres of Clams" is quite a song in its own right. Wikipedia has lyrics and history.)

If you want a more elaborate version, with lots of ornamentation and doodley-doo's, Ron Zuckerman of HMDA has a nice arrangement at

http://www.hsvmda.com/sites/default/files/tabs/RosinTheBeau2.pdf ...

Should it be spelled "Bow" or "Beau?" You see it both ways. Rosin (also spelled "resin") is what you put on a fiddle bow to give it tone, and "Beau" is an old-fashioned word for a handsome young man or boyfriend. Andrew Kuntz, in the Fiddler's Companion, suggests it was a nickname for a fiddle player.

Here it is on YouTube as performed by Bing Fultch:

SOME MORE ON "AUNT RHODY"

After April's session at Clayville, I went looking for dulcimer tablature that better reflected the lyrics and would be more fun to play, not necessarily in that order of importance (click here for as good a set of lyrics as any, at http://www.8notes.com/digital_tradition/AUNTRODY.asp):

Go tell Aunt Rhody, go tell Aunt Rhody,
Go tell Aunt Rhody that the old gray goose is dead.

The one she's been saving to make a feather bed.

The old gander's weeping, because his wife is dead.

The goslings are mourning, because their mother's dead.

She died in the mill pond from standing on her head.

Go tell Aunt Rhody that the old gray goose is dead.

Don Pedi, traditional dulcimer artist and radio host of North Carolina, sings a version recorded by Almeda Riddle called "Go Tell Aunt Nancy" with a wonderful set of lyrics detailing that the goose was hit in the head by a walnut and broke out grandpa's teeth, along with the teeth on a circle saw, a gray wolf, a black dog and a coyote, and other wonders to behold, when they tried to eat the tough old goose. Almeda Riddle's version is available on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75lHFZu1v24

We won't try to play it of course (for one thing, it's an a cappella vocal -- how do you play an a cappella vocal?), but this is worth a listen: A shorter version from a Duke University tribute to Alan Lomax' Sounds of the South field recordings, featuring trio Megafaun of Durham, N.C., and jazz band Fight the Big Bull, with vocalists Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten, singing a cappella, shows just how much you can do with this childrens' classic:

"Aunt Nancy," by the way, may have some in common with the West African goddess/folk hero Anansi. Independent scholar John Bealle, writing for the Alabama Folklife Association, explains:

... Arkansas singer Almeda Riddle sang "Go Tell Aunt Nancy" to the "Aunt Rhody" tune—a version she learned in her childhood that speaks to the alleged African American connections of the song. A key theme in Riddle's "Aunt Nancy" was that the goose was killed by a falling walnut. The gander and goslings mourn. When she is taken in and cooked, the family is stricken by misfortune—the fork breaks, grandma's teeth break, and the saw teeth break when she is butchered (Abrahams 1970a:117-120). Thus Riddle's trickster goose links the song, as folklorist Roger Abrahams observes, to the African American "Grey Goose" (such as the version sung by Leadbelly to a wholly different tune) where the goose exacts revenge upon her killers (178n47). And "Aunt Nancy" is the character "Anansi" from the West African story cycle, who appears in the Caribbean and parts of the U.S. with the "Aunt Nancy" name.

There's more in Bealle's introduction to a CD of 1947 field recordings titled Bullfrog Jumped: Children’s Folksongs from the Byron Arnold Collection. A list of Works Cited, including those referred to in the quote above, is available there.

"Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" - campaign song for William Henry Harrison

D R A F T

Something to pair up with the campaign songs from Henry Clay's 1844 presidential bid on the Whig Party ticket -- the famous, or infamous, "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" from President William Henry Harrison's successful "log cabin and hard cider" campaign in 1840.

An old-fashioned folk-singerly group's version, which I can't identify but surely is suitable for classroom use, uploaded by YouTube user KokoskaTeacher:

And a rather odd version by alternative rock group They Might Be Giants. There are several on YouTube, but this one has period graphics for the video:

Sheet music, apparently from a contemporary book, is also available on the Internet.

Swedish website with 1986 psalmbook "som melodipsalmbok på nätet"

Here's a website -- more accurately described as a cluster of blogs -- that looks like it might be useful. It's put up by a history teacher from northern Sweden named Andreas Holmberg, and it has sound files, video clips and historical notes on the hymns in Sweden's 1986 hymnal, or psalmbok ... at least the hymns that aren't under copyright.

http://svps1986.blogspot.com/

Holmberg explains:

1986 års psalmbok som melodipsalmbok på nätet

Detta är ett bara ett av många sätt att göra vår psalmskatt mer tillgänglig för nya generationer. Det bästa sättet är att gå i kyrkan och återupprätta husandakten, d.v.s. att regelbundet sjunga och spela psalmer tillsammans även hemmavid. OBS! Av upphovsrättsskäl kan inte alla texter och noter publiceras på nätet än. För de psalmer jag inte kunnat återge här hänvisas till papperspsalmboken. Kommentarsfälten får gärna användas, liksom min mejladress andreas.holmberg[at]skutan.eu

Holmberg also has a similar blog with sound files and YouTube clips of hymns in the German Lutheran hymnal at http://kirchengesangbuch.blogspot.com/

. Also shorter blogs with sound files of other hymnody-related topics, like Den blomstertid with songs for summer.

Holberg's profile: Född 1970 i Umeå. Uppvuxen i Luleå, lumpen i Boden, studerande i Ludvika och Lund. Gymnasielärare (historia o svenska) i bl.a. Storuman, Ovanåker och Bollnäs. Numera (2012) kantorsstuderande och -vikarie. Kristen och socialliberal. Trebarnspappa, pastorsman, folkpartist, iggesundsbo, EFS-are m.m. Det ni! From Iggesund, Hälsingland, 126 km north of Gävle and 262 north of Stockholm.

Some campaign songs for Henry Clay to the tune of "Rosin the Bow"

See also my posts of 2009 on the history, sources and variants of "Old Rosin the Bow" (along with "St. Patrick Was a Gentleman") and the lyrics of "When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea" ("Our campfires shone bright on the mountains, / That frown'd on the river below ..."), written in 1865 by an officer of the 5th Iowa Cavalry to the same tune.

Carl Sandburg, in his introduction to "Lincoln and Liberty Too" in the American Songbag, notes that the tune of "Old Rosin the Bow" was first used for campaign songs when Henry Clay ran for president on the Whig ticket in 1844. He quotes this fulsome example of the political songster's art:

So, freemen, come on to the rally,
This motto emblazons your crest:
that lone star of Hope yet is shining,
It lightens the skies of the West.
Hark! freedom peals far in her thunder,
Her lightning no force can arrest,
She drives the foul army asunder.
"Hail, gallant old Hal of the West!

Edifying, huh? But not all the political ditties went in for elevated rhetoric. Sandburg adds that when Horace Greeley ran against U.S. Grant in later years, "Then let Greeley go to the dickens, too soon he has counted his chickens" (American Songbag 167).

Other songs for Clay's unsuccessful presidential campaign, with political lyrics set to popular melodies of the day, were collected in The Clay Minstrel; or, National Songster, published jointly by Greeley's New York Tribune and a Whig publisher in Philadelphia. Excerpts and sound files available on line at Northern Illinois University's National Political Campaign Materials, 1840-1860 website (if you have the right software to play the sound files).

