Peter Berryman's Whither Zither for Madison Folk Music Society Mad Folk

The Archives of

IMPORTANT NOTICE: As of October 31, America Online is shutting down its website hosting feature. I'm in the process of moving this entire site to another host. The old URL of "members.aol.com/wzither" will no longer work after Halloween. I don't know what the new URL will be yet, but will announce it on LOUANDPETER.COM and at the Mad Folk site WWW.MADFOLK.ORG as soon as I can. Apologies and thanks. --Peter B

A monthly column written by Peter Berryman for Mad Folk News, the newsletter of Wisconsin's Madison Folk Music Society.

Zither players: This column is about folk music in a very general sense, however the March 2001 entry is more specifically about zithers. New zither info links were added to that page on February 21, 2007.

2008 Whither Zithers (most recent at top)

October 2008 (.pdf file): Tweaking a song way, way, way beyond parody as a songwriting method
September 2008 (.pdf file): Refrains and how they differ from choruses, and a digression about oldness.
August 2008 (.pdf file): A fair to remember: county fairs, state fairs, animal fairs, all have songs.
July 2008 (.pdf file): Timbre and rock: more than just building materials. Inspired by the crossword puzzle.
June 2008 (.pdf file): This year's folky crossword puzzle. Easier than last year's. SOLUTION here.
May 2008 (.pdf file) Reminds me of a song: song memories triggered by road sightings. Please note: The May 2008 Whither Zither is a .PDF file. I am going to upload Whither Zithers as .PDFs from now on, if no one minds. PLEASE let me know if you'd rather I go back to the old way. My email addresses: peter@louandpeter.com or berrymanp@aol.com
April 2008: Folk on ESPN: Myrna Mplpaplpr and the Mouth of the Rat
March 2008: Folk Music: Something To Do.
February 2008: Arno's memoir: My late father-in-law's boyhood on the farm.
January 2008: Harvey on Joshua plus the Saw Lady: The Art of Busking.

2007 Whither Zithers

December 2007: Make this Transposing Wheel and Capo Guru in your spare time ha ha
November 2007: The ASCAP song by Steve Gillette
October 2007: Trouble in Small Venueland: BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, oh my!
September 2007: Fifty Years Ago: On the Road, Peggy Sue, Sputnik and Bubble Wrap
August 2007: Tiddely Poms: Quotations from my bootbox.
July 2007: Pythagorean Comma: An odd problem when tuning an instrument.
June 2007: Wax Cylinder Collection online: Free downloads of amazing old songs and more.
May 2007: Blank Blanker: A generic job-song for three-syllable jobs.
April 2007: Full Time Waiters: Waiting, Waiting Rooms, Green Rooms, and songs about Waiting.
March 2007: The solution to last month's Whither Zither, with comments and factoids.
February 2007: A mostly folky partly poppy crossword puzzle. SOLUTION in March WZ.
January 2007: The Famous You: Whither Zither agrees with Time and The Times

2006 Whither Zithers

December 2006: Sander Closes Gumming: Homophones for the Holidays.
November 2006: I Go, Yugo, We All Go: Death and Folk Music.
October 2006: Music, Politics, Humor, Life, etc: Joe Glazer remembered; the Prince Myshkins; Charlie King
September 2006: Gizmophoria: More widgets from the US Patent Office.
August 2006: Foot Dillers and Diddley Bows: Make your own folk instrument.
July 2006: The Envelope Please. Folk Music Contests, of all things.
June 2006: Is this anything? An odd diagram of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
May 2006: George's Arrowheads: Taxonomy and songwriting
April 2006: Funny Paper Bridges: Song bridges and their comic strip counterparts
March 2006: Oh Susannah, Susie, Sue: On beyond melody and lyrics
February 2006: Whither Zither number 100: A silly index.
January 2006: More Footsie: A few responses triggered by Edna's Name's Feet

2005 Whither Zithers

December 2005: Edna's Name's Feet: Do you have a waltz name or a polka name?
November 2005: On Beyond Lyrics: Joel's Musing and Rob's Mystery
October 2005: Fire, Water, and Music: The hot and the wet as song material
September 2005: Introductory Oh Susannah: a complicated interpretation
August 2005: Lou and the Girl Scouts. Barges and s'mores...
July 2005:The Autoharper's Index, with apologies to the Harper's Index
June 2005: The Folksong Dipstick Matrix: an interview with its inventor, Kum Bayah
May 2005: Psychoacoustics: Where's that noise coming from?
April 2005: Spring Break: A few puzzles. ANSWERS FOUND HERE.
March 2005: Accordion to Zither: A grim alphabet poem for no good reason
February 2005: Sudden Miss Worm Voice: Home Recording tales by my sister Susannah
January 2005: Mir, Nostradamus, and Klagenfurt: comments from some notable commenters.

