My Humble Efforts at Composition

Below are links to music I have written.  I only have a very few recordings of them being played by human musicians--Unless otherwise noted, the sound files I link to were performed by my computer, using  Melody Assistant software. 

Many link to html pages that play midi files in the background while displaying a little story behind the music, or the lyrics.  Others link straight to midi files or mp3 files.   There's also a smattering of scores, lead sheets, chord/lyrics sheets, and dulcimer tablatures, linked directly and in the html files.

(updated December 27, 2006)

Against the Cold (mp3 file) Vaguely Renaissancy with a 20th century twist.  Based on Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 73 for the Myriad music contest.
Almeda's Dance (html, plays midi):  Another OVFF hallway composition.
Amy's Coming to FKO! (mp3 file):  A tribute to a damned fine fiddler.
Arborland (mp3 file):  A song that jumped into my head rushing to reach the bus stop at Arborland Mall before the last bus of the night left.
Army of Robot Musicians (html, plays midi): A digital march of cartoony robots.
Ars Musical Xocolatl (midi):  Music for a poem my brother wrote: She plucked a chocolate harp/As sweet as the song that she played.
Ascent (mp3 file):  I'm surprised that a low-energy guy like me can write something so high-energy.
Barfy the Seasick Hedgehog (html with lyrics, plays midi): A Horrible song.
Bowed Dulcimer Dream (html, plays midi):  I dreamed someone tried to teach me this tune.
C-Sharp Spacey Thing (mp3 file):  kind of spacey music that happened to have an out-of-place C-sharp in it, and I couldn't think of a title. If I were cooler, I'd come up with some sort of cryptic artsy word for a title.  Sigh.
Campfire Harmonica (mp3 file): An improvised harmonica tune that turns into a Western movie.
Clarinet Duet (midi only):  Just a little something for my friend Dell, who teaches winds
Dance of the Hemogoblins (mp3 file):  WHo else would carry the oxygen in Troll Blood
Dave and Hall in Vaudeville (mp3 file): an Iron Composer* piece about two performers preparing for a vaudeville act, for my friend Lisa.
The Dirt Woman Song (html with lyrics, plays midi): The first and best Horrible song,
Driving Song (html, links to mp3): New wave-ish rock apostrophe n apostrophe roll-ish with a pretentious digression in the middle, mp3 only
Dulcimandyas (mp3):  An Iron Composer piece for Cat Faber--a duet for dulcimer and mandolin.  (Mandolin sheet music with dulcimer tab)  (Mandolin part only)
Dulcimer Dorian (html, plays midi) :  Music that started with a simple melody and drone
Dulcimer Anthem in 5/4 Time (html, plays midi):  When a weird time signature comes naturally
Dulcimer Tune for M (html, plays midi):  Yet another faux-ren tune
Dulcimer Waltz (html, plays midi): A dance for the dulcimer
Earworm (mp3):  Not just a horrible song, but a horrible song about horribleness in songs.
East (html, plays midi): A good adventure is far away, but it takes time to reach it across the Sahara
Exapno's Lament (mp3):  Something for an online friend on a bad day
Falafel (html with lyrics, plays midi): What the hell is fa-la-fell?  A non-foodie take.
Fanfare and Fugue in C (mp3 file): An extended version of my "Happy Fugue"
Fantasia (mp3 file):  A kind of spacey composition with "fantasia" keyboard voice.
Farewell (html, plays midi): A wistful little piano piece.
Fifth of July (mp3): A fragment of a march.
For Delennara (mp3): A little tune to cheer up an online friend.
For Friends (mp3):  A flute piece written for "Beige_Alert," and online friend.
