Tune Time-Devil in the Strawstack

It says I was muted. Hi. Good morning. Hi, Dulcimer Crossing friends. I'm Erin May here with you for our Wednesday livestream.

Yay. It's great to be with you. I'm just looking down to make sure that the stream is actually working, and then we're gonna roll. Today, I thought I just wanna play tune. So I wanna teach you a tune.

I thought I would teach you a tune that's probably kind of an obscure tune, one you may not know, because that's always fun. I like finding, like, the most obscure weird tunes that aren't super common and frequently played. So I picked a tune like that. Okay. Everything is working.

I've got the chat open on Facebook. So if you have a question for me about the tune or the, strategies for playing it, drop them in the chat on Facebook, and I will see them there. And if you're watching later, you can also drop questions in the chat. I'll be watching, the discussion going forward too. So feel free to post questions even if it's not during the live watching of it.

Alright. So let's learn a tune. Yeah? So the tune I picked is called Devil in the Strawstack, and Devil in the Strawstack is a really funny little tune. It's a minor tune, but it could also be a mixolydian tune.

You don't know by the melody. It's only when people put chords to it that becomes really clear that it's minor because this is a tune that has no third in the scale. So it is traditionally played in the key of g minor, g girl minor. So if you are are wanting to play it in an old time setting or with a with a big group of other people who happen to know this tune, g minor would be the key that it's usually played in. But I have transcribed it in d minor, and it's really fun to play on the mountain dulcimer d minor.

If you have a one and a half fret, you can tune to d g d and find this tune really easily. If you don't have a 1 and a half fret, this tune in g is a little bit more tricky. You gotta, like, tune your dulcimer a different way to get to that, mixolydian note. You need an f natural note when it's in g minor. But when it's in d minor, you actually just need a c natural note, which we have on our melody and bass strings at the 6th fret.

And if you're playing dulcimer, you will find this tune going straight up the bridge. That's where your, like, flat 7 mixolydian type scale is. So you can play not in the box, but straight up. And, actually, in the case of this tune, straight down. It starts kinda kinda high and gets lower and bounces around a little bit.

But, anyway, I will share the music on the screen with you in a minute as we go through the process to learn the tune. But first, I thought I would just play it for you. Okay. So here's how devil in the straw stack sounds. What do you think?

Isn't it a quilting? I think it's a quilting. So that's what we're gonna learn. We're gonna do it together. So I wanted to say one more thing, which is somewhere in the process of learning tunes, not always at the beginning.

Because a lot of time, I learn tunes because I'm flipping through a book and one catches my eye, and I tried playing it and I think, oh, I really like this tune. I wanna learn it. Or I am at a jam session, or I'm listening to a Facebook live, and I hear a tune and I go, oh, that's a cool tune. I wanna learn it. And I start learning it from whatever source I first found it in.

Right? Whether I'm flipping through a book or I'm learning it from a jam session, I'm learning it the way they played it in that jam session. If I'm learning it from a recording I heard recently or a Facebook event or something like that. Like, I'm gonna learn the tune the way I hear it the first time, usually, or the the way I heard it when it was compelling to me when it grabbed my attention. But somewhere in the process of, like, really learning the tune better, one of the things that I always try to do is go look for old recordings.

Like, what's the first recording of this? What history can I find about this tune? Where did it come from? That sort of thing. And, I found on YouTube a pretty cool recording of Tommy Jarrell, who's an old time fiddle player, actually playing this tune, and he names where he first heard the tune in that video.

And so what I I will do afterwards is drop a link to that YouTube video in the comments. So if you wanna check it out, I was gonna try to, like, share the YouTube video with you, but I'm not a 100% sure how the whole, like, live streaming, YouTube video. We sometimes Facebook will, like, shut down your livestream if you're sharing something that's not original content. So I will post that link, and you can go listen to Tommy Jarrell play it on the fiddle. And the way Tommy Jarrell plays it on the fiddle is pretty close to the the tune that the way I originally learned it.

And I actually learned it from carp camp homework from, the Walnut Valley Festival a bunch of years ago. I I originally learned the tune there, and then I've played it with a few different old time groups who who like, 1 or 2 people knew it, and we decided to try it anyway kind of tune and played it. And I just really like this tune. It it's magic to me. So I hope you enjoy it too.

So what I'm gonna do is put the tune on the screen. I'm gonna walk you through it kinda slowly, and we're just gonna play a tune today, and I hope you enjoy it. So, hopefully let me even see if I can, like, zoom in to just the a part. Let's see if it'll let me do that on the screen. Close.

I wanna make it as big and easy to read as possible for you. Okay. So, what we've done is we've lost the very last note, which is a 0. So I I will, name that one for you. Oh, and I'm gonna switch my camera so you can see my dulcimer up really close.

Perfect. We're just gonna try to read through the a part together. So a thing that you will notice is that it's switching from the bass string to the melody string. And if you're playing on the hammered dulcimer, you're reading some some ledger lines, here where you're actually reading below the staff. So I'm just gonna name this is an a, this, 2 ledger wait.