Screen shot below of one of the songs from The Clay Minstrel; or, National Songster: To Which is Prefixed a Sketch of the Life, Public Services, and Character of Henry Clay, ed. John Stockton Littell (New York and Philadelphia, 1843). (Google eBook):

St Patrick's Breastplate: A classic Anglican hymn for Trinity Sunday

Posted here now so I can learn the song for a solo on Trinity Sunday (May 26). ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE, incorporating a tune called DEIRDRE in the sixth verse, was No. 268 in the Episcopal Hymnal (1940) that I grew up with. Also commonly known by its first line, "I bind unto myself today," it was my confirmation hymn.

The Lutheran Book of Worship has it, omiting the sixth verse. The entire hymn is included in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (available on line at http://www.hymnary.org/hymn/ELW2006/450) , however. It is more than a thousand years old, and it has been ascribed to St. Patrick since the year 690 AD, when it was directed to be sung in the monestaries and churches of Ireland. Sometimes the hymn is known as "The Deer's Cry," reflecting an ancient legend that St. Patrick and his followers were changed into deer while singing it in order to escape a Druid high king of Ireland.

Several melodies have been written for the song, also known as a daily prayer of St. Patrick. As I know it, ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE combines words by Anglo-Irish hymnwriter Ce­cil Frances Alex­an­der with music by Charles Villiers Stanford, an Irish composer who taught in England's Cambridge University at a time when classical music was beginning to draw heavily on folk traditions.

"This hymn can be a chall­enge to sing with­out see­ing the words matched to the notes," observe the editors of the Cyberhymnal (linked below), "but it is a mas­ter­piece ne­ver­the­less."

They're correct on both counts.

The hymn is complex musically. As Wikipedia notes, "In many churches it is unique among standard hymns because the variations in length and metre of verses mean that at least three different tunes must be used - different in the melody sung by the congregation." The melodies (I count only two) are lovely Irish tunes, though, and they lend themselves to Celtic fingerstyle guitar arrangments.

What it sounds like

You hear elaborate arrangements of the piece, but melodically it draws on the modal harmonies of traditional Irish song. It lends itself to both settings.

So it can sound very different, depending on who's performing it and why.

At one extreme, perhaps, is the opening procession at the installation of the Right Rev. Andrew Dietsche as 16th Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of New York. Feb. 2 of this year at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The hymn begins at 3:19 and the sixth verse ("Christ be with me ...") at 8:21. While the acoustics on the recording are muddy, it shows the pageantry of a high-church Episcopal service at its most elaborate, with a descant on the last verse and variations on the organ afterward as the procession winds down.

\

Very different is American guitar virtuoso John Fahey's arrangement in A minor, here covered by YouTube user BD Shelton.

(Also on Shelton's channel and worth coming back to: Lovely arrangements of another Episcopal hymn, "In Christ There is no East or West," and "Tarleton's Resurrection" by John Dowland in an open D tuning.)

With its roots in Irish folk melody, ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE lends itself to folk arrangements.

In the 1940 hymnal, the melody modulates from G-minor to G-major, which presents a little bit of a problem on the mountain dulcimer, but I think I've worked out a decent compromise between what I want to do and what I can do by tuning my baritone dulcimer to GCgg and capoing on the first fret. That gives me, by my reckoning, A-minor on ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE and D-major chords on DEIRDRE.

All of this is a work in progress, however.

A little background

Stanford, who arranged the hymn, was a professor of music at the University of Cambridge in England, but his roots were in Dublin and he clearly had an ear for Irish song. In his day he was a well regarded composer of several symphonies, mostly in the style of Brahms, but now he is chiefly remembered for his influence on students including Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams, according to a magisterial profile in Wikipedia (I counted 149 footnotes).

According to Wikipedia, Stanford "liked and respected folk songs," perhaps especially "genuine Irish folk tunes" he incorporated in his orchestral works, and his church music "is dominated by melody." I know him best for having "restored and arranged" the Irish Melodies of Thomas Moore. He is one of the few authors I've ever read whose footnotes are entertaining! See what he said about "The Last Rose of Summer," for example. He had no patience for arrangers who didn't understand modal harmony.

At any rate, Stanford's arrangement of ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE and DEIRDRE dates from 1904. It was included in Vaughan Williams' 1906 hymnal for the Church of England, and it clearly respects Anglo-Irish folk traditions.

According to the Cyberhymnal, the text is a 19th-century trans­la­tion of a Gael­ic po­em called “St. Pat­rick’s Lor­i­ca,” or breast­plate ("A 'lorica' was a mys­tic­al gar­ment that was sup­posed to pro­tect the wear­er from dan­ger and ill­ness, and guar­an­tee ent­ry in­to Hea­ven"). Ce­cil Frances Alex­an­der, the wife of an Anglican bishop in Ireland, wrote her paraphrase in 1889 from "a care­ful­ly col­lat­ed co­py of the best prose trans­la­tions" of the original poem at the request of an Anglican dean of the Cha­pel Roy­al at Dub­lin Cas­tle. The Irish-language poem on which it's based is very old, dating at least back to the seventh century, when it was already described as a prayer of St. Patrick. Padraic Colum's Anthology of Irish Verse (1922, available on line in the Bartleby collection) has an unrhymed translation by Kuno Meyer.

Citing a collection of 11th-century manuscripts known as the Irish Liber Hymnorum, the Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship, ed Marilyn Kay Stulken (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) says:

According to legend Patrick and the Druid king Loegaire [mac Neill] met at Tara Hill, where a festival of the Druid fire-worshipers was about to begin with the extinction of all fires through the country. Patrick however, defiantly lighted a Paschal (Easter) fire on the Hill of Slane in full view of the King, when then set out to kill Patrick. In the pursuit, Patrick and his companions were miraculously transformed into deer and recited this hymn in flight; hence its title, "Faeth Fiada," of "The Deer's Cry."

Some performances available on YouTube:

• Another processional, more like what I remember growing up in the Episcopal church, at St. John's Episcopal Church, Detroit, on Trinity Sunday. The notes specify it was Hymn 268 in the 1940 hymnal.
• A baritone solo during the processional at St. James Anglican Church in Kansas City.
• A Christian contemporary vocal backed by guitar and flute (?) by YouTube users Moe & Erin Pacheco of Chicago: "An arrangement of the Lorica we put together for St. Patricks Day."
• Vocal with strummed guitar chords by YouTube user Marco Klaue of the Netherlands.
• Variations on "St. Patrick's Breastplate" by American composer Dwayne Milburn, commissioned in 2005 by Indiana University of Pennsylvania and performed there in 2012 (embedded below). Milburn is conductor of the Soldiers' Chorus and deputy commander of The U.S. Army Field Band.

Psalmodikon tab - Wår Gud är oss en wäldig borg (A mighty fortress ...) from 1819 psalmbook and Just som jag är (Just as I am ...) in Hemlandet

1. Johannes Dillner, Melodierna till Swenska Kyrkans Psalmer, Notarade med ziffror, for Skolor och Menigheten. Stockholm: Morstedt & Söner, 1830. Rpt. Charleston, SC: Nabu Public Domain Reprints, 2012. No. 124.

