IMPORTANT NEWS:

DulciTheory Revived On Google Groups!

Here is the link to the new discussion group on DulciTheory:

http://groups.google.com/group/dulcitheory

The material below all relates to my old newsletter format. I will leave this material here as kind of "legacy material" because it does explain a good deal of what the first newsletter incarnation of DulciTheory is all about, and most of these old issues will continue to be available here as well. Once the discussion group gets rolling along, we may well revisit some of these topics and issues.

Music Theory:

Applying it to the Mountain Dulcimer

This newsletter is very sharply focused on augmenting my book entitled Music Theory and Chord Reference for the Mountain Dulcimer. Particular emphasis will be given to learning how to apply T H E O R Y to I M P R O V I S A T I O N.

The book is a concise reference on the basics of music theory and it does a pretty good job of showing the basic chords in the D-A-D tuning, but it doesn't really address APPLICATIONS for most of the theory that it covers. It also doesn't explore any other tuning besides D-A-D in depth. I hope to cover these applications and many other tunings in the DulciTheory Newsletter, as well as on this web site.

Audience

Music Theory is an extremely broad and complex system of study. In some ways it is ironic that anyone who enjoys the simplicity and down-home beauty of the dulcimer, should want to plunge headlong into such a complex and intellectual pursuit! Of course, this is why the DulciTheory newsletter will try to keep focused on real- life musical examples as they are played on the dulcimer. However, no matter how simple, straightforward, and practical the explanations are; theory is still hard! It will definitely give you a headache faster than any other study that I know of.

So the target audience for this newsletter consists of folks who have been playing the dulcimer for awhile, and who have already been working on their own arrangements, compositions, solos, or improvisations. With some experience in making music from scratch, playing by ear, and generally "flying by the seat of the pants", this small segment of the dulcimer-playing public is well-positioned to benefit immediately from these practical insights.

For beginners, or folks who have no musical background besides their experience with the dulcimer, or players who have only played from other peoples' tablature; the DulciTheory newsletter might be rough going indeed. Then again, its free, and it doesn't hurt to try it. You can ask me any sort of question -- dumb or otherwise -- and I will get back to you via private email. The list of subscribers is never shown to everyone, and it is extremely easy to unsubscribe.

Format and Content

Since the newsletter will be a text-only format emailed to the subscribers, it will be limited to ascii fingerboard charts, text explanations, and TAB. Where standard music notation is required, I plan to supplement the newsletter with music notation files on this web site. There will be a link to these files in the email newsletter.

I had originally planned on having a questions-and-answers section of the newsletter, but in practice I found it ridiculously difficult to get any questions at all! In reality, a newsletter format is the wrong vehicle for dialog and feedback. I may consider having a discussion list for theory topics sometime in the future: the discussion might feed nicely into the newsletter.

DulciTheory Content On This Web Site

I plan to work hard in the coming year to get more of the DulciTheory content published on this web site, with richer formatting and decent-looking music notation and tablature. This is actually a pretty tall order, because it depends heavily on the capabilities of the music notation software that you use. This situation is improving rather slowly, and it should be possible to get some pretty decent-looking tab and music up on this site sometime in the next year or so. As mentioned above, I will be sure to have links to the web content in the DulciTheory newsletters.