Performing-Keys and Building Set Lists

Good morning, friends. Welcome to the weekly livestream from Dulcimer Crossing. Today, our theme is going to be keys and building set lists. This again is a suggestion from one of our loyal participants and and watchers. And so let me get get up the, the video part of this.

There we go. So I can see comments then. Oh, set list. This may or may not be familiar. Okay.

It's not okay. I'm commenting as me rather than as Dulcimer Crossing. Alright. That's the way it is. A set list is when you plan the tunes that you're gonna be playing for a particular reason.

What keys that you've unlocked by a dulcimer. You know, that's gonna be between you and your dulcimer. So the question is, yeah, there are some words here that have particular meaning in music. But the key that we're playing in has to do with which set of sharps and flats we're gonna be using as we play. It's very common in the dulcimer world to play a lot of things in d.

If you're a mountain dulcimer player, somewhere back in the late eighties, somebody decided we should be tuned to d. David Schnaufer had something to do with that and popularizing that. Before then, people tuned them to whatever they wanted them to be. And what would happen is, you would whoo into the hole, And at a certain pitch, the whole instrument just vibrates, and that's what you make your bass string. This one is doing c.

Took me a while because I've got it tuned in f a c at this moment. That's where the whole instrument vibrates. And you would tune your bass string to that and make everything match. And the books that I collected at the beginning of my playing and when I wanted to start doing the dulcimer friendly worship series, I bought everything that I could find, and everybody was publishing the books in the keys they wanted them to be. It was I call it the free range time.

But then at the end, that was and that's fine if you're playing by yourself or you're making it match your voice and those kinds of things. When you wanna play with others, it's really helpful that everybody be tuned to the same, standard. And, I mean, so you might it might be your instrument might be in tune with itself, but it may not be in tune with anyone else who wants to join you. So using an a 440 tuner is really helpful. Deciding on a common tuning helped create what in in our world is called the dulcimer world now.

So I can travel all over the United States and and Canada, and I can expect that I can very quickly play with other people without having to go through a lot of rigmarole because there, we have moved to the, everyone playing being oriented around the key of d. Now it turns out that in the old time world, which is not a dulcimer world, but does welcome dulcimers, a lot of the tunes that they play in the in an old time session start out in d, then they'll change the g tunes, and they'll change the a tunes. This gets at what the question is, what is a key? The the tunes that are in d are gonna have they're gonna have 2 sharps and flats in them. They are, I mean, 2 sharps and flats.

They're gonna have 2 sharps in the key signature. They're gonna be related to the notes that go from d on the treble right below the treble clef to d on the second from top line on the treble clef. On the Mount Dulcimer, they'll actually sound an octave lower, so they'll go from d in the middle of the bass clef to d that's just above the bass clef or just below the top of the treble clef. And the chords that go with that are the 1, 4, 5 that we've talked about before, and there's the minor chords, which are all the ones that don't point out. Those all kind of that whole constellation things will be what happens when we're playing in the key of d.

Now I don't know if you have noticed how fatigued your ear can get with playing over a period of time the same key over and over and over again. But as a listener, it's really easy to become numb to what you're listening to if everything you play is in the same key all the time. This is not in d, because I'm playing jazz with it, and it's attuned to an open chord, which is f a c, which lets me play in the key of f, and lets me f all the chords that go with things that are naturally the keys that the jazz tunes were actually written in. Now here's one that's in d. But if I play, If I play 3 or 4 or 5 songs, it's gonna be real easy for you to fall into what my friend, Butch Ross, likes to call.

If you like one folk song, you'll like the other one too, a workshop he likes to do, because of the stereotype that they all sound alike. And one of the reasons they can all sound alike is if they're all in the same key. Now that when we come to preparing music to play for other people, whether it's a concert or it's a recital or it's a program that we wanna play for other people. Hey, Dwayne. Thanks for sending me those pics, by the way.

I think I owe you some money. If you're playing constantly in one key, it's gonna be very easy for people's ears to just be, you know it's like, what? I don't even hear what's going on. So as I'm putting together and programming a set list, I'm thinking I'm gonna start in d. Where do I go next?