Shown here is the fourth verse, a free translation by Johan Olof Wallin (1819) of Luther's original.

2. Det Rätta hemlandet, ed. T.N. Hasselquist. Galesburg, Illinois, March 18, 1857.

From Oskar Ahnfelt's Andliga Sånger, which Hasselquist published month by month in Hemlandet. The melody is not the same one we hear now.

"Walking in the Parlor" - clawhammer banjo version of a southern Appalachian fiddle tune at just the right tempo

A really cool southern Appalachian fiddle tune in D ...

Like so many old-time string band tunes, it's often played at breakneck speed. But clawhammer banjo player Christopher Olson has a relaxed solo version, based ultimately on the "measured and tranquil" style of a noted West Virginia fiddle-playing family, on YouTube at ...

Olson's version is a cover of Scott Ainslie's recording on "Banjo Gathering." Ainslie posted this comment to YouTube: "This is deeply beautiful to me on a couple of scores: one, your playing and care are lovely, and two, a way of touching the banjo brought to us out of the 19th Century and early years of the 20th by Lee Hammons has successfully moved from his hands, to mine, and now to yours. Thanks. A lot." Certainly Olson's playing here brings out the old modal feel of southern Appalachian fiddle music, especially in the low course. User JanetB on the Banjo Hangout thread 09/10/2012 at 08:41:38, says most versions she knows are "very upbeat and lively. But if you listen to [author, folklorist and banjo artist] Stephen Wade's rendition on his CD Dancing in the Parlor, it's quite different -- he calls it measured and tranquil and says he based it on Lee Hammons' playing."

Lee Hammons was part of the Hammons family of West Virginia that Alan Jabbour interviewed and recorded in 1973 for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture. According to the Encyclopedia of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University, "For two centuries, the Hammons family of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, has maintained a distinctive style of traditional Appalachian music. ... Unlike the string-band and ensemble traditions of near- by Kentucky and Virginia, the music the Hammons family played was part of a larger West Virginia tradition of solo performance, presumably due to the relative isolation that lingered within certain sections of West Virginia well into the twentieth century."

Maybe they just made time to relax and feel the music. At any rate, it's a relief from the supercharged tempos that clog dancers so often prefer.

The tune is a good one, at any tempo.

Banjo Hangout has background, discussion and links to sound files dating back to the 1920s, at http://www.banjohangout.org/archive/244471. Andrew Kuntz says in Fiddler's Companion:

WALKING IN THE PARLOR [1]. See related tune "Trude Evans." Old‑Time, Breakdown. USA; West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas. D Major. Standard tuning. AB (Silberberg): ABB (Brody): ABA'A'B'B' (Krassen). A melody with minstrel-era origins, although some hear distinct echoes of the English morris dance melody “Shepherd’s Hey.” The tune was mentioned in an account as having been played at a LaFollette, northeast Tennessee fiddlers' contest in 1931. The title (as "Walk in the Parlor") appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountian fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Wilson Douglas (Ivydale, W.Va.) remarks it was noted W.Va. fiddler French Carpenter's favorite tune, and says of its origins with his mentor:

***

A lady composed that. She was a fiddler and a top square
dancer. She lived during Carpenter's time, but she was old.
French said she played that tune and nobody could beat her.
That's where he learned it. Her name was Trod Evans. She
was a lady fiddler.

***

Indeed, the tune is sometimes called “Trude Evans.” It took five years, according to Douglas, for him to learn the tune with "the proper time at the proper time, or the proper rock, or the proper swing, or the proper shuffle." Despite its minstrel beginnings Gerald Milnes found a version with topical references regarding the nature of John D. Rockefeller (Milnes, Play of a Fiddle, 1999). Sources for notated versions: Highwoods String Band (New York) [Brody, Phillips]; John Hilt (Tazewell County, Virginia) [Krassen]; Wilson Douglas (W.Va.) [Phillips]; Charlie Acuff [Phillips]; Oscar ‘Red’ Wilson [Silberberg]. Brody (Fiddler’s Fakebook), 1983; pg. 284. Krassen (Masters of Old Time Fiddling), 1983; pg. 114‑115. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 1, 1994; pg. 252 (two versions). Silberberg (Tunes I Learned at Tractor Tavern), 2002; pg. 164. Spandaro (10 Cents a Dance), 1980; pg. 6. Anachronistic 001, John Hilt (Va.) ‑ "Swope's Knobs." Document 8039, “The Hill Billies/Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters: Compoete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vol. 1” (reissue). Paramount 33153 (78 RPM), Dr. D. Dix Hollis (Ala., 1861‑1927), 1924. Rounder 0047, Wilson Douglas (W.Va.) ‑ "The Right Hand Fork of Rush's Creek" (1975). Lee Hammons ‑ "Shaking Down the Acorns." Rounder 0023, Highwoods String Band ‑ "Fire on the Mountain." Rounder 0089, Oscar and Eugene Wright ‑ "Old Time Fiddle and Guitar Music from West Virginia." Rounder C‑11565, Eugene Wright ‑ "Rounder Fiddle" (1990). In the repertoire of Luther Davis, Galax, Va.

Available at http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/WAL.htm (scroll down directory).

When Aunt Rhody's Irish Eyes Are Smiling (even though the Old Gray Goose is Dead) at Clayville - tunes for Saturday, April 6

We'll introduce a couple of old standards Saturday morning at our second Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music tune learning jam session (from 10 a.m. till noon, with some tips for beginners at 9:30 ... details here on the Clayville.org website). They're the chorus to "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" and the American folk song "Go Tell Aunt Rhody,"

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"

"When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" was written in 1912 by Chauncey Olcott and George Graff Jr. and set to music by Ernest Ball, for Olcott's production of The Isle O' Dreams, an early Broadway musical. It's one of those "foyne Oy-rish" songs that was later made famous by Bing Crosby, 200 other recording artists, and (I am not making this up) a 1985 duet by Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Shelley Stevens has dulcimer tablature in the archives for March 2005 on her website. Technically, it's for the chorus only. Like a lot of early Broadway and Tin Pan Alley songs, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" also has an introductory verse that hardly anybody remembers. The legendary 1920s-vintage 78rpm recording by Irish tenor John McCormack has both verse and chorus at ...

We're just going to do the chorus Saturday. If it was good enough for Bing Crosby, (and it was), it's good enough for us! If you want to work up the song as a solo with both the verse and the chorus, there are lyrics and backup chords in D on the GuitareTab.com website and four-part barbershop harmony on the Barbershop Harmony Society website. Singing harmony with a barbershop quartet is not for the faint of heart, but the sheet music here is also in D if you're interested.

"Go Tell Aunt Rhody"

A favorite children's song, one that most traditional Appalachian dulcimer players learned very early in the game. (Think "Boil 'em Cabbage" but with a catchy melody!) Dulcimer tab by Terry Lewis of the North Georgia Foothills Dulcimer Association (NGFDA) has dulcimer tab for melody and harmony below at http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/u/dulcimer/AuntRhody.jpg. Guitar chords (or backup chords) in D at http://oldgleaner.com/images/music/AuntRhody_D.jpg. We play the same chords on a dulcimer, or any other instrument.