2004 Wither Zithers

December 2004: Deciduous Teeth: Web translations of Berryman Xmas songs.
November 2004: The Dolceola, starring Joel Mabus and Andy Cohen
October 2004: WDET Detroit and Matt Watroba: The Unfolking of Public Radio
September 2004: As I Tread the Drear Wild: Songs about home.
August 2004: Capo and Phonemendator: A capo museum, and the US Patent Office, both online.
July 2004: Book Review of a memoir by Samuel Charters about music in the Bahamas in 1958.
June 2004: Hiawatha Ruminations: Rhymeless Verse from Barnes and Noble
May 2004: The Hep Folkslanger: Slang for folksters inspired by Antarcticulation
April 2004: Short Quotes Unremarkable In Depth (SQUIDS) in song lyrics
March 2004: Universal Laws 2: Gravity! Gravity! (A sequel to February's column.)
February 2004: An assignment for you: Find Universal Laws in song lyrics.
January 2004 Zipper Tripper: Zipper songs sung loud make good No-Dozers on long drives.

2003 Whither Zithers

December 2003 Spray Them Gold: What to do with LPs when the turntable gives out.
November 2003 Ringing Out A Room: A diagram to help conquer bad sounding rooms.
October 2003 Shocks and Mufflers Revisited: Word-gathering walks in 1841, 1988, and 2003
September 2003 More Nonsense: Light Verse via MacGuffin, Mondegreen, and Mountain View
August 2003 Wella Wella Bing Bang: Lyrics that don't make any sense.
July 2003 And The Snow Was Deeper, Too: Being small time music pros in the olden days.
June 2003 A Dream, a Drama, and a Device.
May 2003 Twitching and Plucking: Weird gigs and lurching synapses
April 2003 Lonesome Therapy: Lonesome songs for a lonesome time
March 2003 Sometimes vs Usually: What exactly is a "House Concert" anyway?
February 2003 Jingo Jingles, Crimson Cream, Flimsy Whimsy: Songs and ego extensions
January 2003 Cultural Purity: Art and advertising. Feedbag Cookies.

2002 Whither Zithers;

December 2002 The Country of the Winter Miracles: Web translations of Xmas songs.
November 2002 Maine Attraction: Matthew Szostak and his Hurdy Gurdy.
October 2002 Not listlessly: Songs containing or made entirely of lists.
September 2002 Bad writing, Totem talk, found poetry: a glut of inspiration
August 2002 My former instruments the Toggle Bass & Blues Tube, plus Art Thieme
July 2002 A short discussion of recordings and live gigs inspired by a friend's e-mail.
June 2002 A Beatnik update, followed by an imaginary folk-video hallucination.
May 2002 Bandware. My own peculiar duo's particular amplification procedure.
April 2002 Beatniks and folk music: Appreciating appreciating.
March 2002 Baitbox Treasures: Rewriting magazine article titles for inspiration.
February 2002 Prat like That: Music is such a peculiar thing to hate.
January 2002 Interesting folk music question: What is a "Sinatra song"?

2001 Whither Zithers:

December 2001 Bob Ross, hypnotic painter of bad art; noodling vs doodling.
November 2001 The Texton Theory, Attentive and preattentive vision, model airplanes, music, and art.
October 2001 A few ideas about exactly how music can be a healing force.
September 2001 Aviation events, folk festivals, and the outdoorseyness of folk music
August 2001 Doug Henkle's amazing FolkLib Index website, and a brief interview with Doug himself.
July 2001 So What's With The Buttons? The most common accordion button layout explained in tedious detail.
June 2001 We Shall Overcome: The story of the song, and Joe Glazer, one of its early singers.
May 2001 A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes: Software rhyming dictionary VS an old fashioned book type with paper pages.
April 2001 Chew and Walk Gum: The branching (multitasking) brain listens to a song.
March 2001 More Whence than Whither; finally a little something about actual zithers.
February 2001 A Limburger Ballad, written for WI Public TV and the WI State Historical Society. Cheesy.
January 2001 Epenthesis, the diphthong, the schwa, the glottis, made up words, and Rattlesnake Mountain.