Do I stay in d? Now if I stay in d, are there some other changes I can make? And so let me share my screen here with you. So when I'm putting this together, I can choose the time signature for the piece. So I might have, I might have a 44 piece.

The next piece could be a jig. And that then I might say we're all in the major key. What happens if what happens if I well, my chords are gonna go into minor chords. Oh, now it gets interesting. What if I after I get done with my first note, which is in 44, which is whisk before breakfast, and then I was doing byword tower, which is a jig.

And then what if I Emi, Bminor, Oh, point framework. What if I change it to a minor key? What if I have a completely different emotional framework for the tune? Is it one of those tunes that makes me if it's inauguration day, does it make me feel patriotic? Does it make me feel proud?

Does it make me feel mellow? Does it does the emotion of the tune make me wanna get up and and, boogie? Does it make me wanna do my taibo or whatever my Pilates or my exercises? Is does it make me wanna relax and go to sleep? Does it wanna comfort me?

Does it, make me hungry so it's a good dinner at, you know, a company? Those are all the kind of things that are going on in music. And as I think about putting together my set list, I wanna draw from all these and use as many of them as possible. And I want to put them together in a way that makes some sense. Now Rick Thumb is someone who, always he's very conscious of the keys of the songs he's playing in his sets.

And he'll be talking about the fact that when I start off and I'm in d, if my next song is ee minor, then I could go to g after that, and then I could go to a after that. And there is a a natural progression as the keys advance up the scale. There is an energy level that gets built into the performance. So that and I might get to a, and then I might go to b minor, and then I might be back to d again, and then I might go to g, and then you'll you might notice that often in his performances, he'll end with a set of a tunes, which is just like the old old time jam sessions where the whole everything comes to comes to a head in a, and there's all this energy. There it's not just tempo, but it has to do with the the reason the energy is there is because we've taken our our patient time, like, James is saying.

Take your patient time to build the expectations that when we get to the a, we know we're at the top of the mountain. So then you might have Hangman's Reel or John Stinson's or something like that an a tune. And as you get there, you can feel this. And when the when the you're done playing, the audience expectation is to rise to their feet and clap. You get a standing ovation partly because you played well.

It but it's also part of how you've prepared. Have you set up their expectations so that this is the satisfying you've delivered the satisfying, coup de grace, the, piece de restaels or whatever. Yeah. I'm using all the kind of language I don't even know. But I've set up the expectation that something good is coming, and then I give you the good thing.

That is a function of planning your set list. Now, if you only know the songs in the key of d, it's possible in the dulcimer world for that to happen, because sometimes we'll pick songs that are in another key in their real life, and we'll put them in d so that people will play them. But then the the the sad thing that happens is people begin to believe that everything belongs in that key, and we really don't hear much different. So that's one of the reasons I mean, it could be useful. I don't need a capo.

I can just play my instrument the way I don't have to retune it. I just play it. I play a lot of tunes. That's great. But when I'm thinking about sharing tunes with other people, I've gotta be a little more thoughtful.

I need to get at a little bit lower level or deeper level to understand what's going on in the music in order for the audience to have a satisfying experience when I share the music. Now if I'm playing 1 piece in a recital, the whole site recital is probably not programmed in order. But I I wanna add invite you to do this. I want you to listen. Go to your music collection, and I want you to listen.

And see if you can figure out what keys things are as the programmed set list, which is if it's a we're living in a single world again, where everybody, says, I'm gonna play the music I want, and I don't want that one. I only want this one. They put together their set lists of what they wanna listen to. That's fine. It's like the not mix tape of the nineties is the is the playlist that we create on Spotify or in your in your Itunes or whatever your method of listening to music is.

But if you take a CD or a cassette or a vinyl, and you put it on your player in your player and play, there has been programming that went on ahead of time to decide what's gonna happen next, what's the order. In the long play records, there was a certain amount of time you had, and you could only fit from the from the beginning, from the outside to the middle. You can only fit a certain amount of music on there, and then you have to flip it and do the other side. And so you're thinking about 2 sets of music, like the first half, and then there's an intermission in the second half, and there's an intermission. When I'm when I'm doing concerts that are in people's homes for a house concert or I'm at I'm in a soft cedar venue where there's a stage and people are it's a listening room.