"Go Tell Aunt Rhody" (or Nancy or any one of a half dozen other names) is related to the shape-note melody SWEET AFFLICTION ("In the floods of tribulation ..."), and it has been assigned to sources as varied as the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and African-American tradition. Most plausible answer, according to folklorist John Bealle, is it may owe something to both sources. Writing for the Alabama Folklife Center, Bealle has "reviewed the various arguments ... in detail," but acknowledges "this may well be beyond the interests of many readers." The YouTube clip below shows California singer-songwriter Renee Winter playing a duet with her mother. Watch her mother, on the right, playing chords, harmonies and other fancy stuff.

Also, you ought to watch "Strumelia" teaching this "quintessential beginner's tune for [traditional Appalachian] noter-drone type playing." She tunes her dulcimer differently (to DAA instead of DAA) and she uses a noter, or hand-held stick, to sound the notes. But that's the authentic sound of the mountain dulcimer. And Strumelia, who is an accomplished musician from upstate New York who fell in love with the authentic sound of southern Appalachian music, has a series of YouTube videos that offer the best introduction available on the Internet. This video is 9:37 minutes long, but it'll be the best 10 minutes you've ever spent with your dulcimer!

A few more tunes

We already have tab for some of these, either for our sessions at Clayville or the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club in Springfield. But here are links to what's available on line:

• "Farther Along" http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/Farther_Along.pdf
• "Be Thou My Vision" http://www.ninazanetti.com/freetab.html (click on the easy version)!
• "Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm" - scroll down EverythingDulcimer.com directory to "Gray Cat" by Lee Cagle http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/tab/GrayCatTablow.jpg
• "Old Joe Clark" - scroll down directory to "Old Joe Clark 1" by Sr. Margaret Mary or click on http://everythingdulcimer.com/tab/Old%20Joe%20Clark.pdf
• "Shall We Gather at the River" - http://www.thedulcimerhymnal.com/blog/post/This-Weeks-Dulcimer-Arrangement-Shall-We-Gather-at-the-River.aspx

Prairieland Strings April 2 - "Be Thou My Vision" and learning tunes by ear

At our last session of the Prairieland Strings, we made a lot of progress learning a couple of difficult tunes. But it was kind of a hard slog after a while, and some of us decided -- let's have a little fun at our next jam. That's coming up Tuesday (7 p.m. at Atonement Lutheran Church in Springfield), and we've selected some tunes we want to play that are:

1. Fun to play; and
2. Easy for beginners to pick up by ear.

By ear? He say what? Did he really say "by ear?" How can anybody learn a song by ear? Especially beginners! Well, don't be intimidated. Tuesday's session is especially for beginners. But it's also for more experienced players who want to be less dependent on printed tablature.

You see, we're modeling some of what we do in our sessions -- especially the learning jams out at Clayville -- on the Small Circle Tune Learning Session in Colorado's Denver-Boulder metro area. They're a "friendly and supportive group of musicians," and they "welcome all skill levels to play at a moderate and steady pace." They're able to bring the beginners up to speed by stressing "aural learning" -- learning by ear. It's especially important in Irish trad music, the type they play at Small Circle sessions, since Irish musicians tend to have an attitude about printed music. But it can help us, too, especially when we're playing at a moderately brisk tempo.

A couple of tips from the Small Circle folks on how to "pick up tunes in a session, with everyone roaring away but you." There's more at http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/learn.html.

• "Well, first of all, remember that listening IS practicing in Irish traditional music. It's not unheard of to spend 75% or more of your time in a session listening rather than playing, and it's generally considered a good thing, because when you're playing, it's much harder to listen, and listening and paying attention to what's going on musically (and otherwise) is key to becoming a good session player."
• If everybody else is playing up to speed, start to join in softly, one or two notes at a time, "... try to pick up just one phrase in the part, or even just a piece of a phrase. Every time that piece comes around, play it. Once you have it solid, try adding a note or two to that each time it comes round. After a while, you'll have the entire tune."
• "Never, ever, feel uncomfortable about putting your instrument in your lap and just listening to the tune everyone else is playing. Nor should you ever feel uncomfortable about humming the tune along with them until you know it. (Don't sing so loud that you put off anyone, though.) In actual fact, many players will respect your evident ability to respect the music and learn the tune ..."
• "Most importantly, remember -- this is supposed to be fun! Relax, give yourself a break and some time to get used to this. It'll pay off big in the future!

Here are the tunes for Tuesday night's session. Two of the three you already know, and the third is a fiddle tune that's so easy it practically plays itself:

"Be Thou My Vision" (SLANE)

I'll introduce the song Tuesday, but it needs no introduction. The text is ancient Irish, dating from the 6th century, but the tune -- called SLANE -- was first paired with it in a 1919 Irish hymnal. The CyberHymnal, a very popular website, explains the legend behind the tune's title like this: "It was on Slane Hill around 433 AD that St. Pat­rick de­fied a roy­al edict by light­ing can­dles on East­er Eve. High King Lo­gaire of Ta­ra had de­creed that no one could light a fire be­fore Lo­gaire be­gan the pa­gan spring fes­ti­val by light­ing a fire on Ta­ra Hill. Lo­gaire was so im­pressed by Pat­rick’s de­vo­tion that, de­spite his de­fi­ance (or per­haps be­cause of it­), he let him con­tin­ue his mis­sion­ary work. The rest is his­to­ry." However, Wikipedia weighs the evidence and concludes, "the folk song has little prior connection to the text."

Benjamin Esh, who has compiled a two-volume "Dulcimer Hymnal" (info on his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/groups/145249), has a nice flatpicked mountain dulcimer version ...

And the song, unlike a lot of hymns, is in the public domain. So the music is freely available on the Internet:

• Nina Zanetti has mountain dulcimer tablature in DAD for "Be Thou My Vision" at http://www.ninazanetti.com/freetab.html on her website. Both the simple melody line and a more intricate arrangement with lots of nice ornamentation are available. (I like the simple one!)
• Chords at http://www.worshiparchive.com/song/be-thou-my-vision in D at the Worship Archive website. It prints out nicely as a one-page HTML text document.

You'll need both the tablature and the chords, at least till you learn the song aurally, since the chords aren't indicated on the tab.

Another song that's easy for beginners to pick up is "Shall We Gather at the River." We've been playing it forever, but I have no evidence that we have permission to use the tab in our folders. And a very good arrangment for dulcimer in DAD with backup (i.e. guitar) chords by Benjamin Esh is available at

http://www.thedulcimerhymnal.com/blog/post/This-Weeks-Dulcimer-Arrangement-Shall-We-Gather-at-the-River.aspx

Four-part harmony in D, for voice, on the TimelessTruths.org website (click on "view PDF sheet music [.pdf]") at

http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Shall_We_Gather_at_the_River/

And "Coleman's March" is a nice fiddle tune that's usually played at a slow tempo. (It's a march instead of a reel.) Different members of our group have different versions of the written tab -- the "dots" -- and they all work together. (To get a really very good explanation of why, go back to the Small Circle Tune Learning Session's page on learning tunes by ear. It's just about the best thing I've read anywhere on how a fiddle tune, Irish or American either one, is structured.) To get DAD ducimer tab by Terry Lewis of the North Georgia Foothills Dulcimer Association, follow this link ...

http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/u/dulcimer/Colemans%20Mar01.jpg

Prairieland Strings / Clayville - how do we keep beginners and more experienced (novice and intermediate) jammers on the same page?