Frenobulax (html with lyrics, plays midi): An interplanetary Horrible sing-along.
Friendly (html, plays midi): A happy little tune for little bunnies frolicking in the woods and fields
Grand Piano Fanfare (html, plays midi):  Just a few seconds of music for no reason
The Great Merganser (midi):  A song about a duck Fly on great merganser/fly away to your home/fly on great merganser/may you forever roam
Gypsy Spy (mp3): Music for my friend Dell
Halloween 2005 (html, plays midi): A little music that might be a nice theme for a horror sitcom
Happy Fugue (html, plays midi): My little effort to emulate the mighty J. S. Bach in my lame little way (mp3 with fanfare)
The Harpers (mp3):  An Iron Composer* challenge for my friend M--a theme song for an imaginary 1960's sitcom.
An Irish Airman Foresees His Own Death (midi):  A setting of a poem by Yeats, as an Iron Composer* challenge for Naomi Rivkis.
Iron Feghoot (mp3 file): An imaginary dance based on horrible puns
La Dilly Dilly (mp3 file):  A song with silly words that aren't in the mp3.
Late Night (midi file):  A little fragment of music from sitting alone at the piano, wishing there were someone to play it for.
Lullabye (midi):  I wrote this song for my ex.  The words are out the window, but the music is still kind of sweet.
Mad at the Universe (mp3 file):  An all-out mad organ piece.  I made a piano midi version to play on the disclavier at school
Madman's Waltz (html, plays midi): A dark piece for Halloween
Mama's Looking for a Craftsman (mp3):  I had lyrics for this, but they aren't quite right.  So here is just the music.
Manly Song (html with lyrics, plays midi): For whalin' men and sailin' men and pirates on the sea
March Fourth Dance (Human performance Arranged for Clarinet mp3 file):  My friend Dell transcribed my dulcimer piece for three overdubbed clarinets.  March Fourth Dance (original dulcimer arrangement mp3 file):  A little piece that just happened.
March of the Platelets (mp3):  A very short little march.
May Damsels Dance (html with dulcimer tab, plays midi): My prize-winning manifestation of the Terpsichorean muse for the dulcimer, mp3 available
Mermaid's Song, (html, plays midi): A tune inspired my a bit of online poetry
Mountain Bunny (html, plays midi):  Not so horrible, really, but just a little weird.
Muse Pickle (html, links to midi):  A silly little songs with words by my brother
Music Box (midi file):  Just a simple little tune from when I was first learning to use Melody Assistant.
Nifty Renaissancy-Sounding Tune Cooked Up While Waiting for a Clouded-Out Observing Session (html with dulcimer tab, plays midi): One of my first dulcimer compositions
1916 (mp3) A tribute to the memory of a friend's father.
Nothing to say Spacey (mp3):  Words failed, music spoke, and it was spacey
Orion Hill (midi):  a song about astronomy. I know of a hillside where Orion rises tall/Aloof from the cold wind when winter touches fall
Oryctolagus Cuniculus (html with lyrics, plays midi): A happy little song about bunnies, based on the melody "A Whistler and his Dog," by Arthur Pryor
Phrygian Tune form OVFF (html, plays midi): An exploration in modes from a hallway discussion at a convention.
Piano 3-22-05 (html plays midi): A little sentimental piano tune I haven't named yet
Polystyrene Shipwright (Html with lyrics, plays midi):  My personal nautical experience--it was a runner-up in an OVFF songwriting contest.
Pondside Meditation (mp3 file):  A dulcimer piece for "Pondside." an online friend, for her koi pond.
Psycho Circus (midi):  A strange little piece that keeps descending by minor thirds.