I'm usually planning for 2 sets of about 45 to 50 minutes each with a break in the middle. And I I could play forever, but with the kind of music that is usually happening in the, in the acoustic world, there's an interaction, there's story, there's instrumental, there's setups for the songs. There's sometimes you go right into the song without any kind of introduction. But as I work through my set list, I'm building to I'm also building an emotional curve. I do this with my little kids classes too.

It's it's, we have a hello and a greeting, and then we have some enter we have this focus to get everybody's attention. There's some dyadic, you know, you're with your adult, your parent, and you're connecting. And then there's, something that's exciting. We're either getting something to play and hold in our hands, or we're getting up and moving our bodies. And then we relax.

We go from large to small, and we have a couple of, like, roller coaster waves. And then there's the big stuff that happens toward the end. In that kind of a class, I don't end with the standing ovation. That's what happens when we all get to play our instruments. So there's this there's this big climax of us playing the instruments, and then there's a lullaby, and then there's the goodbye.

And that rhythm is the expected thing that happens all the time. We all know that when you develop rhythms with children, they have a better experience because they have a little bit of knowing what's gonna come, and it's less scary, much more engaging. When people come to a concert, they expect something at the beginning. They expect something in the middle. They expect something at the end.

And if there are 2 sets, they expect something that sends them to the intermission and something that brings them back. And, usually, you know, thanks for your question about switching instruments. That'll be a piece of this. Usually, I I like a lot of heart songs, the kind of songs that make you real feel deeply, but I can't expect an audience to trust me to take them deeper into their personal experience right off the bat. It's like, I just don't walk up to you and ask you personal questions if we've never met.

I need to put this on here too just so you can see that this is what we're doing. Keys and building set list, just as a reminder. I'm and the ways that we build the trust is, I'm gonna play something that feels kind of expected to begin with. I'm gonna start inside the with something that's uptempo, kind of radio length, 3 minutes ish. Something that, is is going to have you wanna be part of this and say, yeah.

This is gonna be good. We're gonna have some fun here. And then we're gonna move after that. And because I switch a lot of instruments, I'm gonna be ans ask answering the questions that Doug is talking about. If I'm switching instruments, for a long time when I would play, I would not necessarily develop a set list.

I would try to read who's in the room because I'm in a coffee shop. The audience is coming and going. It's not It was not a ticketed event. This was as I was getting started a lot. And I still love those kind of settings.

But if I'm in a house concert situation, I've have some experience of who the host is and what they're looking for. And so I might start with one of their favorites. Just, you know, it's like, look. I brought all these people to my house, and this person's playing my favorite song. So it it just we it it's a party, and it's a it's a sharing, but there's some trust being built between me, the stranger, and them, the audience, so that we can get to the place where I can play that song, which is the heart song.

The one that makes them feel deeply, whatever the feeling is that they have when they when they get to that place. It may be a familiar song. It may be an unfamiliar song. I might be taking a risk and asking them to go to a place that they haven't thought about or didn't know they were gonna do tonight. And in order to do that, I have to build their trust by having some expected things happening.

And my decisions about building that is gonna be in somewhat related to the keys that I'm playing. Now I don't always have to go in order, but like Doug says, what's interesting, if I'm playing a mountain dulcimer that's tuned to d, and I wanna switch to a baritone that's turned tuned to a So I finish that song in d, and then I pick up my baritone. Now this particular one is tuned to g. And I like it in g because it's well, I'm I'm playing this one in g, not so because I like it, but because I have a student who is currently spending all of all of her attention in her baritone because it fits her voice in g. So mine's in g to match her.

But you'll notice that what I said before, I played songs in deep, and then I went e minor, went up to g, that sounds a lot higher. If I went to a, that sound even higher. But a baritone is pitched lower. So I could go higher in keys, but the sound is gonna be lower because of the octave this is in. So there there is it the you can walk up the keys, but you might end up below where you started.

It's kind of an interesting thing to be thinking about. There will be a general feel just because the register of the instrument and how it's tuned, it'll feel lower. That's okay. But it'll be a change from where I was before, And that's that's what's gonna be interesting. Now if you do a lot of baritone because it matches your voice or you just like what the songs are in that place, then you might use your standard to be the brighter thing that moves us out of this low place and moves into this.

