SAMfest Houston - small review

Whistle
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The Summer Acoustic Music (SAM) fest http://www.peggycarter.com/samfest.html is mostly about hammered and mountain dulcimers, but has classes and events that include whistles and other acoustic instruments. Pennywhistle classes were held both days, taught by Beth Shelton of Tin Roof Tango http://www.tinrooftango.com and Houston local Linda Ellison. Beth is a multi-instrumentallist, mostly woodwind, singer, guitarist, dulcimer player and songwriter. She is also a fine teacher.

I took two of her dulcimer classes as well as her whistle class on ornamentation. Beth is classically trained and applies terminology from that realm to whistle ornaments. For example, she refers to what I’ve seen called taps or strikes as mordants. She also plans her ornaments more than most folk players, settling on what to use and where by experimentation and experience.

Her O’Riordan whistle is a very expresive tool in Beth’s hands. (As well as a coveted tool in mine, hard to give back after she let me try it out.) She plays a style fairly dense with ornaments, and yet is very quick, lively and interesting to hear. I recommend both her classes and her groups CDs.

The event was well-organized and planned for the number attending, probably several hundred. The one snafu involved a planned Irish session that didn’t really come off. The evening big jam session sure came off, though, with over 50 players and still going when I left at, gulp, 2:45 this morning.

One of the highlights of my day yesterday was meeting the Wandering Whistler in person. He is a great guy and a fantastic whistler. Who knows, the SAMfest people might not have been joking when they asked him if he’s like to teach whistle next year. (I’ll take your class if they do, WW.)

My Chiff and Fipple T-Shirt attracted quite a bit of attention and the URL was copied down a number of times, so maybe we’ll have some new members soon.

Nice weekend, great fun, Cheers, NancyF

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Wow! Sounds like you had a wonderful time! I didn’t know they had stuff like that down there when I lived there! Maybe I wouldn’t have moved…

Nawww!

Kim

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Meeting Nancy at SAMfest was great fun! We sat and talked for quite a bit, and she showed off her whistle collection, and the whistle bag she makes (which is a great bag…I’m thinking of getting one myself soon). Afterwards, we played some tunes together at the ‘irish session’..though it was only like 4 of us there. It took a bit to find some tunes that we had in common, but it was fun. :slight_smile:

She was was quite generous in letting me try her different whistles. The more I pick up Burkes, the more I get impressed with them. Nancy had a metal model (don’t remember exactly if it was an al-pro or what?) which had many of the same characteristics as the composite of Lee’s that I played with. Very easy playing, requiring very little agression on the 2nd octave (whereas she found my alloy Silkstone to have high requirements in this dept.). I noticed that the perturbed bore gives the Burke a sound like a conical whistle, but without a conical shaft. Nifty. She also let me play her Sindt, and while it was also very easy playing, I wasn’t happy with the cross-fingered c-nat at all. No Sindt’s in my immediate future, it seems.

SAMfest itself is quite dulcimer-centric (moutain dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, etc). This stands to reason, as Peggy Carter (the organizer) is a dulcimer player. But there were some decent classes outside of this scope. I went to a tinwhistle class (my first!), but kinda wish I’d have gone to the “how to learn a tune on the fly” class Nancy took…I saw an impressive application of those newly-acquired skills.

As for teaching a class, I think it’d be a blast! Linda didn’t take down any of my contact inforamtion, so who knows if anything’ll actually come of it..but it was certainly gratifying to be asked.

[ This Message was edited by: Wandering_Whistler on 2002-07-29 11:06 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Wandering_Whistler on 2002-07-29 11:08 ]

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The whistle the Wandering refers to above is indeed a Burke Aluminum D Pro.

Cheers, NancyF

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Nancy could you post some information about what you learned in the “how to learn a tune on the fly” class?

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The class, Favorite Jam Tunes, was taught by hammered dulcimer wizard Rick Thum and to him I credit the following. Rick is a wonderful, sharing person and I don’t want to step on his toes, but I’ll share a bit of what I came away with through the lens of my musical development. The trained musicians among you will no doubt correct my theory problems and the experienced session players will laugh at the obviousness of it all, but this is my perception and not meant to simulate anyone elses reality.

Keep in mind that this was all aimed at a mixed instrument, beginner to intermediate acoustic crowd tending toward bluegrass and old-time music. Rick shared a method for quickly joining a tune without clashing that usually works on 8 x 2 reels in a major key. (8 measures in two parts each repeated)

The method works because of the common structure of reels in the form of each part having 4 2-measure phrases, the last of which is a run to the tonic (key name note).

Before the tune starts, if possible, ask for the key it will be played in. When the tune starts, play the pentatonic scale of the named key, in the rhythm of the tune, while you count measures. (The pentatonic is the 1,2,3,5,6 notes of the diatonic scale, so in D: D, E, F#, A and B). This scale won’t clash with the tune, so while you are playing, look for the chord changes and always play a run to the name note in measures 7 and 8. Once you get the location of the chord changes, you can play any notes from the diatonic scale of the chord being used while you begin feeling out the tune itself.

I think one reason this works better in old-time and bluegrass is that in the jams (vs Irish sessions), they play a million repeats of the tune, so you have a lot of time to learn.

His caveats included: the method isn’t reliable in minor keys; if what you are playing isn’t working stop and wait for the next tune; don’t forget jam etiquitte (which I find a bit different than session etiquitte).

Again, thanks to Rick Thum for a great class, Cheers, NancyF

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Hi Nancy, You are so lucky to have had Ricks class! He is so great! I had his class’s at the Upper Potomac Hammered Dulcimer Fest in West Virginia for 2 days straight. This past March. They were just for the HD though. I learned so much from him that I am still working on the things I learned. Thank goodness for tape players. I had contact with Rick before the festival because I had him custom build my Hammer Dulcimer. He is very talented in both playing and building them. I will have to listen to the tapes again and try to apply them to my whistling too. He explained about the pentatonic scale and how to play almost any tune during a jam if you know the key they are playing in, but I think that the Dulcimer is set up to make that understanding much easier. I am just learning to read music and have no knowlege of music theory at all. I amazed my daughter who has a Masters degree in music with my knowlege of scales and how to instantly change key on the same song! It was great! Ha Ha! A couple hundred dollars to learn that alone was worth it! Especially since I spent 10’s of thousands of dollars for my daughter to learn the same thing! (well, I guess she learned more than that). Anyway, I must admit I am still totally unaware of how to count in music! I am learning though! Wish me luck. I think playing by ear is getting easier though so maybe the counting isn’t so important.

Kathy

~Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often~

[ This Message was edited by: chattiekathy on 2002-07-29 15:09 ]