The following blast email (lightly edited here for the web) went out last night to people on the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club and Clayville Pioneer Academy of Music tune learning jam session lists.

Hi everybody --

We had a fine session Thursday night at the Prairieland Strings meeting. Several new people joined us, and we learned two new songs, "The Battle Cry of Freedom" and "Si Bheag Si Mhor." I think that was quite an accomplishment, especially since "Si Bheag Si Mhor" is a fairly difficult piece of music with an intricate melody and subtle dynamics. We were starting to get both tunes down by the end of the session, and we finished up with "John Stinson's No. 2," which is always fun!

Even so, for a while there, things were about as lively as memorizing verb conjugations back in high school Spanish, and some of us left the session vowing to find some music that's just fun to play.

So we're taking requests!

We're especially looking for jam tunes that are beginner-friendly and fun to play. Fiddle tunes, gospel songs, whatever you'd like. If you're new, what would you like to learn? If you've been with the Prairieland Strings for a while, which of our oldies-but-goodies would you like to keep playing? Let me know, and I'll try to find dulcimer tab on line or arrange to have PDF copies made of our old Prairieland tunes that we can email around.

SI BHEAG SI MOHR

In the meantime, several of the folks at Thursday's session wanted to hear "Si Bheag Si Mhor" so they can get the melody better in mind. It's pronounced "sh'BEG sh'MORE," by the way; it's an Irish Gaelic song about a battle or a field hockey match - I've heard it both ways - between the fairies on a little hill ("si bheag") and a nearby big hill ("si mhor"). I'm not aware of any translations in English.

So here, by popular request, are a couple of YouTube performances of "Si Bheag Si Mhor":

1. Fingerpicked on mountain dulcimer tuned to DAD, by YouTube user 6FIDS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkZP8ZvyIoc

2. An Irish fingerpicking guitar arrangement in DADGAD tuning, by French musician Jean Banwarth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIcb6ypujeQ

3. A freestyle guitar version in DADGAD as taught by folk and jazz maitre Pierre Bensusan, also of France

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjqxPb31-MU

Be sure to listen for what Bensusan says beginning at 4:38 about giving the tune his own interpretation. He's talking about solos, of course, but he's an absolute master of feeling the music on a stringed instrument. Any stringed instrument.

BEGINNER-FRIENDLY JAM SONGS

As we help our beginners get up to speed, I think we can strike a balance between practicing techniques, chord positions, etc., and just playing the songs. There's a lot of good advice on the Small Circle Tune Learning Session website at ...

http://www.slowplayers.org/SCTLS/

At SCTLS jams, they play tunes over six and seven times each at what they call a " quick beginner's pace, slow enough that you can pick them up fairly easily if you are familiar with the process of learning aurally" (by ear, in other words), but fast enough that you don't lose the rhythm and melody. That way the more experienced players can improvise harmonies, play on the bass string, try out new techniques and chord positions, etc., while the beginners learn the melody and everybody's happy.

Which is why we're asking for requests -- what jam songs would you like to play?

We're looking for a good jam book at the moment, but in the meantime there are a lot of good tunes we used to play in the Prairieland Dulcimer Strings. Two that I'd like to bring back at our next session are "Shall We Gather at the River" and "Coleman's March."

-- "Shall We Gather at the River" is available on line:

1. Dulcimer tab in DAD with backup (i.e. guitar) chords by Benjamin Esh at

http://www.thedulcimerhymnal.com/blog/post/This-Weeks-Dulcimer-Arrangement-Shall-We-Gather-at-the-River.aspx

2. Four-part harmony in D, for voice, on the TimelessTruths.org website (click on "view PDF sheet music [.pdf]") at

http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Shall_We_Gather_at_the_River/

-- "Coleman's March" is tabbed out by Terry Lewis of the North Georgia Foothills Dulcimer Association. His DAD tab is available at

http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/u/dulcimer/Colemans%20Mar01.jpg

It's one of several versions we play at Prairieland Strings sessions. They all work very well together.

So, if you've played with us before, please let me know which of our tunes you'd like to see us play this spring. "June Apple," for example. That wonderful tab we have with "Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm" and "Shortning Bread" on the same sheet. "I Feel Like Traveling On" and "Uncloudy Day." Songs like "Hard Times" and 'Wild Mountain Thyme." And whether you're an old-timer or a newbie, let me know what new tunes you'd like to learn, and I'll see what I can find on the Internet without violating copyright.

And, as always, if you have questions, comments or suggestions, please don't hesitate to get back to me.

__________

For future reference ... links to lead sheets with dulcimer tablature, lyrics, chords and YouTube clips for songs we've played in the past and might again in the future as we go through the stacks and stacks of old dulcimer tab.

• Very nice version of "Coleman's March" by the Kentucky Wonder String Band of New Liberty, Ky., at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iVDTFzH6zI According to their Facebook page, "The band was formed inadvertently, and over time its members have waned and waxed, come and gone, and stumbled accidentally into venues where Old Time Traditional Music is appreciated, most frequently on porches or under shade trees."

  Of special interest to Appalachian dulcimer players, a very traditional version by _____ aka "birdrockdulcimers," a British dulcimer builder and vendor, pick and noter style on an Uncle Ed Thomas replica. It looks like he's tuned in DAA, and you'll notice he's not chording. He can't chord, in fact, because Uncle Ed's instruments were only fretted under the melody string. ...

  The Bird Rock Dulcimers website at www.dulcimers.co.uk is also well worth checking out in detail. The guy knows a lot about historic dulcimers and has some instructional videos on pick-and-noter style playing.

• Sheet music, in four-part harmony at http://www.barbershop.org/ for "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" on Barbershop Harmony Society website. Use the sheet music search engine or go directly to http://www.barbershop.org/document-center/category/20-heritage-of-harmony-sheet-music.html (Heritage of Harmony).
• Chord sheet for "Be Thou My Vision" at http://www.worshiparchive.com/song/be-thou-my-vision in D at the Worship Archive website. Prints out as a nice one-page HTML text document. Nina Zanetti has DAD tab at http://www.ninazanetti.com/freetab.html on her website. Both a simplified melody and a more intricate arrangement with lots of nice ornamentation.

Prairieland Strings Thursday March 21 - "Battle Cry of Freedom" w/ links to tab, backup chords

At Thursday's meeting of the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, Bev will teach us the "Battle Cry of Freedom" out of Maureen Sellers' book Songs of the Civil War - available on her website at http://www.maureensellers.com/ by mail order. Click here for a capsule history of the song, with both Union and Confederate lyrics, and here for a short biography of composer George Frederick Root. It was very popular on both sides, although it is probably more associated now with the Union cause. A New Englander by birth, Root was from Chicago. Also known for "Tramp Tramp Tramp (the Boys Are Marching)" and "Just Before the Battle Mother," as well as gospel songs.