That's a c. That's a c. That's an a. Yeah. Two ledger lines below the staff is the a, and then it lands here on a low g.

So this low g is the lowest note when we're playing it in d minor, and then it jumps up, like, almost an octave to get to the the next little phrase. So there's kind of this low phrase, and then there's this high phrase. The low phrase happens again and it ends on a high phrase. So you'll feel that as we're playing through it. So we're starting on a d note on the bass string at the 7th fret.

I'm in d a d tuning. Didn't do anything different to play this in d minor. Alright. Here we go. 12.

Ready? Play. 764676464 63. That's 7646 again. Now it jumps to the melody string.

2nd line. This is a d, c, a, c, d, cacdcacg. Dcacdaged. Let's do it again. Alright.

So that was the a part. So I wanna talk about a couple of mountain dulcimer specific things related to fingering. So, I'm gonna stop sharing the screen for just a minute so you can see my dulcimer bigger. So when I play this 7646, I'm using index middle pinky. And I totally get pinky on the bass string is not comfortable for everyone.

It works really well for me to kind of rock back and forth between those notes and just use 3 fingers that are available to me. There's nothing wrong with sliding, though. That slide sound is cool on the bass string, so you can for sure slide, especially, like, between 6 and 4 and 6 and 4. I don't use my thumb on the bass string at all, but that could be another if you're a thumb player, you could use thumb on the bass string. You can tell I don't use thumb on the bass string because I'm really sloppy at it.

So there's a bunch of possible ways of kind of making the that transition happen. I'm gonna share my screen again and put this music up where you can see it again. Another thing I always like to name when it comes to fast fiddle tunes, fiddle tunes with lots of 8th notes. The second 8th note in any pair So if you look at the pairs of 8th notes in here and you look at the pairs of the 8th notes in here, the second 8th note is always less important than the 1st 8th note. And the 2nd 8th note is the same note in all of these.

Right? So it's always the c, and it's always the 6 on the bass string. And so what that tells me is if I can't get a note, it would be more important to play d a d a d a g. 7474743. That's a really important thing.

And because of that, if I slide the whole way, It actually it slides right by that 6, that c note. And so on the mountain dulcimer, anyway, if I totally leave out that note, I can get this tune to really sound like the tune. Same thing when I get to the 4 three one three four three one. It's always the threes that are the less important note. It's the g natural note over here.

And so you can always skip that second 8th note. You can always slide by it if that works better for you than using individual fingers. So, again, I'm using index middle pinky to do these runs. You could do slides. You could do a different set of fingers that work.

This, a part is the really jumpy part of the tune, But, again, if if you want to, you can just slide through those jumps, and that'll get you there. So let's play the a part at that same speed one more time, and then we'll look at the b part together. 1, 2, ready, play. Trying not to go too fast. Here's where it jumps to the melody string, back to the bass string, It lands on 0, the d note.

Repeat it on the bass string, lands on the 3, Gino back up to our little repeating line, then it hops to the melody string to the high a. Back to the base string. To the high melody. Okay. I wanna point out one more thing.

That's this place where you've got a tie across the bar line. So this is how I play it. It is anticipating the first beat of the 4th measure in these lines. And so I'm anticipating those notes by actually playing that a, the high a, on beat 4 of the previous measure. So it feels like I'm getting there early, and then I just kinda hold on to it and then move into the 8th note pattern.

So if I wanted to play it in a way that didn't have that anticipation, it would sound like this. So it's got a lot kind of more straight feel if you don't use that tie to create that anticipation. And when I have played it with other folks, that anticipated note here is really common. Most people will play it with that anticipation, and so I wrote it into the music. But that's a a kind of thing that happens a lot in fiddle tunes where the anticipation might not be written into the music.

So there might not be a 4 on beat 4. It might just be on beat 1. But when you start to listen to everybody play it, you realize folks are actually landing on that note early. And so this is what it looks like in the music if you're hearing that sound of like, it sounds like we're getting there before beat 1. We are.

We're getting there on beat 4, and we're holding it over across beat 1 and then resuming our 8th note patterns. So that's a a pretty common little embellishment you'll hear in a lot of fiddle tunes. Okay. I'm gonna move us up to the b part here. Try to keep yep.

K. So the ending is gonna be the same, but the rest of it does something different. And so, this one is all in the melody string string or up in the higher register on your instrument. And, let's see if we can play it. I did put a double stop on the mountain dulcimer part here in the 3rd measure.

So for hammered dulcimer players, it's not written in, but we're playing an e note below the c note. So we're playing a c in the melody and an e, which is the third of that c chord. We're playing that note below the c and pitch. So if you wanted to catch that c and e note, it just hints a little bit more at the chord change from d minor to c here, and it's totally optional. So mountain dulcimer players, you're welcome to leave out the 4 on the middle string.

It's just kinda cool if you wanna put it in there. So the first time through, I'm gonna play it without it, and the second time through, I'm gonna play it with it. So we're starting on the melody string at 4. It's an a note. 1, 2, ready, play.

