![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
my first dulcimer lesson
Oct. 17th, 2014 11:59 amThere are no other hammer dulcimers anywhere in northern Sweden, so far as I have been able to discover, so I have been teaching myself how to play, which goes slower than I might have liked, since this is my first instrument. Even so, I have managed to learn to play the melodies of 7 songs reasonably well, and am working on a few more. But it takes time, sometimes a few weeks of effort, to memorize the notes I need to play to manage a melody. One of the guys in our band worked out the chords I could play instead for one of our songs, and it was simple enough that I was able to play along reasonably well on that first evening, even if I wasn't always hitting the string set I should have been.
Therefore I have had it in the back of my mind to learn the chords for more songs, in hopes that I could be playing along faster. Which is why, when I found out the new guy attending nyckleharpa nights is a guitar teacher for his day job, I asked if he would like an unusual student. He agreed that it sounded like a fun challenge, and last night was our first session.
Being the first attempt at teaching a dulcimer player who has only bits and drabs of self-taught music theory we only managed one song all evening, but we managed it. Part of the challenge is that since chords (often) contain notes, but I have two hammers I can use at a time, there are lots of possible options to play the chords.
For example, one of the chords we needed is the G chord, which contains the three notes G, B, and D. I could play that by hitting them one at a time, one after another as G-B-D or G-D-B (and we will forget about the other options that start with the B or the D, because he says that it is good to establish that it is a G chord by hitting that one first), or I can play two of them simultaneously and then the third promptly thereafter such as G+B, D or G+D, B (again, skipping the options where there is no G to start with, because of the value in having it at the beginning of the chord). Or I can play two at a time, followed promptly by another two, such as G+D, G+B. No doubt there are lots of other ways it could be done, but it was the last option that we settled upon.
The song we decided to work on last night is Lokomobilen, a popular local Swedish folk dance tune. Because he is a guitar teacher and chords are what he does he looked at the sheet music and instantly knew which chords go with it, and he wrote them down above the sheet music. And the sequence of letters looked confusing and hard to remember the pattern: GGDGGGDGCGDGCDGD. But then he pointed out that if you look at it in groups of 4 there is a very clear, easy to understand pattern:
GGDG x 2
CGDG x 2
Then he taught me which notes to play for those chords:
G = G4+D5, G4+B5
D = D5+F#4, D5+A5
C = C5+E5, C5+G4
And then he mentioned the D7 chord, which is nearly the same as the D, but has one extra note, a C, which, he says, note helps the listener better expect the transition to the following G chord. That bring the total number of notes for the chord to four, which means that instead of playing the base note twice, once with each of the other notes, I can play two of them and then the other two, like this: D7 = D5+F#4, A5+C5.
Note that the numbers next to the notes refer to which octave the notes are in, where C4 is the note that is called "middle C" on a piano, and C5 is the C one octave up from there.
These chords are all from the key of G, which is the key the song is in, so all of the notes used are notes from that key. The key of G contains the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. If I understand it correctly, we generally want the lowest note in a given chord to be the base note for that chord. Since my hammer dulcimer has two full octaves (# 4 and 5) with all of the possible notes, and another two octaves for which some of the notes exist (#3 and 6), we decided to use the notes from octaves # 4 and 5. Since the octaves are grouped from C to C this means that the notes in the key of G will fall into two groups with different numbers. Given the instrument we choose the version of the key of G that includes the notes G4, A4, B4, C5, D5, E5, F#5, and G5.
However, when we tried various combinations, for this song it happened to sound better to play the F#4, instead of the F#5, for the D chord the lowest note is actually lower than the base note. He assures me that this is totally ok—that people playing the piano nearly always choose to play the combination of notes that is easiest to reach from where they are just now that make up that chord. However, in this case the choice was based on how it sounded, not which was easiest to play, since the F#5 happens to be equally easy to reach from the other notes in the chord as the F#4 is.
( Here is a photo of which strings I hit for each of these chords )
The only other complication I should record here is that since the sheet music is in 4/4 we decided to hit one pair of strings for each beat, which gives time to play each chord twice per measure. Therefore, even though the above pattern says play these four chords and then repeat the same four and then play the next four and repeat, what I really do is double up each of the individual chords, so the whole song winds up looking like this:
GGGGDD7GG x2
CCGGDD7GG x2
(keeping in mind that the D7 is what is played right before returning to the G, so for the pair of Ds in each section I play the first as a D chord, and the second as a D7 chord.