Here's a nice, slow verison on Appalachian dulcimer by sailplane enthusiast and YouTube user Tom McDonald, who says, "I recorded this at Ridge Soaring near Julian, PA on a day when I couldn't fly sailplanes due to the weather."

McDonald has a link to tab in DGD, the tuning in which he plays the song. (The song is usually written in G, and DGD is a wonderful "reverse Ionian" tuning well worth learning. But we play it in D.) It's available in "D for dulcimer" at http://everythingdulcimer.com/tab/battledul.pdf in tablature that includes fret numbers for both DAA and DAD. (Don't worry, if you want to experiment - they'll sound the same if you play either one, as long as everybody's tuned in D.) Either way, if you "play by number," you may want to get out a highlighter and mark the line of tablature you want to follow. If read music, of course, you can just play the notes!

Guitar chords - or "backup chords" - in G are available on line, for personal use only of course, at ...

http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/g/george_f_root/the_battle_cry_of_freedom_crd.htm

Of course, you'll have to transpose it to D. You can do that by going to where it says "transpose" in the upper lefthand corner of the page and clicking down from G to D.

A couple of performances on YouTube

A string band in Michigan. More up to tempo, at least as I've heard it played. Fiddler Brad Battey joins Picks and Sticks on Aug. 7, 2010, at a wedding reception barn dance. Sherry Humecky on hammered dulcimer, Morgan Humecky on banjo, Bob Miller on bass, Alex Belhaj on guitar. Fiddler Brad Battey joins Picks and Sticks on August 7, 2010 at a wedding reception barn dance. Sherry Humecky on dulcimer, Morgan Humecky on banjo, Bob Miller on bass, Alex Belhaj on guitar. "Battle Cry" begins at 1:29.

Brass band - period instruments. The Federal City Brass Band's sunset concert atop Little Round Top at Gettysburg, November 2012. Brass bands and string bands of the 1800s often played the same music. Here's a better-than-average group of Civil War re-enactors playing on what look like period instruments.

"Post-folk" band Ilgi - tracks featuring (or at least briefly showing) Gatis Gaujenieks on the giga - a Latvian folk instrument derived from the Swedish psalmodikon

PLEASE NOTE -- On March 12, 2013, I also posted several links to Hogfiddle on the Hedgehogs Baltic Folk Ensemble (also known as Ezisi, in Latvian, or Siilikesed, in Estonian) of Indianapolis (permalink http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/03/latvian-giga-misc-notes-and-maybe-video.html), which features another bowed folk zither, or giga, directly related to the Swedish psalmodikon. That gives us two bands who apparently play secular folk music on it, and it's always been on my "B List" to find out more about these bands -- "Hedgehogs" in the US and the folk-rock group "Igli" in Latvia -- but I've never gotten around to it.

The giga, which appears to be a folk adaptation of the psalmodikon in Swedish-speaking parts of Estonia and Latvia, is playing a small part in the burgeoning traditional and "post-folk" music scene in the Baltic nations since independence from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Link here to primer on folk music in the Baltics, with several embedded videos from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, at ...

http://www.worldmusic.net/guide/music-of-baltic-states/.

If you look carefully at the YouTube video of the Latvian "post-folk" band Ilgi embedded below, you'll see Gatis Gaujenieks on the right with his giga. The video will show him playing it from time to time in the midst of all the music video pyrotechnics.

Ilgi - Saule brida miglajos.

CD Baby biography at http://www.cdbaby.com/artist/Ilgi1 has a thumbnail that shows Gaujenieks with his giga at lower right. Also this:

In 1981 Ilga Reizniece, a classically trained violinist, formed the folk group ILGI (Latvian for friendly spirits). She soon was joined by Maris Muktupavels on kokle, bagpipes and accordion. They traveled the country learning folk songs and traditions from their elders at a time when the Latvian folklore movement was more of a political statement than a musical trend. In contrast with the Soviet sanctioned sugar-coated presentations of Latvian "culture", true Latvian culture was preserved in folk songs and dances by folk groups such as ILGI. The latter groups became de facto centers of national and cultural studies.

As Reizniece recalls, "from the very beginning we were different from the authentic music ensembles in the traditional sense. We have always been interested in music as art, not just the folklore aspect of it. There always has been a dual purpose of the group: we had to fulfill our mission in preserving the Latvian heritage, return forgotten lore to the nation, but at the same time we really enjoyed just playing the music. I am a professional musician after all."

After Latvian independence was restored in 1991 ILGI began to travel abroad, and some of its music shifted from minor to major keys.

Another shift occurred in the late 1990's. Muktupavels and Reizniece had been playing in ILGI as well as in the rock band, Jauns Meness. Gatis Gaujenieks, a native New Yorker of Latvian descent, moved to Latvia and joined ILGI in 1997 as a musician, sound artist and producer. ILGI's meditative and somewhat traditional approach gave way to fuller instrumentation and bolder arrangements without undermining its foundation of Latvian folklore. ...

Photo IĻĢI: Gatis Gaujenieks 1301. Playing the giga, a fretted low note instrument, also known as a trough-fiddle or -violin. http://www.flickr.com/photos/83507215@N00/1548649124

CD Baby has this blurb on Tur saulite perties gaja, a 2012 album that won a best CD prize in Latvia ...

llgi's mature roots in Latvian folk music and the skilled musicianship of its members are apparent in profound and bold interpretations, album after album. Ilgi takes kokles, violin, a cello-like giga, acoustic and bass guitars, percussion, and an adopted kalimba on a tranquil journey in Tur Saulite Perties Gaja, released in 2011 as Ilgi celebrated its 30th anniversary.

The album's central theme is the Latvian pirts, a place for cleansing the body and soul. "Spirits are tossed" by ladling water onto rocks heated by a wood fire, creating a steam bath in the typically small wooden structure. To "perties" (gently flog) with a pirts slota (bundle of twigs) is invigorating. Whether in a private pirts in the countryside or under the direction of a modern day pirts keeper, the tradition is alive in Latvia. Nevertheless, it lacked music - until now.

In "Pirts Kurinasana" (Lighting the Fire), Ilga Reizniece sings of a pirts near a golden oak by a silver stream, "where the Sun went perties" (the album title). Celojums (Journey) is the story of a pirts mouse. Cels (The Road) is a gentle interplay of strings and kalimba. In Persana (Flogging) Reizniece names health promoting flora used in pirts slotas. Lidosana (Flying) showcases Egons Kronbergs' guitar and Maris Muktupavels' kokle and accordion. Gara Pupa (The Beanstalk) is the classic story of a beanstalk that grows up to the sky, but the music suggests the wonderfully languid feeling resulting from a trip to the pirts. It features a duet by Reizniece on violin and Muktupavels on kokle, playing as one after collaborating for three decades. Finally, Paldies (A Song of Thanks) is offered to everyone who makes the pirts possible, from its builder to the water carrier. Throughout, layers of depth are created by Gatis Gaujenieks on giga and bass guitar, and Martins Linde on percussion.