Queen Beryl (html plays midi): A power-crazed exotic queen in 7/4 time, mp3 available
Rhythmic Thing (html, plays midi): I pretend to be a minimalist composer for this one
Romantic 19th Century Tune (mp3 file): A little something I hope is original
Romantic Movie (html, plays midi): Our hero meets the dame
Sad Piano (html, plays midi): A short keyboard piece
Sad Waltz (html, plays midi): A sad waltz
Sax Tune--sweet Tenor Sax (html, plays midi): I thought it was jazzy, but I am told it is more 70's pop-y.
Shadowrider's Howl (mp3): My friend Hope was pondering howling at the moon.  Since she plays a sax, I imagined she hown with it.
Shoveling the Snow (Midi file):  A little waltz.  I'll get the words up eventually.
A Sound in the Basement (html, plays midi):  Just an attempt at a scary interlude.
Spacey (mp3 file):  A minute of music from outer space.  I can pretend that the mp3 compression artifact is a cool digital effect.
Spacey with a C sharp in it (mp3 file):  Another spacey tune.  I actually like this one a lot.
Spring Corn (mp3):  Spring Corn: Something out of a bucolic musical?
Spleen Dream (html, plays midi): Some crazy rhythm that came to me in my sleep
Sputnik Waltz (html, plays midi): Sometimes cheesy music can be catchy
Squirrels in My Head (mp3): music for those with ADD
Stately Flute (mp3):  This piece became special to me when this recording of Dell Taylor and me playing became one of her last recordings.  I have a lead sheet in D (good for flute and guitar or dulcimer accompaniment) and one in C (easier for a piano) with the melody and chords.
String Quartet A Minor Andante (html, plays midi): Some fake chamber music with some rhythmical fun
Summer Night (html, plays midi): A soft piece for dulcimer and imaginary winds.  Here is the mp3 version.
Sweet C Dulcimer Tune (html, plays midi): A nice little harmless bit of music.
Troll Blood (mp3): When the trolls are chanting for blood, there's going to be trouble.Tune That Brian Liked: a little dulcimer tune from my college days.
Tune that M Liked (html, plays midi):  a more recent tune
Twisted Metal (html, plays midi): An Iron Composer* challenge by Mary Crowell for Piano piece using assymetrical time signatures and a limited number of notes.
Two-Part Contraption in D Minor (mp3):  this was supposed to be a reed duet, but it grew extra parts, so it's not really two-part.  Oh well.
Unrequited (mp3): A little tune that sounds like musical theater to me.
Variations on a Winnebago Love Song (mp3):  An Iron Composer* piece for my brother Dave, for a piece based on Native American Indian music.
Virtual Worldcon (midi):  A little piece I wrote for an imaginary online version of a convention.
Waiting for Pizza (mp3):  A renaissancy dulcimer tune from a visit with Dell.
When the king is alone (mp3):  A dream song that might possibly by playable on the dulcimer, but is folky enough to fit in this category
Which Witch (html, plays midi): a tune composed on the fly from a little children's activity book tongue-twister.  OK, it's not really a dulcimer tune, but it's in Dorian mode and has a drone and I played it on a dulcimer once, and it's sort of folky/fake medieval so it fits here.
Why Do Comets Always Appear at 5:00 in the Morning? (html, plays midi):  A new tune with some gentle dissonances.
Wide Ocean Sea (html with lyrics, plays midi):  A song from a dream about love, loss, and the sea.
Woman in the Moon (midi):  This is just me improvising on the keyboard, really.  Not at all polished.
You're a Rabbit (html, plays midi):  A silly song I used to sing to rabbits.

