Developing Your Playing Skills  - Part2 By Jenny Coxon & Sally Whytehead

This is the second part of the workshop that Jenny and Sally gave at Launde in 1999.

ACTIVITIES/EXERCISES:

The first part of Activities/Exercises - Listening - was covered in the previous article

LOOKING:

 i.              awareness of position:  use exercises such as scales and arpeggios - try finding different ways of playing these e.g.. Using different instances of repeated notes, or different starting hands, try playing tunes which contain scales or arpeggios e.g..  Winster Gallop, Joe Hutton's March, Breakdowns;  *play all the 'a's, 'b's, 'c's etc - how quickly can you strike them all? - try systematically by either starting at the highest of lowest in the sequence.

 ii.             hand to eye: there is a best position to strike for each note (like the sweet spot on the tennis racquet) try and find that spot for every note on your dulcimer and aim to hit it; try to do a quick and ongoing mental check whilst playing to hear if the sound is good and pleasing to your own personal taste; NB. You often need to hit the wire quite hard and very crisply with a quick flick of the wrist to get a feel for sound quality;

use exercises such as rhythmic patterns played on one course (by yourself), - combine with *above by using all the 'a's - play the rhythm on one 'a', repeat on other 'a's until all 'a's played - start at highest, then start at lowest;

(with others), - rhythm pattern - all learn a simple rhythm, then play rhythm together in 2 part harmony, then try 3 part or possibly even 4 part harmony depending on number of players.

NOT LOOKING:

i.                 not looking at certain wires: explore 2 part harmony through particular types of tune accompaniment - a) constant drone e.g.. My Beautiful Isle; b) learned patterns e.g.. St. Basil's Hymn*;

ii.                 playing and looking ahead: playing arpeggios - look at the start note all the time and play arpeggios over the whole instrument, up and down;

playing chords - choose a pattern of chords or accompaniment patterns (see *above) and build up speed for chord sound - 3 note chords or 4 or even 5 for a challenge! Could try appreciated chords which 'miss out' some notes - you have to travel further but you can do it quicker with a fuller range of pitch;

iii.                 playing without looking in pairs:  each person has a turn at playing a tune or an exercise without looking, whilst the partner watches in order to try and identify the cause of any mistakes and give useful feedback on these;

iv.                 playing from music: (presupposes an ability to read music) - get music, set up, off you go!

if unable to read music, a long term aim could be to do this in conjunction with the dulcimer, this will help both skills to develop alongside each other - i.e.. Reading music, and playing without looking. 

v.                 playing from someone else's playing: - one person plays slowly, partner tries to play after each phrase by looking at other's dulcimer, not own.

GENERAL POINTS:

We are always finding out new things about the dulcimer by just getting stuck in and playing.  One approach can be through learning tunes; where there are difficult bits in a tune we have developed various strategies for coping, e.g. - first of all we identify problem are and, then analyse why there is a problem and where it is in the tune, e.g.. ending up on the wrong hand - practice a get out strategy such as double notes (choosing the best note to double up on), introducing a chord or roll to sort it out, deciding on an alternative note to use, - these enable you to create your own exercises within the context of a tune so that you can find the means to play difficult bits by working out a variety of ways to play them and then try out each different way in the entire tune at speed and seeing which works best.

If you hear a tune that you want to learn - say, played in a session, try asking what it's called if possible, and then have a look to see if you have either the printed music for it, or a recording of it, or search on the internet (ask Sally for some sites).  If none of these methods succeeds, then you'll just have to hope that you hear it again and have more success.

If choosing tunes to play from music, and starting from scratch, try sight reading them on your first instrument (if the dulcimer isn't) as that will probably be the quickest for the job.  Tips for sight reading - locate yourself in the key first - learn to recognise important notes for that key on the stave e.g.. tonic, third, dominant, sub-dominant, octave etc., try to recognise common patterns/rhythms etc., recognise arpeggios, notice relative positioning - note on note, identify runs with a note missing etc. emphasise first beat of each bar the get feel of rhythm.