Photo by Judith Giddings "Evening on Hills Creek Lake" (near Wellsboro, PA) Here goes the tune list for my Nine Meditations for Dulcimer (originally called Best of 2012 Sleepytime CD). The tunes are in strict chronological order and represent the best of the best tracks (at least according to me!). 2012 was an incredible year for my home recording! I probably did more recording than in any other year. This music fits nicely into the "New Age/Healing and Relaxation/Meditation" category. There was a time, around the mid or late 1990s, when I had some resistance to this label or "genre" or whatever. There was something that just felt phony about it, and I wasn't totally clear about my musical direction, either. Now I seem to be all the way there..... just making music that is soothing and healing on some levels. My intention is very clear. I'm not interested in "success" in the traditional sense. It is EXTREMELY personal spiritual stuff -- maybe like a personal music meditation practice. Here are the titles. Thanks go to my partner Mary who helped me with these: 1.) Eileen Walks the Avenue 3/29/12 ....................................7:31 2.) Prayer for Safe Passage (backing track) 4/1/12......................4:13 3.) Flowers of Kale 2012 4/17/12........................................7:50 4.) Five Cups of Tea 10/15/12...........................................1:40 5.) Twinkle Variations 2012 (backing track) 10/24/12....................5:51 6.) Cuckoo Elegy 10/28/12...............................................6:04 7.) Light Into Darkness 2012 11/27/12...................................3:51 8.) Slow Waltz on the Pachelbel Chords (backing) 12/2/12................6:58 9.) Cloudships Impressions in 4/4 12/3/12...............................6:09 1.) Eileen Walks the Avenue 3/29/12 ....................................7:31 Basically the good old cabbage chords or Pack Up Your Sorrows for a more extended version of this progression. This has a certain freedom and lightness to it that is quite liberating, and allows me to breathe and let everything flow. It is also very well organized in many spots --- there are tonal sequences (basically just moving around a motive or phrase) and a few other devices my theory involvement has allowed me to acquire. But for some reason, I was flowing in a very natural way this day in March. This is basically a duet, where I tried to get a give-and-take, low-vs-high, lead-vs-backup dialog between the parts. 2.) Prayer for Safe Passage (backing track) 4/1/12...............4:13 This mixolydian chord progression: A-Em-G-D ----- which (loosely) came from Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald ---- is a long time composition project for me. This is a backing track, in the sense I use it to improvise new melodic ideas over. The first half, with a fairly rapid harmonic rhythm, is more interesting and throws a few new ideas out there. The second half, with a halved harmonic rhythm, is VERY static, and really is the same backing material over and over, like a loop. This project has "legs" in that I'm currently finishing up this new version, which now has 4 discrete sections, and I recently started working again on the precursor to this tune, which is kind of a slow lament and jam on the same chords. 3.) Flowers of Kale 2012 (backing track) 4/17/12.........................7:50 Another backing track that is very repetitive! Towards the very end the textural density thins out a lot, and I love this sparseness. This whole track is probably due for radical shortening soon! This is a dorian mode version of the Passamezzo Moderno progression (the cabbage chords). More recently I have paired down the texture on this so that it is MUCH less busy. 4.) Five Cups of Tea 10/15/12..........................................1:40 This is an improvisation around the chords: C#m - E - A E B7 - using almost exclusively the E Major Pentatonic Scale: E, F#, G#, B, C# --- it is so much fun to see what you can do with a restricted set of pitches! Stravinsky said some of his most unlimited freedom came ONLY after setting up more and more restrictions!! I'm using a volume swell patch on my AdrenaLinn II to get that sort of backwards tape effect. 5.) Twinkle Variations 2012 (backing track) 10/24/12.............5:51 These are some of my variations on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" that I've been messing with for at least 25 or 30 years now. This is mostly a duet in E of backing chords and a bass line, so it would be nice to have a little more melodic improvisation. 6.) Cuckoo Elegy 10/28/12......................................................6:04 This is a pretty sparse take on one of my aeolian mode tunes, originally based upon some variations on SLOW Drunken Sailor, but now it seems to have a life entirely its own. This is a very heavy and dark kind of melody, as many aeolian mode tunes are. 7.) Light Into Darkness 2012 11/27/12...................................3:51 This is a very interesting progression appearing in tons of pop and rock songs: D A Bm G -- this version is a fairly tightly composed setting, with at least two main themes. In the past I have been simply jamming with the chords: improvising melodies over the chords, or playing the chords as arpeggios. More recently, though, I have been looking for easy, singable melodies that are fun to sing or play (I often do both). This version has at least two of these themes: one is the opening theme, and the other is the theme that gets repeated from about the middle of the piece until nearly the end. There are other melodies popping up here and there in places, but they are improvised and kind of like “icing on the cake” - I couldn't remember what I did, nor could I TAB them out. Everything else in this piece is accompaniment chords. I decided that it would be great to try some two-handed tapping for the “bed” of accompaniment chords. If you listen closely, you'll hear the tapping groove underlying everything in most parts of the piece. Toward the very end, though, TAPPING IS ALL THERE IS! So you can hear what this bed of tapping sounds like alone. This is probably the first time I've used the tapping in a finished tune, and I'm really satisfied with how it supports the main melodic themes, and how it supplies a gentle, undulating rhythmic groove. I'm not sure what I'll do with this tapping style in the future – it doesn't seem to work for me as a solo technique – but maybe other dulcimer players might want to try it? (with a little bit of luck, this recording may actually appear on the included CD with the Winter Dulcimer Players News!) 8.) Slow Waltz on the Pachelbel Chords (backing) 12/2/12....6:58 The well-known Baroque classic Pachelbel Canon in D has an amazing chord progression behind it, and a set of possible bass lines to go along with the chords. I decided to try the progression in 3/4 time, and since I never learned any of the real melodic themes from the actual piece, the structure is always pregnant with possibility for me. This is mostly backing here, and I plan to get some fairly developed melodic stuff to go with it. Hopefully none of this ends up sounding like the Canon in D!!! There are hints of long, sustained lines that I played on my Ovation/Adamas acoustic guitar with an EBow (a hand-held device for electromagnetically driving or "bowing" any steel string. It will work on dulcimers, but is probably best suited to guitar.) 9.) Cloudships Impressions in 4/4 12/3/12.............................6:09 Cloudships is a Tyrolean folk song appearing in Girl Scout songbooks. It is usually in 3/4 time, so here I go in 4/4! I have come up with some melodic material that doesn't have any traces of the original folk song. The piece is still evolving. Again I'm using a volume swell patch on my AdrenaLinn II to get that sort of backwards tape effect. ==================================================================