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Lessons Learned from Gardeners
- from Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Winter is coming, and those who planted gardens are seeing their plants wither away once a hard frost has blown through. But watching my neighbors care for their gardens through the spring and summer, I realized that gardening and learning to play an instrument require some of the same basic principles of care. And (of course) I want to share with you…
Finished or Not Finished? That is the Question.
I recently read this quote by artist Arshile Gorky, an Armenian-American abstract expressionist painter (1904-1948). "I never finish a painting – I just stop working on it for a while. … I like painting because it's something I never come to the end of. Sometimes I paint a picture, then I paint it all out. Sometimes I'm working on fifteen or twenty pictures at the same time. I do that because I want to – because I like to change my mind so often.”
This quote resonated in my heart because that’…
Cockleburs in Your Practice
You may remember, about 6 weeks ago, we got a new family member – Mikaela. What a cute little bundle of love she was ... 2-1/2 pounds of black fur, with beautiful brown streaks running through her hair. In the sunlight, she actually looked like she had been to the beauty shop to have her hair highlighted.
Because Parvo virus cases have been on the rise in the Rio Grande Valley recently, our vet would not allow us to take her outside to play in the grass. However, last Friday she said Mikaela …
New Blues Backing Tracks added to the Library
I am excited to the announce the addition of SIX (6) brand-new Blues backing tracks in 6 different keys. These are all played at 117 bpm (beats per minute). The tracks were created with guitar, dulci-Bro and drumkit and are located in our Backing Tracks Library
All levels of membership have access to this library and can download the tracks as well as the PDF chord charts that accompany them.
Making use of the Pentatonic Minor Scales for each key and/or the Blues Scales for each key, players…
When the Unexpected Happens
Performing any kind of music for a live audience can be terrifying! But when we have an upcoming performance, we do everything we know how to do to make sure everything is perfect. We practice, we tune and retune, we get enough sleep the night before. That is because our brains need to feel that they have everything under control. And our brains interpret anything even remotely unexpected as a threat. But crazy, unexpected things do happen right when you need everything to go smoothly. Strings…
What Makes Your Heart Sing?
Steve Jobs once said, “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying, “I’ve done something wonderful today, that’s what matters.” Steve Jobs followed his heart his whole life and that, he said, made all the difference.
If Jobs had not pursued his passion for music, he might never have created an MP3 player that fit in our pockets. If Jobs had not pursued his passion for animation, millions of children—and adults—would never have experienced the joy of …
Avoid Dulcimer Burn-Out
Where does musical burn-out come from? From what I’ve seen, we all start out from the same place.
- We want to learn an instrument.
- We take lessons.
- We keep getting better, day by day.
- We leave the house with our instrument and jam with others.
- We pursue our musical dreams, some of us with long-range goals.
Our time is filled with playing the dulcimer. We read, eat, breath, live dulcimer music. We put a ton of time into practice, watching tutorials, preparing for contests, attending conc…
Are We Back to Normal Yet?
It’s the million dollar question everyone is asking. When will life return to normal? When can we stop wearing masks? When will everyone be back at work? When will the supply chain get back on track again?
And this is the question I get in my sales office at the senior resort every day too. Winter Texans, identified by some as snowbirds, are calling every day to ask, “What’s it like in the Rio Grande Valley? Are you back to normal yet?” Since we live just 10 minutes from the Mexican border (o…
A Short Video Tour of the New DulcimerCrossing Site! (4:31)
Here is a short (4 and a half minute) tour of the new DulcimerCrossing Site, once you are logged in.
Gratitude for our Legacy Site at DulcimerCrossing.com
Wow. Linda and I have been working on creating, maintaining, publicizing and updating the resource of DulcimerCrossing since 2009.
After a year-long soft-launch in 2010, we opened up the gates in 2011.
One year, on July 1st, we woke up to discover that because Adobe (who created Flash Technology) and Apple (who created the Safari Browser) were having a squabble, none of the lessons on our website were working!
We had spent a good deal of time adding all of our filmed lessons to a video pl…
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