*Iron Composer is a composing challenge where online friends propose pieces for me to write.

Unlinked music:  I don't always post a link here when I upload new music.  I have two AOL directories dedicated to mp3's where new stuff can pop up either unannounced, or announced elsewhere:
alwaycomp
alwaycomp2

All these tunes--compositions and electronic performances--are Copyright 2003 through 2006 by me, Peter Alway.  I don't mind you downloading them for your personal use, of course.  But if you pass them along, be sure that you pass along the copyright and contact info (my email address or the URL), too. If you play or perform any of this music in public for free (like at a festival open stage or in a filk circle), I'd to know, just so I get the warm fuzzies for feeling like a composer; if you want to use any of this on your website, please ask permission; and if you play or perform any of this music for money (yeah, like that's going to happen), I want a cut.  If you think my music is swell, you can reach me at petealway (at) aol (dot) com.

I have entered some of my music in Myriad's "friendly tunes contests."  You can hear them if you first get the Myriad music plug-in and then go to the index of sample tunes to find my name in the alphabetical list. I burn CD's with better sound quality (more realistic fake instruments) from time to time, which I give to people I meet at filk events.

My Musical Biography

Mrs. Merchant's Music Class

First through fifth grades, all us kids in Amberly Elementary School (in Portage, Michigan, a suburb of Kalamazoo) all went to Mrs. Merchant's music room for some number of hours each week. We picked up some basics--Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge,  FACE, whole notes and half notes and the more squiggles the shorter the duration of the note.  Then we'd ignore all that notation and just sing along with her favorite show tunes for an hour while she played the piano.  I never learned to sight read, but at least I was exposed to the squiggles.  It was kind of fun.

Discovering the Dulcimer

When I was a teenager, my brother Walter (the youngest of my four brothers, but still three years older than I am) brought home a mountain dulcimer.  This was sometime in the mid to late 1970's, in the waning years of the 60's counterculture back-to-the-land movement, when environmentalism, folk traditions, and rural nostalgia came together in many places, including the Kalamazoo Nature Center, where Walter (and other siblings) had spent a lot of their time.

The mountain dulcimer was one of many folk traditions that became fashionable in the 60's and 70's. For untold years, people of the Appalachian Mountains played this simple 4-stringed instrument out of view of the larger world.  Nobody quite knows when or how the thing was invented, but it is a distinctly American instrument. The mountain dulcimer has many charms, and as many limitations, but it has one feature that makes it especially appealing.  It is incredibly easy to play.

Walter demonstrated his new toy, showing how all you had to do was plop the thing on your lap, press on a pair of close-together melody strings just to the left a fret with your left index finger, and strum with the right index finger. The other two strings are just drones. There were just enough frets to play a diatonic scale--a regular do-re-mi scale. No sharps or flats.  No fancy chords. You could play the thing within minutes. To learn more about the dulcimer, try looking at Everything Dulcimer.

The dulcimer stayed hidden in Walter's room; he only played it on his mysterious nights out, if then.  When nobody was in the house, I stole into his room and took the forbidden object down to the living room couch with the stealth of a normal adolescent boy taking his one stolen issue of Penthouse out from under his mattress. And there I played, one ear on the strange sound of music coming from my hands, and the other listening for the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway--the signal to cheese it.

My eldest brother, Dave, soon procured a dulcimer of his own, and even deigned to show me some of his tricks for making harmonies and for picking arpeggios on an instrument created for no such thing. In a fit of kind generosity uncharacteristic of our fractious collection of siblings, Dave bought me my own Folk Roots dulcimer for Christmas during my freshman year at college. She was a curvaceous beauty, all comfy in her own Sally Rogers original corduroy bag. In my room, and away at college, I played my dulcimer.  I secretly composed for her. I even took a music appreciation course at the University of Michigan so I could understand some of the technicalities of music--subtleties beyond "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge." My dulcimer was my consolation in my lonely years of college and flunking out of college and going back to college.  (I composed this piece back then) And flunking out of college, and going back to college, and graduating, and muddling through grad school. But I got a girlfriend, and a life, and the girlfriend turned to a wife, and I started writing books, and found a subculture of rocket people where I felt like I counted, and needed the dulcimer less and less.

Filk: A Tolerant Musical Community

I can't place the time--kind of around 1990, I'm thinking, maybe later, maybe sooner--my brother Dave offered to take my ex-wife, Riin, and me to a science fiction convention.  I'm not a hard-core fan, though what fiction I read is likely as not to be science fiction, but Dave was paying the bill, Riin could watch movies and knit, and I could watch movies and see what else was up. I did find the science fiction subculture to be a charming one, even if it was not my home--I'm more of a rocket guy..  We went to a few of these cons over a couple of years.  Dave urged me to attend a filk session with my dulcimer. This was the first time I had ever been to a place where people sat around in a circle singing and playing music for fun.  The songs alternated among science fiction-related parodies, folk songs, and various silly songs.  One event at these early filks really struck me.