Latvian ģīga - misc. notes and (maybe!) a video *** UPDATE - definitely a video! *** and links to music of an Indianapolis traditional Baltic music ensemble

PLEASE NOTE -- On March 16, 2013, I also posted several links to Hogfiddle on the Latvian "post-folk" band Igli (permalink http://hogfiddle.blogspot.com/2013/03/post-folk-band-ilgi-tracks-featuring-or.html), which features another bowed folk zither, or giga, directly related to the Swedish psalmodikon. That gives us two bands who apparently play secular folk music on it, and it's always been on my "B List" to find out more about these bands -- the Estonian heritage band "Hedgehogs" in the US and the folk-rock group "Igli" in Latvia -- but I've never gotten around to it.

An obscure instrument in Latvia, a two-stringed box zither known as a giga or "trough fiddle" ... that by all accounts represents an authentic folk tradition that evolved out of use of the Swedish psalmodikon by Lutheran pastors in that Baltic nation. Scattered references on the Internet ...

For the basics, as always, I consulted Wikipedia. As follows, in its entirety: "The ģīga is a two-stringed bowed zither found in Latvia. / The instrument is descended from the psalmodicon, a bowed monochord developed in Sweden in 1829 for liturgical singing. From there it filtered down to the Latvian peasantry who added a second string for harmony.

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Picture at right shows traditional Latvian instruments depicted on a Soviet-era postage stamp. The ģīga will be the second instrument from the top on the righthand side of the stamp. Instrument at bottom right is a kokle, an iconic Latvian box zither related to the Finnish kantele. (Photo Wikimedia Commons).

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** UPDATE ** MONDAY MARCH 18 - Baltic ensemble in Indianapolis --

Here is a promotional video for the Hedgehogs Baltic Folk Ensemble (Ezisi, in Latvian, or Siilikesed, in Estonian) of Indianapolis. Closeup of a giga being plucked at 0:46-0:47 and video of the entire ensemble playing from 0:48 to 1:14. The giga player uses a bow and stands the instrument on a chair.

The band's website at http://www.indiana.edu/~bafsa/hedgehogs/ezisi.html has 30-second clips from their CDs plus a 57-minute podcast of a noon-hour concert at the Hoagy Carmichael center at Indiana University Bloomington. You can hear the giga, described as "kind of like a cello ... a bowed instrument," beginning at 36:50. It plays chords in a sustained, dronal style.

Says Daina Gross for the Latvians Online website, reviewing a CD of the hedgehogs' music:

Ezīši (also known as Siilikesed in Estonian and Hedgehogs in English) is a group of musically talented individuals from Indianapolis, Ind. Most of the members are U.S.-born and only some have Baltic roots. Their common trait is a passion for folk music. They even made some of their instruments themselves and, according to the CD liner notes, their “goals are to help preserve and to spread awareness of the folk music of the immigrant communities from the Eastern Baltic area…our specialty is the presentation of medleys of similar or at least compatible tunes from different nationalities of northeastern Europe.”

Hedgehogs' webpage at http://www.indiana.edu/~bafsa/hedgehogs/ezisi.html has audio files, contact information.

Link here to IU's podcast page: http://www.indiana.edu/~iaunrc/content/hedgehogs-%E2%80%93-traditional-baltic-music.

** END UPDATE **

Also, based in Riga, the Latvian "post-folk" band band Ilgi includes a giga among its rather varied instrumentation - seems to add a bass drone to the band's folk-rock-Europop-jazz-ish sound. According to the blurb on the CD Baby online music store's website, Igli was founded in the 1980s by Ilga Reizniece, "a classically trained violinist," and Maris Muktupavels, on kokle, bagpipes and accordion. After independence from the former Soviet Union, the band has morphed into a folk-rock-jazz ensemble. "Over the years Reizniece and Muktupavels have been joined in ILGI by some of the best Latvian musicians. In addition to Gatis Gaujenieks on electric bass and ancient giga, they recruited Egons Kronbergs, an accomplished rock guitarist (The Hobos), in 2001. Martins Linde, a successful jazz drummer and percussionist (Time After Time), completes the current roster."

ANOTHER GIGA (?) YouTube clip below of an unidentified group of musicians - maybe a pickup band? - at a "Cuckoo Festival" in Lithuania shows a woman, on the left, playing an unidentified bowed instrument that corresponds to the description of a giga. It sounds like she's playing a drone accompaniment to the melody.

Latvian folk music. Uploaded by YouTube user haribo348 on May 10, 2010. Cuckoo Festival, Lithuania. No comments, no further info. User is in Lithuania.

A brief description on the Folklora.lv website of the giga with pix (fuzzy, but with an interesting, apparently handmade bow) at http://folklora.lv/muzikas/giga/en.shtml:

The monochord has been created in Sweden in 1829 for accompaniment of spiritual singing. Probably through the Lutheran parochial schools, monochord has got to the Latvian peasants, and they have begun to play on it, to make it and to improve it (the same instrument, but with two strings has been developed). [pix] "Monochord consists of a long, rectangular body, stuck or hammered together from wooden plates. In the upper plate the sound holes are cut and a stepped rod (neck) is attached, on which a string (or two) is put.

A horsehair or bow is used to play the monochord. The height of sounding is changed, pressing the string to the neck.

More information on a British website devoted to all kinds of fiddle music worldwide, with maybe a couple of good leads for futher information, at fiddlingaround.co.uk homepage. The page on the giga reads:

One of the most interesting aspects of fiddling in Latvia is the use of the giga or trough fiddle, a large rectangular box-like instrument played like a cello with one or two strings. Due to the shape of the body it is sometimes referred to as a trough-fiddle. In Ilgi, the giga is played by Gatis Gaujenieks. Indianapolis-based band the Hedgehogs also use the giga, alongside other Latvian and baltic instruments such as the kokle (a type of zither, and perhaps the best-known Latvian folk instrument), the bagpipe and the Novgorod lyre.

Lisa Lynne and Aryeh Frankfurter - harp and nykelharpa duo of California

Quite a mixture of Carolan, folk, early music, New Age, a polska or two and a little bit of everything else - on harp, Swedish nykelharp and a little bit of everything else - by two California musicians. Lots of promotional tapes, especially on Lisa Lynne's website, good production values on the videos and Vblogs (video blogs). The embedded tape plugging house concerts below gives a pretty good overview, but there are also videos from music festivals, faerie gatherings, Renaissance faires, music camps and a wide variety of concert venues. Fascinating.

Lisa Lynne - All about doing House Concerts. "I made this video to inspire and encourage people to host house concerts for acoustic musicians. It features myself & Aryeh Frankfurter, we are a duo of two multi-instrumentalists who have recently started performing at house concerts. The footage was taken from San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Central California, Napa valley, Portland & Seattle. The songs featured are both traditional and written by me. The second half of the video features my "Hands-on-Harps" workshops and live music programs at various hospitals, school, retreat and rehabilitation centers. www.LisaLynne.com

"Shenandoah Falls" - new learning video (well, only a year old)

Posted to YouTube since I last looked. But ...

(and this seems like a *big "but" to me),

his sheet music is in D and E minor instead of A. Still, I like the way he swings it. Nice tempo on his CD.