There's that 6, c to d, going down, lands on the a note at 4. That high d, so the c and d lands on 0 low d. Do it again. Here's that double stop. 2nd line.

And open. Okay. So, rhythm wise and note wise, I think the b part is a little bit simpler. It's got a lot more quarter notes and half notes in it. There is one place where you've got the a little 8th note run.

And, again, if you look at what the second to 8th note does and what the first 8th note does, you see that in this situation, the important note is the 7 or the d note that we land on in beat 1, which is the same d note we just played in the first measure. So we're playing a d d d d a. That would be the sort of simplified melody of this. So if you wanna get the 7, 8, 7, 6, d, e, d, c in there, that's great. That's a very fiddle style.

Fill in that place. And if it's going too fast for you and your fingers are getting tangled, just play 477, that's add, 774, that's the simple melody here. And then 6 767-634. So, again, you can totally leave out that 8th note on the way, or you can just slide slide from 6 to 3, catch 4 afterwards. So there's always a way of kind of removing the complicated 8th note passages and simplifying the tune.

If you're playing it all by yourself, you might find that to be a little bit boring or dull sounding, sounding, and you might wanna just play the tune more slowly so you can catch all the eighth notes. But if you're playing with other folks and they're playing faster than you've practiced it and you're not quite comfortable playing at the tempo they're playing, a great strategy is to just get rid of the 8th notes and play those quarter notes as the important part of the tune. So let's put it together. The one other thing that I wanna kinda talk about is accent placement. Let's see.

I think that it's probably gonna be hard to read. So we'll just do two lines at a time, and I'll scroll between the parts, as we put it together. Accent placement in this tune is really on ones and threes, which is what makes this anticipation here so unexpected because you're also playing a note on the not usually accented place. 123. 1234.

1, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1 and 2, 3, 4. So it does this little like, it it it puts a hitch in your get along because you're going along with accents on ones and threes, ones and threes, ones and threes. All of a sudden you have an accent on beat 4.

That's probably why I like this tune. It's got a hitch in its get along. I like a little bit of syncopation in my life. Okay. So I'm gonna play it.

We are we have time to play it through a a couple of times. So what I'm gonna do is play it at a pretty slow tempo, and then I'm gonna speed it up, like, a a bit. So we'll practice the process of playing the tune a little bit faster. And if you enjoyed the tune and you would like me to send you this transcript transcription of it as a PDF file, you can just send me your email address, or you can email me. I don't have it set where I can, like, put that on the screen for you, but it's aaron@aaronmaymusic.com, or you can comment in the in the Facebook chat, and I'm happy to send you the PDF PDF file that I've been putting up on the screen.

Okay. Here we go. 12. 1, 2. Here we go.

Jump into the melody string with those high notes. Back to the base string. The melody string, back to the base string, repeat the whole thing. Here's the b part. Repeat the b part.

Last line. Back to the a part. We're gonna go a little bit faster. 1, 2, ready, go. There's the b part.

I just realized the notes aren't there. There you go. I played a variation. Oops. That's what we do with fiddle tunes.

Right? B part again. Alright. Devil in the Strawstack. An old traditional tune, but not one of the more common old traditional tunes in my experience.

So, Francis, to answer your question, yes. This livestream will be available forever, I guess, on the, Dulcimer Crossing Facebook page. There's also a place on the Dulcimer Crossing website, where you can log in if you have a subscription, and you can see all of the archives for the live events and, Dulcimer Crossing Wednesday live streams. Steve started these at the beginning of the pandemic, and we've been doing a live stream every Wednesday morning. Usually, it's either Steve Uhlberg or myself doing the live stream.

Sometimes we get to do them together, which is really fun. So, yes, those things exist and are archived and will remain available to you. Be sure to check out the next Dulcimer Crossing live event, which, features Grant Olsen. He's gonna be teaching about his method for playing 4 equidistant string mountain dulcimer. It's very cool.

Also, if you enjoy this process of sort of focusing on one tune and learning all the stuff about one tune, I teach monthly t and a tune classes. They're called, and my next one is on Sunday, And I'll be teaching the tune spotted pony in a lot of depth. So we have a whole hour to learn one tune really well. So we'll play it, sight read it, study it, analyze it, add embellishments, play it some more, work on playing it faster. And so those one hour, classes can be a really effective way of really, really learning a tune, instead of just kind of getting an over view of the tune.

So you can go to aaronmaymusic.com to learn more about the t and a tune classes, and dulcimercrossing.com to learn more about the next, live event workshop with Grant Olson coming up later this month. So I'll drop links to all of that in the Facebook comments in a couple of minutes. Thank you all for joining me for this morning's Wednesday livestream. I will be with you again next week, and then we expect to Steve to be back with us, if recovery from his surgery has gone the way they expected it to. So, we'll be getting an update from him next week, and, more information for you about that.

In the meantime, have a fantastic Wednesday, and I'll see y'all later. Bye.

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Tune Time-Devil in the Strawstack

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