It was the turn for one particularly quiet gentleman to sing.  He was clearly nervous (in retrospect I think  a neurological illness was compounding ordinary anxiety about public performance) but started to sing.  Nothing came out.  He choked out a few syllables and it was possible to make out something of what he was singing.  Across the room, a woman with a drum began a steady beat. I was reminded of stories of the drum on the battlefield giving soldiers courage as they marched toward death. Eventually someone else started singing along.  And others added to the drumming or strummed their guitars.  By the end of the song, the room was alive, and I had seen a new meaning for the word encourage--the giving of courage. The applause was sincere, not because the guy could sing, but because he had the guts to try. 

I came to see that making music is not a contest where everyone but the best is considered a caterwauling horse's ass who should shut up and listen, but rather that making music is a human need and a human right.

Alas, the feds cracked down on the video rooms at science fiction conventions. Without movies to knit to, my ex really had nothing to do.  We stopped going.

Horrible Songs

Brains are weird.  Sometimes they just do things at you.  On a long drive somewhere through the countryside, soil classifications jumped into my head.  And they came out as a song.  The Dirt Woman Song

They call her Sandy Loma Linda
They call her Sandy Loma Linda
They call her Clayey Loma Linda
They call her Sandy Loma Linda

'Cause she was named after dirt
Yes she was named after dirt
By a geologist
And soil scientist
Yes she was named after dirt
Yes she was named after dirt
The sandy loam of Loma Linda

I started blurting out more songs. Barfy the Seasick Hedgehog.  Gimme an Axe.  Zombie. Not great songs.  Not good songs.  Not even mediocre songs.  Horrible songs. I found myself singing them at inopportune moments.  My ex hated most of them, but our best friend Monica loved the worst of them, and passed them on to her niece and nephew. On one long drive home from a national rocket contest (NARAM) with my brother Bob, I sang them in the car.  Bob reported this aberrant behavior to Dave.

By the way, eventually Riin started to tolerate some of the horrible songs.  She said they kind of grew on her (like a skin fungus?).

Back to the Filk World

A few years ago, Dave had a house built, designed specifically for some kind of party. Dave never seemed like a party animal, so this seemed odd to me. I didn't understand what he really had in mind. When he finally put his head together with an extroverted filk queen, Susan, however, his plans were realized. He began to hold regular "house sings."  Amateur musicians of the filk persuasion converged from hundreds of miles around to sing and play music in Dave's Great Hall. Glimmerglass House, he calls it.  I was vaguely aware of these, but never attended.  Until, that is, Dave heard some of my Horrible Songs. Susan, the music director and queen bee of the singing get-togethers, saw the lyrics and was amused. And so it came to pass that Dave invited me to his house sing.

There was as much rust on her strings as there was in my fingers when I got out my dulcimer for Dave's little musical party, but Dave's house sing was the most wonderful place imaginable for a nervous amateur to perform. Dave and Susan follow a "bardic circle" format. Everyone gets a turn to sing, play, recite a poem or essay, request a song, or pass. I could sing horrible songs, and their horribleness was truly appreciated.  I could play sad pseudo-ancient dulcimer solos (like May Dulcimer Tune) and their sad pseudo-ancientness was appreciated. There are excellent musicians as well as not-so excellent musicians, but this is not a contest, the idea is to have fun.

 I came away from the evening with an impulse that grew out of running a basement publishing company for a decade. I had to get these Horrible Songs and my old dulcimer tunes down on paper, and neatly bound. I tried notating the music with my graphics program, MacDraw, but it wasn't really satisfactory. So I turned to Google, searching for music notation software.  There, on the internet, I came across a cheap piece of shareware that warped my life.

Composition Addiction

The software is called melody assistant. It's not the only composition software on the market.  I'm sure it's not the best, but for only $18 it might be the cheapest.  It certainly does everything that I wished I had a machine to do 20 years ago.

