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New Fiddle Lesson by Vi Wickam

by Steve Eulberg


The Arkansas Traveler is one of Vi's favorite old-time tunes, and crosses several different genres from old-timey Ozark style to Texas style, and even to bluegrass.


The version in this lesson is on the beginner level.  This is also a tune that was featured on Fiddle Whamdiddle's Not My Monkey recording.   





Vi has taught a brand-new lesson on this tune for DulcimerCrossing.com here.



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Dulcimer Articles Archive

by Steve Eulberg

Since appearing on the cover of Dulcimer Players News in 2002 (see above), Steve has been writing articles to share what he has learned with the dulcimer community.

Dulcimersessions.com was a website hosted by Mel Bay Publications and was coordinated and edited by Lois Hornbostel.  Sadly, the website is no longer hosted and all of the resources published there are lost to the bits and bytes of time in the internet age.

Dulcimer Players News is a quarterly magazine for enthusiasts o…

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Tam Kearney Dulcimers

by Steve Eulberg

I was picking through my photo archives and was so delighted to uncover these photos!

TamKearneyHeadShot Tam Kearney, co-founder of Toronto's Fiddler's Green and dulcimer-builder

Tam Kearney was a mainstay in the Toronto folk music scene after growing up in Glasgow and then moving to Canada in the 1960s.  Unfortunately for us, he passed in 2013.  (Read Ian Robb's eulogy in SingOut! Magazine here.)

I was on tour in Toronto in March of 2017 and was able to play a house concert for Lynn Westerhout, Tam'…

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Historic Dulcimers in England

by Steve Eulberg

I was honored to be the American mountain dulcimer tutor for the Nonsuch Dulcimer Club's Fall Festival in Malvern, England last month.

Thanks to Geoff Reeve-Black, I was also able to see some historic mountain dulcimers from his collection that I am pleased to show to you here:

edpresnelldulcimergeoffreeveblack1.jpg

This one was built by Edd Presnell from North Carolina.  Some people find the traditional wooden tuning pegs to be a challenge (and a chore!) but these operated smoothly, AND accurately, even though I was co…

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Habits Announcement (Ends 9/30/18)

"Hi, this is Steve Eulberg with another Habit for Your....

....well, it's not exactly a Habit, it's an announcement: For people who are developing their Habits for a Healthy Music Habitat. My patrons, on Patreon, have been able to support me so that I can finish this collection in a digitized fashion. Southern Harmony shape-note tunes arranged for Mountain Dulcimer Trios. InstaSpecialOffer And what I'm excited about is they were able to do that, and THAT let's me get to work on the NEXT one, which is shap…

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Mountain Dulcimer Sighting!

by Steve Eulberg It is always exciting to uncover or bump into another dulcimer sighting, in the course of one's daily life (and/or internet searching!) In this video there is a visual and audio sighting of Frank Profitt playing and singing the ballad Barbara Allen from 8:46-11:09.

His part of the video footage is from the Alan Lomax Collection The Theme:  The Cultures of the Scots-Irish in the New world, the role that music plays on both sides of the Atlantic, during the passage across the s…

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Frank Proffitt

by Steve Eulberg In Pete Seeger's television series, Rainbow Quest, Episode 26, he hosted folklorist Frank Warner.  At about 26:27 they begin discussing Frank Proffitt, including some film of him playing his banjo at the Newport Folk Festival (begins at 40:09) Frank is most well-known for preserving the song Tom Dooley, [UNFORTUNATELY THIS YOUTUBE ACCOUNT HAS BEEN TERMINATED.] Earlier in their conversation, Pete relates an exchange of letters between Howie Mitchell and Frank Proffitt about dulci…

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Mimi and Richard Fariña

by Steve Eulberg What a time in which to live!  The archive of so many treasures is available with a few clicks or keystrokes. Pete Seeger hosted a television series in 1965-66 that had a very limited audience in the New York and New Jersey areas, called Rainbow Quest. There was no studio audience yet Pete interacts with the camera as if it is an actual audience as he told stories and sang. He had many guests and in this episode he hosted Mimi and Richard Fariña having met and heard them play an…

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The Perfect Wrong Note

by Linda Ratcliff

If you ever strum the wrong note, or strike the wrong string with your hammers ...  just tell them you were playing the jazz version. - Linda Ratcliff




The Perfect Wrong Note
My 16-year-old grandson plays the saxophone in his band at school, and he was telling me about trying out last week for the school jazz band. All the kids waiting for their turn were troubled by one note in the arrangement - an Eb. They thought if they could just play that note 1/2 step higher, it would sou…

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Music Confounds the Machines

tboneburnettby Steve Eulberg

Focusing on the challenges that artists face in the current digital and mechanistic day and age, T Bone Burnett gave the keynote address at the AmericanFest in September of this year.

I found these words echoing in my soul:

"Music is to the United States as wine is to France. We have spread our culture all over the world with the soft power of American music.  We both have regions- France has Champagne, we have the Mississippi Delta.  France has Bordeaux, we have the Appalachian Mo…

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