And, really, it all feels easier than this long-winded explanation makes it sound, but I think it is worthy my time typing it all up, so that I am certain that I not only remember, but actually understand.
Therefore I have had it in the back of my mind to learn the chords for more songs, in hopes that I could be playing along faster. Which is why, when I found out the new guy attending nyckleharpa nights is a guitar teacher for his day job, I asked if he would like an unusual student. He agreed that it sounded like a fun challenge, and last night was our first session.
Being the first attempt at teaching a dulcimer player who has only bits and drabs of self-taught music theory we only managed one song all evening, but we managed it. Part of the challenge is that since chords (often) contain notes, but I have two hammers I can use at a time, there are lots of possible options to play the chords.
For example, one of the chords we needed is the G chord, which contains the three notes G, B, and D. I could play that by hitting them one at a time, one after another as G-B-D or G-D-B (and we will forget about the other options that start with the B or the D, because he says that it is good to establish that it is a G chord by hitting that one first), or I can play two of them simultaneously and then the third promptly thereafter such as G+B, D or G+D, B (again, skipping the options where there is no G to start with, because of the value in having it at the beginning of the chord). Or I can play two at a time, followed promptly by another two, such as G+D, G+B. No doubt there are lots of other ways it could be done, but it was the last option that we settled upon.
The song we decided to work on last night is Lokomobilen, a popular local Swedish folk dance tune. Because he is a guitar teacher and chords are what he does he looked at the sheet music and instantly knew which chords go with it, and he wrote them down above the sheet music. And the sequence of letters looked confusing and hard to remember the pattern: GGDGGGDGCGDGCDGD. But then he pointed out that if you look at it in groups of 4 there is a very clear, easy to understand pattern:
GGDG x 2
CGDG x 2
Then he taught me which notes to play for those chords:
G = G4+D5, G4+B5
D = D5+F#4, D5+A5
C = C5+E5, C5+G4
And then he mentioned the D7 chord, which is nearly the same as the D, but has one extra note, a C, which, he says, note helps the listener better expect the transition to the following G chord. That bring the total number of notes for the chord to four, which means that instead of playing the base note twice, once with each of the other notes, I can play two of them and then the other two, like this: D7 = D5+F#4, A5+C5.
Note that the numbers next to the notes refer to which octave the notes are in, where C4 is the note that is called "middle C" on a piano, and C5 is the C one octave up from there.
These chords are all from the key of G, which is the key the song is in, so all of the notes used are notes from that key. The key of G contains the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. If I understand it correctly, we generally want the lowest note in a given chord to be the base note for that chord. Since my hammer dulcimer has two full octaves (# 4 and 5) with all of the possible notes, and another two octaves for which some of the notes exist (#3 and 6), we decided to use the notes from octaves # 4 and 5. Since the octaves are grouped from C to C this means that the notes in the key of G will fall into two groups with different numbers. Given the instrument we choose the version of the key of G that includes the notes G4, A4, B4, C5, D5, E5, F#5, and G5.
However, when we tried various combinations, for this song it happened to sound better to play the F#4, instead of the F#5, for the D chord the lowest note is actually lower than the base note. He assures me that this is totally ok—that people playing the piano nearly always choose to play the combination of notes that is easiest to reach from where they are just now that make up that chord. However, in this case the choice was based on how it sounded, not which was easiest to play, since the F#5 happens to be equally easy to reach from the other notes in the chord as the F#4 is.
( Here is a photo of which strings I hit for each of these chords )
The only other complication I should record here is that since the sheet music is in 4/4 we decided to hit one pair of strings for each beat, which gives time to play each chord twice per measure. Therefore, even though the above pattern says play these four chords and then repeat the same four and then play the next four and repeat, what I really do is double up each of the individual chords, so the whole song winds up looking like this:
GGGGDD7GG x2
CCGGDD7GG x2
(keeping in mind that the D7 is what is played right before returning to the G, so for the pair of Ds in each section I play the first as a D chord, and the second as a D7 chord.
And, really, it all feels easier than this long-winded explanation makes it sound, but I think it is worthy my time typing it all up, so that I am certain that I not only remember, but actually understand.