Learn SHENANDOAH FALLS on Hammered Dulcimer

Jess Dickinson·29 videos
Published on Jul 5, 2012

Another FREE hammered dulcimer learning video from http://DickinsonDulcimer.Com. Learn to play "Shenandoah Falls" on the hammered dulcimer. Download the sheet music FREE and see more learning videos at http://DickinsonDulcimer.Com. Sign up for Jess Dickinson's classes at ODPC Funfest 2013.

__________

* Did I just say that?

"[P]ut a ribbon on that dulcimer and mount it on a wall": Misc. notes on dulcimers, Appalachian crafts

Excerpts from article in website based on a 1996 series in the Enterprise Mountaineer newspaper of Waynesville, N.C., quoting local musician, instrument builder and "folklore historian" Jim Trantham on dulcimer origins and some of his own experience with the instrument. Bio of Trantham and profile of the Trantham Family singing group consisting of his children and grandchildren, on the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area website. Trantham, who builds banjos and guitars in addition to dulcimers, is quoted on the history of the instrument:

Today's dulcimers evolved from a family of long, neckless instruments.

The monochord, a singled-stringed instrument with a soundbox, was around in medieval Europe and is thought to be the precursor of the zither, which was found in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From the zither came the dulcimer.

The French name for the dulcimer is an epinette. In Norwegian, it is the langeleik. In Holland and Italy it's known as the humle. In Germany, it's the box-shaped scheitholt, which translates into "chopping block."

"Every culture will have a form of this instrument," Trantham said.

German settlers most likely brought a form of the dulcimer over to America, Trantham speculated. Crude hand-sawed boards fashioned into dulcimers may have killed the tone quality, but were fairly easy to make.

* * *

Today, dulcimers remain popular despite being looked down upon by some native Appalachians.

When Trantham played his dulcimer at the Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the festival's founder and a well-respected name in preserving Appalachian music, told Trantham if he ever wanted to amount to anything, he'd have to put a ribbon on that dulcimer and mount it on a wall.

Michael Beadle, "The Heritage of the Mountain Dulcimer." Mountain Grown Music: Celebrating the Traditional Mountain Music of Heywood County 1999. [Haywood County Public Library, Waynesville, N.C.]. http://mountaingrownmusic.org/mountain-dulcimer.html.

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Research and documentation of the Niles "dulcimers," by Dwight Newton, organologist and web publisher of Lexington, Ky., who is a musicology graduate of UK and has a long-standing interest in John Jacob Niles:

Niles called his instruments "dulcimers." He certainly had a lot of experience with the authentic Appalachian instrument by this name, but he took the concept in a fairly radical direction. As he did with the old songs he had collected, he took the essential idea of a dulcimer and turned it into an icon. I believe Niles thought of himself as a balladeer in the bardic tradition of Scots-English poetry. Certainly his repertoire has its roots quite consciously in the British Isles. His vocal style is rhythmically free and declamatory, with great emotional expression, especially as he employs his stratospheric falsetto. The instruments were used in a minimalist way, strumming the strings in a simple down- down-down-down... stroke, or in some cases in a single rolled stroke at certain moments for emphasis in an otherwise a cappella performance.

Niles performed with at least eight instruments that he built himself. This research project focuses on these instruments as objects, but in truth, they really cannot be separated from Niles the balladeer. The reality is that these objects are not particularly good musical instruments -- their ranges are quite limited, thay have relatively poor volume considering their size, and they are all clearly the work of a folk artist, not a luthier. But their musical function was secondary to their function as theatrical props. He rarely played melodic tunes on his large dulcimers. In all cases the real star of the show was Niles himself -- his voice and his expression.

Dwight Newton, "John Jacob Niles, Luthier." Mewzik.com: All About Musical Instruments. 2006. http://mewzik.com/research/niles/index.php.

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scantling [ˈskæntlɪŋ] n
1. (Miscellaneous Technologies / Building) a piece of sawn timber, such as a rafter, that has a small cross section
2. (Miscellaneous Technologies / Building) the dimensions of a piece of building material or the structural parts of a ship, esp those in cross section
3. (Miscellaneous Technologies / Building) a building stone, esp one that is more than 6 feet in length
4. a small quantity or amount
[changed (through influence of SCANT and -LING) from earlier scantillon, a carpenter's gauge, from Old Norman French escantillon, ultimately from Latin scandere to climb; see scan] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Scantling a small quantity—Johnson, 1755.
Examples: scantling of apples, 1849; of burgundy, 1765; of eloquence, 1704; of food 1835; of geological knowledge, 1876; of paper, 1743; of time, 1665; of wit, 1680.
Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scantling.

Prairieland Strings dulcimer club - "Farther Along" Tuesday, March 5

At our upcoming "first Tuesday" session of the Prairieland Strings dulcimer club, we'll take up one of the classic bluegrass gospel songs, "Farther Along." We meet, as always, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Atonement Lutheran Church, 2800 West Jefferson in Springfield.

"Farther Along" is of uncertain authorship, dating from the early 1900s. It has been covered by artists including Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, the 60s folk-rock group the Byrds, African American gospel singer Willie Neal Johnson and the Gospel Keynotes, country music icon Johnny Cash and blues legend Mississippi John Hurt, among many others. I first learned it in an inner-city ecumenical congregation in Knoxville, Tenn., and songs like "Farther Along" were perfect for getting 1970s-vintage hippies, street people, members of the old Epworth Methodist congregation and grad students from the nearby University of Tennessee singing - literally - from the same page.

"Farther Along" is also a favorite gospel piece in the mountain dulcimer world, where its harmonies lend themselves to group singing.

I'm going to embed two videos - the first is by members of the "Flat Mountain Dulcimer Club" in eastern North Carolina (where there aren't any mountains and it's pretty flat). It's representative of what a well rehearsed dulcimer club does with the song:

The other video shows vocalist Patty Mitchell, who has sung with artists as varied as Ralph Stanley the Dixie Chicks, backed by dulcimer player Stephen Seifert (who was in Springfield last year for one of our workshops). Steve's backup is understated, but the way he engages with the music shows how much the mountain dulcimer is capable of:

Here's the music:

• Dulcimer tablature in DAD and DAA by Steve Smith of the Western North Carolina Dulcimer Collective on the everythingdulcimer.com website at http://everythingdulcimer.com/tab/Farther_Along.pdf.
• Six verses in four-part harmony (in D, no less!) on the timelesstruths.org website at http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Farther_Along/pdf/

A word about Steve Smith's tab: A lot of people get frustrated with it, because it packs a lot of information onto one page. In addition to the lead sheet - i.e. the notes for the melody line - it identifies the chords above the melody line and the individual notes by letter underneath the melody. It also has left hand positions in both DAD and DAA: as you play more in different tunings, it will help you transpose between them. (For example: The first note in "Farther Along" is an F-sharp, written F#, and it's played on the second fret in DAD and the fifth fret in DAA, but it's the same note and it sounds the same in both tunings. I like knowing stuff like that.) At Benedictine I used to tell my students to keep stuff they wanted to memorize in the bathroom, and hand to read in the bathroom, and this tab is perfect for that purpose.

But that stuff comes later.

For now, all you need is to play the melody line in DAD.

I like to mark the DAD fret numbers with a highlighter, so they'll stand out the first few times I've playing through the melody. It's a trick that comes in handy with church choir music, and it works like a charm when dulcimer tab gets complicated, too.