I downloaded for free, and within hours, I was hooked.  This software didn't just notate, it performed.  All my dulcimer compositions that I had stumbled through came to life, with their imagined accompaniments and no bumbling ans stumbling (like Summer Night).  Then the little melodies I tried to play on a cheap keyboard in college came together with all the harmony and polyphony and color I had imagined 20 years before.  By the end of the first day, Myriad, the French software company that makes Melody Assistant had my registration fee.

Within days, Melody Assistant destroyed my life. I got carried away.  At my worst, I was grinding out a new tune every week, I've notated, composed, and arranged dozens of little pieces now.

I honestly can't judge my music objectively, but for once, my music sounded how I intended it to sound. The corny science fiction tune that I had tried to make sound corny and science fictiony on a cheap toy keyboard actually sounded truly corny and science fictiony.  The romantic John Williams ripoff sounded truly romantic and ripoff-y.  My pseudo-renaissancy new-agey dulcimer tunes sound genuinely fake and renaissancy. I feel like a composer now.  Maybe a good amateur composer, as amateurs go, maybe a bad amateur composer, but a composer nonetheless.

Update on November 16, 2003:  I just won second place in Myriad's "Friendly Tunes" contest for May Damsels Dance.  I am insufferably pleased!

My New Special Friend

As much as I love my old Folk Roots dulcimer, I found that I couldn't play long without hurting my left pinkie.  I had to stretch that digit way to far too make the chords that season my compositions, and I could not endure playing more than three song sat a sitting.  But in the spring of 2003, I came into an inheritance that made it possible to throw a couple thousand bucks at frivolous things--including music.

I searched for a smaller dulcimer in Ann Arbor, but all I could find were instruments with extra frets--since the late 1970's, the instrument had evolved, apparently.  The newer instruments are more versatile, but to me the extra frets just meant there were more ways to make mistakes.  I tried Elderly Instruments in Lansing, only to find more of the same. Searching the internet, I found that Folk Roots had been taken over by Folkcraft, which was still a respected maker, and that another widely praised maker was McSpadden. When I emailed both, McSpadden actually replied.  McSpadden makes a nice little instrument it calls Ginger, which I was able to special-order in a more primitive form without extra frets (in case you are wondering, it cost $326 with shipping).

Here is a direct scale comparison of the two instruments:

Folk Roots:

McSpadden Ginger:

That's a significantly shorter fretboard, and a 25% reduction in the space between frets makes the difference between a painful stretch and a painless hand motion. Playing without pain is lots of fun.  And I have become a much better player, too.  I love my Ginger. The only thing that I don't like is that she is tuned in D instead of C, which means I have to think if I want to know what actual note I might be playing.  Fortunately I rarely care what actual note I am playing.

This is me playing Ginger on the back deck on a freakishly warm November day.  I was playing May Damsels Dance when Riin snapped these pictures.

This shows how I play, plucking strings with my right index finger and playing chords with my left. My usual mode, which is not universal among players, is to use my left index finger for the melody strings (the pair closest to me) my middle finger for the bass string (the one farthest from me) and my pinkie for the middle string.

Here is the sound of Ginger playing May Damsels Dance.

This is the sound of Ginger playing my arrangement of Simple Gifts.

Kin Ya Play the Pi-Anna?

Ever since flunking out of the University of Michigan in 1981, I've kept some sort of small keyboard handy. Never took lessons or anything, but I've used them for working out tunes and harmonies (like Romantic Movie). I haven't even played for small groups, like I have with the dulcimer. After I got Ginger, I found out that my sister--the one with the lessons--used her inheritance to buy a baby grand piano.  The bulk of my inheritance went into our mortgage, but I had enough dough left to buy a nice "adult" electronic keyboard, if not a real, flesh-and-bones, acoustic piano.