And maybe this is where you do your high energy things. Maybe you you you can play against expectation too. So there are all these variables that we need to be aware of all the time. So I talked about them before as being, time signature, tempo, key, emotional framework, mood. And we didn't talk about which instrument.

So and I started to say when I played in the coffee shops and things, I would if I had 3 instruments, I would have a mountain dulcimer, I'd have a, hammer dulcimer and guitar, I would be moving through them in each one of my sets. And I would tend to do a couple on the hammer dulse, a couple on mom dulse, a couple on the guitar, back. And then it's like I work through all the instruments twice. That's the end of the first set. And I would be depending on I would be I was developing my skill to read the energy in the room to know what song should come next.

It wasn't and it was beyond just it started off as, can I how many songs do I know? Can I play them? To how do I share these songs in the right order for people to experience it, to trust me, and to experience the songs to have the power that they have in them? And how many instrumentals before I sing sing 1? Do I start with singing?

And there's an interesting kind of thing that happens, especially in drop in music, like a coffee shop is. If you're playing an instrumental, a lot of people think that's time to talk, and they will. And when you're done playing, all of a sudden, the sound will stop. They'll they'll stop their conversation and go, oh, they're not really listening to what's going on. When I was in Scotland, there was they're playing in set in pub sessions.

There was a lot of instrumental music, and the the the room is really loud. But in Scotland, if you sing an unaccompanied ballad or an unaccompanied song of any kind, in my case, the whole place would stop and listen. There was a reverence for unaccompanied song that I had not experienced anywhere before. Pubs can be really loud, but if you start singing, say did you see him walking? It was early this morning.

He passed by your houses on the way to the coal. He was tall, he was slender, and his dark eyes so tender. His occupation was mine and West Virginia, his home. Jean Ritchie tune, the West Virginia mining disaster told from the perspective of the women who were at home while the disaster happened down in the mine. Now when I sang that in Scotland, everybody stopped everything, And it didn't have to be at night.

It could be the sun shining through the windows. They still did, because there is a reverence and an expectation that if you're doing an unaccompanied ballad, this is something to be listened to. It's a treasure. The instrumental music, not treasured as much. And that's my experience in the states too.

People tend not to if you're singing, then they listen. If they're not if you're not, then, well, I'll do what I wanna do. Yeah. Now I, Joe Doug, you're saying you could bring 7 instruments. Yes.

I have been known to do that. That that does bring a big expectation from the people watching you unpack. They wanna know, oh, can you play all these? So it's good to have tunes that you can play on each one. And I will sometimes, when I'm preparing for a concert, think what do I wanna play, which instruments do I wanna play, and does that shape my set list?

Yeah. Well, yes. It does shape my set list. But how does it shape it? And can I do still do it so that I get done what I wanna do by thinking about it from the listener's vantage point?

So there's I'm putting myself in a lot of different positions as I do the planning. And the keys are a piece of it. The the voice of the instrument is a piece of it, and the kind of music is a piece of it. I like that story, Doug. You're talking about Joe Bethencourt in Phoenix.

That would be the perfect kind of coffee shop or pub or whatever where where your instruments are hanging on the wall, and you just grab the one that's ready. It's kinda like being in my studio. I like that, having my instruments on the wall. I can just grab them off. It's a bigger deal when you have to unzip them from some place.

So I guess this is a little bit rambly, but there's a lot of lot of options when I'm planning a set. But I'm always trying to do it both from the perspective of what I want to accomplish, but with this audience. So I'm focused on the audience experience, but I also I have a reason for being there. And my overall reason for sharing the music is I want people to be in get deeper in touch with themselves. And so I'm trying to help them connect with themselves to the music that I'm playing.

Sometimes it's new music Mhmm. That I've written. Sometimes it's contemporary music others have written. Sometimes it's ancient music that helps do that. And the, the length of the set list makes a big makes a big difference.

If I've got a one song set, which happens, especially in festival sitting settings where you have this cast of 1,000 that need to play. The audience can only take so much. You know, my dad would always say, the brand the ears can only listen as long as the butt can take it. If you you get TB from sitting, then you have to have something else that's gonna keep the people engaged. And having them get up and dance is a way to take to deal with that TB thing.

