Saturday, February 16, 2013

Doofus Music || Music Class

I recently bought a dulcimer after viewing many inriguing videos on YouTube. So, as usual, I set about hunting the internet for dulcimer music websites. I found out that there were several opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area and was in my hometown in the east bay hills.

The class was sponsored by a local woman that is an Autoharp and Dulcimer player. The instructor was Neal Walters from Greencastle, Pennsylvania and it turned out that Neal is also a baritone ukulele player and he asked me to send him an e-mail with a link to Humble Baritonics.

Neal and his wife Coleen have a website with links for both autoharp and dulcimer music, called Doofus Music. The site has tablature for a list of old timey type music that some baritone ukulele players may find fun to try. You can't find Grasshopper Sittin' on a Sweetpotato Vine just anywhere.



Here, looks like Neal is playing a bari in the background.

Since the class was full of newbies and Neal kept the information quite simple. The most memorable for me was:

1) "Play rhythmically, know the chords of the song and listen, don't be held back by always requiring a piece of paper. In this way you can learn thousands of songs."

2) "If you are learning the melody / arrangement of a song. Practice small portions, put the paper away, play again and repeat as often as necessary to memorize. The next morning try again. If necessary get the paper out look and put it away again."

No comments:

Post a Comment