2000 Whither Zithers:

December 2000 Partial interview with Wil Bremer and Julie Luther of Spruce Tree Music of Madison, which is 20 years old, with link to the full interview.
November 2000 Lydia Maria Child, "Over the River and Through the Woods," Medford MA, "Jingle Bells," and hardtack.
October 2000 Toys R Us: A simple setup for home CD-quality recording direct to your computer.
September 2000 Who put the Corn in Cornet: Brand new used brass instrument of my boyhood revisited.
August 2000 No Whither Zither this month. Here's an explanation, and a photograph relating to last month's episode.
July 2000 Quotes from and a response to an email from Mark Moss, editor of Sing Out! magazine, who disagreed with last month's Whither Zither.
June 2000 MP3, Napster, downloading music, the demise of the CD, the subsequent personalized band trinket boom.
May 2000 Gilda Gray the song, Gilda Gray the legend, theme songs and jingles, prostate cancer.
April 2000 Part two of my article on the debate about changing one another's lyrics, reprinted from Sing Out! magazine.
March 2000 My article on the debate about the ethics of changing someone else's lyrics, Part One, reprinted from 1998 Sing Out! magazine.
February 2000 Bad gigs, Bob Dylan as Krusty the Clown, love of performing, The Hidden Dimension and society's zones.
January 2000 On fomes, fomites, vectors, punk, hysteresis, Nancy, Sluggo, and the Oxford Companion to the English Language.

1999 Whither Zithers:

December '99 A Whithery Zithery tribute to technology and how it helps us document and, hence, dig our lives, more easily every year.
November '99 The story of my own peculiar youth, musically speaking. Not gripping, but on the other hand, unenlightening.
October '99 The second half of an interview with departing ten-year president of the Madison Folk Music Society, Mike Tuten.
September '99 The first half of an interview with departing ten-year president of the Madison Folk Music Society, Mike Tuten.
August '99 A sampler of song titles harvested from the BMI archives.
July '99: Michael Cooney's coming to town. Here he talks about how he got started in folk music.
June '99: Black Sheep Cafe of Amherst MA, songwriter Lorre Wyatt, strokes and music, left brain and right brain.
May '99: Zither info request, email from Russia, Komar and Melamid with the Most Unwanted Song.
April '99: A few words, personal and otherwise, about accordions, including a photo of Lou's inspiration, Henry Bilde.
March '99: Cheeseheads in California: Memories of a typical tour.
February '99: Apologies to Maureen Gerarden, Thanks to Mike Tuten, More Robert Service, and Madison in the days of Stephen Foster.
January '99: The Californa Gold Rush songs of John A. ("Old Put") Stone and the Klondike Gold Rush poems of Robert Service.

1998 Whither Zithers:

December '98: An abbreviated interview with Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen.
November '98: A Prairie Populist revisited, David Rea revisited, Fritz Schuler and the Golden Ring Folklore Center, Oberek defined, Judy Rose's autobiography.
October '98: Festival At the Fort in Omaha with David Rea & others, Shawano festival with Larry Penn & others, a book about the prairie, what's an Oberik?
September '98: A quick description of the protective outer bag for the case described in the August column, with link to photos of the project. Mention made of this being episode #12.
August '98: Saving an old beat-up hard shell case from the trash can, with the help of Velcro and Naugahyde.
July '98: Grandson of Whoopee John, Polka Names, Roll Out The Barrel, Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Minute.
June '98: Descending minor third revisited, plea for comments on changing lyrics, interview with Norman Kennedy by Matt Watroba.
May '98: Geoff Muldaur, The Anthology of American Folk Music edited by Harry Smith, melody not quite on the beat.
April '98: Songwriting tips, reprinted from an article written about five years ago for Sing Out magazine.
March '98: John Koerner, Utah Phillips, Faith Petric, Sam Hinton, health, age, Dr. Demento, and more John Koerner.
February '98: Descending minor thirds, spoken intonation, the major pentatonic scale, Irving Berlin and the black keys.
January '98: Menorahs and rosaries, e-mail about willies & looping, Wallace and King, concert acoustics.

1997 Whither Zithers:

December '97: Owatonna MN, Steve Cloutier, & the JamMan; universal vs. personal willies caused by melodies.
November '97: Nova Scotia, Si Kahn, & misreading; Club de Wash anniversary; Dan Small, Warren Nelson, and the Outdoor Wisconsin theme song.
October '97: Introduction (this was the first column); Rob Lopresti & urban legends; Satterfield Electronics; Sam Hinton & the mouth harp.

Love to hear from you.

Please e-mail me at
peter@louandpeter.com
(My old address still works fine, too: berrymanp@aol.com )
Send snail mail to:
Peter Berryman
Box 3400
Madison WI 53704