That's one thing. But if I just get one song, then I have to choose that song carefully. If I get there's no worse song set than a 2 song song set, in my opinion, Because there's no it's like getting 2 pieces of bread, and there's nothing in the middle in your sandwich. If I have a 3 song set, then I have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that if I'm gonna have to do something short, that's a really good a good length.

If I have a half an hour, I'm still gonna be thinking about beginnings, middles, and ends, and maybe I can get 2 bumps in the energy. 45 minutes, an hour, 2 hours with the break in the middle, all those kind of things, I'm making my decisions and my planning, my set lists based on those things. And I want a lot of different keys. I want a lot of different time signatures. I want different tempos.

I want different moods. But I also want them put together in a way that helps the people come with me on the journey. So we don't have this and then we slam into that, and then we break and we turn completely around, go the other way. Now that's if you're doing the screamo music or you're in in a metal setting, you may want those kind of things. And there are Celtic players, silly wizard.

Johnny Cunningham was the fiddle player, big Scottish fiddle player. I don't remember who the other players were, but I had one of their recordings that they would do these medleys, and they'd just do a hard stop, and they'd pop into the next tune that was in a different time signature, different key, different everything. And then they get to the end, and they flow into the next one. And there was there was one that it was getting close to the end of the of the recording, and you could tell this was like the culmination. This was gonna be the the big finale.

And they play and play and play, and you could feel the energy. And then it they played a different tune that had a even more energy based thing. And I can't remember if it was a time signature change or a tempo change. But then they did it, and everybody's going with them. They're clapping with them, and then there's a hard stop.

And you think, are we done? And then, no, they've moved to a new tune that had even more energy than before, and it's like this ecstasy that happens in the audience. You can hear them getting so excited. It's like, we thought it was over in theirs before. So do you need a set list for busking?

The audience is constantly churning, but what if it isn't? Yeah. If you get people if if people are just going by busking, and there's no common people, you can recycle your tunes. Clear. And you have some that you might know really work with people, and so you kinda use those a lot.

But if they stop because they're intrigued with what you're doing, you gotta be able to shift gears. And busking is a really good way to test audience reaction to things. Open mics is another good way to test audience reaction. But then if you can if you can get people who are walking by heading to something else to stop and spend some time with you and maybe listen to the whole thing you're doing, then it's really important to be thinking about set list and be thinking about a clear conclusion. Because, you know, you might be busking for 2 hours, but they only plan to spend 15 minutes.

So you might need to give them a graceful way to leave and interact with you. So that's a good question too. Well, I thank you for your comments and your suggestions. As always, if you want to see something, covered in the livestream, this is a way to let me know your ideas. Beltsmithstevenbeltsmercrossing.com.

We are continuing to work in the backstages of a a big upgrade and a remodel for Dulcimer Crossing, so keep your eyes open for that. Last week, I forgot to tell you about the Quarantine Festival. Remind you, if you're already, Quarantine 3, and here is the site for this. Registration is open now. And, a couple of my classes are closed, but there's over 50 teachers.

And you're gonna find something that's gonna work for you. All kinds of both kinds of dulcimers and some other instruments as well. It will be held on Zoom February 5th 6th. I've also got another schedule of the the workshops and festivals that I'm teaching at through the beginning of the year. And, and you can find several lists of those kind of things on our on our Dulcimer Crossing page.

Let me share that so you can see it. We have a list on the side. There are several things that are happening. Weekly Zoom jams are happening. That page up here.

Yeah. Send in music. That's fun. And the Quarantine, and there's another one that's taking place. See.

Calling it virtual is really not helpful because I think this this one is out east, but it's March with 6th 7th. I'm taking part in the Walnut Valley one, which is gonna be their festival is planned for September as usual, but they're gonna do it midway through in March, and I'm teaching hammer bells on that one. I'll let you know about that later. But that's what's coming up, and I invite you to continue to just pick up your instrument and play every day. Every day.

Well, thanks for your attention today. It's good to be with you, and I wish you well. Bye bye.

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Hammered Dulcimer Sample Lessons

Chromatic Dulcimer Sample Lesson-Erin Mae Lewis

Dulci-Bro Sample Lesson-Steve Eulberg

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