I have yet to find an alternative to uploading the video. However, I have now enlisted the library in supplying me with a camera that I am hoping will be sufficient.

I have been absent and have missed three days of practice due to a family member passing and have just recently picked it back up. I have some good news and that is that I have progressed to several different songs.

ò          The songs located below involve melody, plucking and strumming.

ò          Simple Gifts (Shaker tune)

ò          This Old Man

ò          Michael Row your Boat Ashore

ò          OH, Susana

ò          When the saints go marching in (one of my favorites)

ò          Little Liza Jane ( Extremely difficult)

I have reached goal five of my First lessons book by Joyce Och’s called “First Lessons in Dulcimer”. That stated, there are only five lessons, and I still have several songs to go. This is not to assumed that I can play them by memory or that I play all of them well. There are some very tricky finger movements.

I am still not adept at reading music in a way that allows me to translate the sheet music for the dulcimer itself. I have been reading the book by Chet Hines called, “how to make and play the dulcimer”. However, his translation only gives me numbers which I assume are suggesting frets.

My worry is that the “learning to play” may have made it to simple and therefore has made me complacent on the remainder of the process. I have noted that in my progression earlier.

However, before we get back into the learned part of the blournal. I wanted to reflect on some observations that I have noticed since playing an instrument. As I had mentioned earlier, there was a passing of a family member, and as I was writing this, it became apparent just how influential music is both implicitly and explicitly.

There are not many times during the day where I do not hear sound. So I began to think, what is music? According to the Webster’s online dictionary, Music is a recognized, “vocal or instrumental sound” which combined in such a way as to produce harmony and to evoke an emotion or expression. Whereby, anything can be a sound. An unsound (silence) can be music. This flings the door wide open to the interpretation to the world in which I live.

 It, music that is, can no longer obtain a space within my social cognition that remains in the background. In addition, as I have been reading the historical context of the Dulcimer, as best it can be delivered with accuracy; it is also dialectical in its very nature. It is as if it is a living and breathing thing that changes through necessity of the evolutionary process. It just so happens that it is largely dependent on our adaptation of creativity and the means in which to manipulate the object. 

This may seem obvious to most, yet is completely new to my most complete knowledge. One might compare it to a simple phrase such as,” grass is green” and this may suffice. Yet, it is not green through its entire living process and undergoes an infinite amount of change right before our very eyes, and yet if we are not particularity cognoscente of this fact, it remains unnoticed.

It’s a HUMPH, moment or a Well -SHIT, I never thought of it that way.

Enough of that, I can tell you that my favorite song to play as of now is “down in the valley”, in specific when I make a transition in chords that feels fluid and crisp. I do not know how to describe it. It registers within my auditory and cognitive perception as of being played correctly. This reinforces me to play it more often and with confirmed announced strumming. Making me self-assured that this is the area I have accomplished.

It is funny and also mentioned in the book, Zen Guitar” by Sudo, where he discusses the players ability to play with enthusiasm; like you mean it. I do notice that I do not strum in an aggressive manner and I do not know if this is because I live in an apartment and do not want to be to loud or is it self-esteem in my playing of the instrument itself? Furthermore, it may also be the type or style of music I like to listen to.

 I tend to migrate to the singer song writer for their honesty and moody melody. But it is also the texture of the sound itself. It is soft but course, muted but loud, it is a contradiction of what I generally think of as right; yet is so. This sound is similar to that one chord that if played right, brings us to an emotional threshold. You know the one that note in a song, its pitch and tone that touches something inside you. For me it can only be achieved through the cello. A more apt description may be the saying that goes something like this.

Music achieves what the human language cannot; it transcends our human experience into something that is metaphysical or ethereal. For a moment it allows us to escape from where we are to where we would like to be, and then it is gone. We both love it and hate it for what it is capable of. That is its capacity to be what and who it wants to be at any time, reaching beyond external control into a thing, purpose, and being that it is truly meant to be.