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DESCRIPTION

“Primal Dulcimer”  Get spirit, mind and body ready to work together for a simple approach to playing.  Relaxation and breathing techniques are taught along with basic rhythms.

Easy basic playing techniques including how to strum, play simple melodies, follow simple dulcimer tablature,

Learn to play beautiful slow melodies by playing one note at a time.  Learn left and right hand techniques, how to play backup chords, participate in a jam and use harmonics.

Start out slowly, but we’ll  pick up speed! Learn about good ergonomics, strumming, fingering, intro into chords while learning a bunch of fun tunes.  DAD tuning.

Repertoire.  Increase your repertoire while exploring techniques that make particular songs work.

Use the Chromatic Mountain Dulcimer to Play Anything with Anyone.  While repertoire will be covered, the emphasis will be on chords, scales, fingerings, and arranging skills for the chromatic dulcimer.  (You can borrow a cardboard chromatic dulcimer for the week at no charge.  Let us know.)

Ensemble Tunes.  Playing two, three, and four part arrangements.  Bring your bass, baritone and/or soprano dulcimers as well as standard instruments, so we have more “voices” in our orchestra.

Knucklebusters!  Butch teaches the tunes that give him fits!  Learn how to dissect and master challenging tunes.

Learn how to locate the minor keys and play several tunes while we learn simple chords with our melody lines.

Basic Jam Tunes and Back Up.  We’ll learn skills to be able to really enjoy playing in jam sessions. Lots of great tunes!

Expand your musical horizons by adding excitement to your playing.  We’ll apply new techniques to new tunes and learn some skills to help add life to old arrangements.

High Flight.  We’ll combine the various elements in the dulcimer world: hammer independence, chordal and rhythmic embellishments, mainstream percussion techniques, traditional and jazz oriented chords, contemporary tunes and harmonies.

 “Merrily Sing”  Song and Harmony Workshop.  Each day a different song theme will be presented, different harmonies will be featured.  Gospel harmony, sea songs, Christmas songs, old-time American and contemporary.

Covers tuning, scales and chords,  strumming techniques, bass runs and picking styles.  Lots of tunes.

Beginning To Knit.  Two sticks –Two stitches – some string.  That’s all there is to it!  Come and relax after a long day of music.  We’ll learn the basics, lots of fun!

Intermediate Level.  For those with some experience, we’ll take on a more intricate experience.

(BONNET) How to smock a fancy bonnet and weave a silk ribbon into your smocking.  You need to know basic stitches (smocking 101) in order to take this class.