10th Annual SouthEast Ohio Dulcimer Festival

We'll be having our tiny dulcimer festival again in Stewart, Ohio, at the Federal Valley Resource Center, on Saturday, October 22nd. Last year we had some very intimate workshops and an incredible staff concert in the evening. This year we have most of the same folks teaching, along with a few new teachers, so it should be another great year.

This year everything is a benefit for the FVRC, so it is a great, big team effort!

web site down for a while

I guess every once in a while you need to make a major change: in our case we've had pretty good luck for well over a decade (a VERY long stretch in web-time!) with a small hosting service and ISP in SE Ohio. About a week ago they were moving some of their web hosting customers to a new server, and something catastrophic must have happened, because now they won't return phone calls, and there is a constant busy signal on their main local phone line.

We've got a new hosting service all lined up, but it will probably be a few weeks before everything is back up and running. Thanks for your patience on this - we are doing everything we can to restore the site. With any luck (and, of course, a certain measure of skill!) we might even have a simpler, cleaner design and user interface. We've put off a major redesign for too long.

Thanks,

Jerry Rockwell

I Love This!

Shambhu has some very appealing music - check it out:

http://www.shambhumusic.com/

New Prototype: Fully Chromatic Dulcimer for Playing Underneath

I've got this new prototype set up in 4-string equidistant, and the strings are reversed to make it familiar to guitar players. I'm tuning DADE or 1-5-8-9 to start, but I'll probably try a huge variety of other options before I spend any serious time working out chord shapes and such.

Interview on Dulcimer Sessions!

The April/May issue of Mel Bay's Dulcimer Sessions web site has an interview with me, beautifully and professionally put together by my long-time friend and fellow dulcimer player, Lois Hornbostel.

There is a video linked in the interview where I'm playing an semi-improvised version of my tune Light Into Darkness. Back on my home page, I recently put up a pdf of a fairly composed study on the same D-A-Bm-G chord progression. (the famous "Axis of Awesome" chords!). This written study is made to go with the ground bass, which I have in the first eight measures of the study.

Dulcimer Sessions is an absolutely incredible resource for learning mountain as well as hammered dulcimer: the issues go way back, so be sure to look through the listing of back issues.

Reference Structure 1

Sometimes I call this "In My World" but it is basically a very circular Mixolydian Progression:

A D Em D

Try it in a variety of tempos and time signatures. I think it makes a great progression for 6/8 and 9/8 jig-like ideas. Have Fun!!

Refreshing the DulciTheory Pages

I'll be doing some editing on the DulciTheory pages over the next few weeks.

DulciTheory was originally an email newsletter, but I moved most of the newsletters to my website, and I've tried to format them a little nicer than the plain-text format of the newsletters.

The whole idea behind DulciTheory was to add some useful applications and expand the scope of my Music Theory and Chord Reference book. The book has been very popular over the years, but it is more like a quick reference than anything else. As I get to going over the theory pages, I will be looking toward improving them and, of course, adding some new articles. So please let me know if you have some ideas for future topics, or if you need help in applying what is already there.