My ex cousin-in-law Hope helped me find an instrument.  Essentially she took me to a good piano shop where we walked in and I said "I'd like a prosthetic piano that folds up like an ironing board and costs no more than $500."  I was able to get something pretty nice with a nice discount, to boot.  It motivated me to do some practicing of a couple of the simplest Bach pieces that I hope to master someday, a folk song or two, and some of my compositions.  I'm about at my limit playing simple chords with my left hand and pecking out a melody with my right. My ambition is to be able to sit down at a real piano in an occupied room and improve upon the silence. 

I have a lot of fun improvising and composing with my new Pi-Anna (This is a literary allusion to a bugs bunny cartoon in which Bugs and Yosemite Sam are running for Mayor. In the course of the debate, Yosemite asks Bugs if he can play the Pi-Anna.  Sam provides the rabbit with a piano rigged with explosives, of course. The result leaves a generation of Americans wondering how "Those Endearing Young Charms" ends).  So far my only tangible result is Sad Piano, though I am working out a couple more ideas on the instrument.

Actually, I should learn to play "Endearing Young Charms."

A little update for 2006:

The one fringe benefit of my part-time job teaching at Schoolcraft College is free tuition, so this winter term I took Class Piano 1.  It was quite a challenge but for a middle-aged guy who's feeling like an old coot, it was neat that something that was impossible one week was possible the next week, and even easy two weeks later.  By the end of the course, I could play Bach's Minuet in G.  Here is a midi file recorded from me playing--in real time with no editing of any kind.

Lego Dulcimer

OK, I got a little silly.  In the 19th century, folks would make their dulcimers from whatever supplies they could scrounge up on the farm.  Well, I used what I could scrounge around the house to make one.  Here's the story.

I might mention that many musicians and luthiers are fascinated by this instrument.  If I feel the need to strike up a conversation at a convention or festival, all I have to do is carry my Lego dulcimer with me. In fact, the Lego dulcimer has a wider appeal than I could have imagined.

My ex-wife had just moved out, and I was feeling a bit down when a call came in February of 2005.  It seems that a friend, colleague, or acquaintance of the producer of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday stumbled into my site, and forwarded the URL to him.  And so I was invited the the studio of WUOM, the local NPR affiliate, and interviewed.  I even got to play the Lego dulcimer on the air.  And so it came to pass that my music has been on national radio.  You can read about it and hear the interview, and a little bonus bit of music here.  My three minutes of fame!  That leaves me 12 minutes to be famous for my books!

Since then, I made a remarkable discovery about the Lego dulcimer.  Because it's not glued together, I can rearrange the frets to play exotic scales like the harmonic minor scale, used in middle eastern and klezmer music, and the Hungarian minor scale, also known as the Gypsy scale.  Those scales turn the Lego dulcimer into a completely different instrument with a remarkably ethnic sound.

Making Music with Friends

Nothing is better than making music with friends.  If you live in or around Ann Arbor, and want to make music with me, I'm in the phone book. 

I have recordings of making music with just one collaborator, Dell Taylor.  I met Dell online in 2005, and got together with her to make music several times in 2006.  Aside from being a talented woodwind player and teacher, she informally taught and encouraged drumming, and in my case, composition.  In October of 2006 we made these recordings:

Gymnopedie No. 1, by Erik Satie:  I played the dulcimer, Dell played the flute

When the King is Alone, by me:  I played the dulcimer, Dell played the flute, twice, thanks to overdubbing.

Stately Flute: I playe the dulcimer, Dell played the flute

Sadly, Dell died of cancer three weeks later. She was a remarkable musician, a remarkable human being, and a kind freind and teacher.

Not everybody dies!  I get to play with a fine fiddler named Amy McNally at filk conventions.  She even wrote me a waltz.  I was feeling pretty down when Dell died--like music itself had died.  Then Amy very kindly made me this recording for me. There is nothing so sweet as having a happy tune written and played just for you:

Dippy Waltz

I am hoping to add to my collection of music with and from friends, and post it here in the future.

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