I am Patrick Foil, a 16 year old high school student trying to learn how to play the dulcimer.
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Week 12, 202112/12/2021 I can't believe that it is already week 12. When Mr. Barker said that we were doing this project I thought to myself that it would be a pretty easy project. I was wrong. This project has taught me to not put things off and do them before they are due. I didn't really put this off but it was a lot of work to do. It was a 12 week project so it seems like you have plenty of time but its not as long as you think. I will also be working on my presentation that is due next Monday because I don't want to put it off until the night before its due. My favorite song I actually didn't document about it but it was Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It's a really fun piece that is fun to play and it sounds nice. My entire project was to try to learn how to play a stringed instrument. It was challenging at some parts because I really didn't know what I was doing. After watching some YouTube videos on how to play it I figured it looked fun. I started playing it and it was difficult to try to play it. On the videos it looked really easy. I was really wrong. You have to think where to put the noter while paying attention to the notes on the page. Sure it does get easier if you have done it for a couple of years but I don't think I did bad for 12 weeks of learning how to play it.
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Week 11, 202112/5/2021 For this week on genius hour I am going to learn another song. I have already learned a couple of songs and I have had to put more time into learning them. They have ranged from Christmas music to pop songs. My favorite kind of song to learn is one that I know well because it is just fun to hear the version one the dulcimer. It is always different on the dulcimer than the actual song and it is pretty fun to play it that way. The song I am going to learn this week is First Noel. I really like this song because it always reminds me of when I was younger and I went to concerts at my church that my family sung in. They would sing this song and it always sounded really good. The website I am getting the song off of is https://www.dulcimertab.com/wp-content/uploads/tab/first_noel.pdf.
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Week 10, 202111/28/2021 Wow. We are 10 weeks into this and it feels like it's the second week. I don't normally enjoy projects let alone projects that are 12 weeks but since I got to pick what I'd be doing for 12 weeks I have enjoyed it a little more than I thought I would. Over these 10 weeks I have learned to play the dulcimer and play different songs. This week I have chosen to pick the hardest song to learn in the learning dulcimer book. The hardest song in the book is Loch Lomond. This is a famous Scottish song and the drone strings are supposed to remind one of the haunting sounds of the bagpipes. This should be entertaining because I have never heard this song and I feel like it would be a good challenge for me. I'm starting to think I should do different folk songs from countries that I haven't been to.
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Week 9, 202111/21/2021 This week is going to be a fun week for learning a song because I like the song I know how the song goes so it will make it easier to learn. I tried to stay on the idea of doing Christmas songs but then I realized that it wasn't practical for me to learn a different Christmas song every week because I'm trying to get in different genres of music. The song I have chosen to learn this week is You are My Sunshine (https://revelsmusic.co.uk//wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Finale-2005-You-are-my-Sunshine.MUS_.pdf). It is getting easier for me to play the instrument because I have found a way that works for me and it makes it easier. Since I have gotten better at playing I tried to chose an intermediate song that wouldn't be too easy or too hard so I went with this one. This is a good instrument to learn that is a Segway into playing guitar because they are so similar. The main differences are the way you hold it and on guitar you have your fingers to make different notes but on the dulcimer you have a noter (a piece of wood). I might start playing guitar when all of this is over but I'm not sure.
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Week 811/14/2021 This week I've decided that I will learn a longer beginner song. I have tried stay on the idea to learn mainly Christmas songs. I want to learn difficult songs like Joy to the World and O Holy Night but that's for later weeks when I'm better at playing it. This week I am going to learn Deck the Hall. I feel like it is challenging enough for me because I am only a beginner at playing the instrument. I also feel like I should work on my positioning and figure out what works for me. The site I will be using to find all of my Christmas songs is https://dulcimermusic.org/category/christmas/ (copy and paste). I like this website because it is easy to read and I don't have to pay to get the music to play.
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Week 7, 202111/7/2021 This week I've decided that I will learn a longer beginner song. I have tried stay on the idea to learn mainly Christmas songs. I want to learn difficult songs like Joy to the World and O Holy Night but that's for later weeks when I'm better at playing it. This week I am going to learn Deck the Hall. I feel like it is challenging enough for me because I am only a beginner at playing the instrument. I also feel like I should work on my positioning and figure out what works for me. The site I will be using to find all of my Christmas songs is https://dulcimermusic.org/category/christmas/ (copy and paste). I like this website because it is easy to read and I don't have to pay to get the music to play.
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Week 6, 202110/31/2021 This week I will actually be playing. I will be picking out a song to play. The song I have picked out is twinkle twinkle little star. It is a simple song but it was difficult to learn because I couldn't find the piece online anywhere so I had to go off of what I remember the song being. I have found that reciting songs from my memory and trying to play them based off of what I remember is pretty fun. I might later go into some more challenging pieces but for now I will stick to the "easier" stuff because I know I am not ready for that. It will be interesting to see what I come up with in these next weeks so I'm hoping that it will be fun while doing it. I am willing to take suggestions if you want to hear any songs played by the dulcimer. I can't promise it will be the best you have ever heard but i can promise that I will try.
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Week 5, 202110/24/2021 This week I am going to learn how to tune the dulcimer. The most common tuning's are DAA and DAD. I will be using DAA to tune my dulcimer. For this to work out I will have to tune it to a piano and try to match the pitches. I have a piano but it is a little out of tune so I went up to my grandparents and tune it to their piano because it is more in tune than the one at my house. To tune it is the same as tuning a guitar so its really not hard. I would play the right note and turn it until i think it is good enough and I'd play the note again on the piano and turn it as much as I think it needed. I did that for the three strings until they were all right. At first I really didn't know how to listen for the tuning and to hear the right note but I eventually got a tuning app that tells me if I am in tune or not. Tuning the instrument I normally play helped me a little bit with tuning the dulcimer but it didn't help me enough for it to be perfect. Fortunately now I have a tuning app on my phone that can help me tune the other instrument I play.
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Week 4, 202110/17/2021 This week I'm going to start messing around and trying to play the dulcimer. I realized when I started playing with it it was sort of difficult. The plucking and noting that you have to do at the same time. Also you have to make sure that you don't hit the wrong string when you're trying to only pluck one string. It is easy to hit the other string when trying to only pluck one string. I tried to play Happy birthday but I don't know the notes so I tried to learn it completely off of ear. Again I kept running into the problem of hitting the other strings when your only trying to hit one. If you were to play it right you'd hit all three of the strings and it would sound good but for me i can hit all of the strings and they don't sound the best.
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Week 3, 202110/10/2021 This week I looked into what I could play it with. I went online and searched up the best "gear" in order to play the dulcimer. I ran into the problem of not many people making websites solely dedicated to dulcimers. So I went on amazon and just looked up dulcimer picks and noter. Sure enough it popped up and I ordered it. Before I got the pick and noter i had a makeshift pick which was made out of an old gift card, but I lost it so that's when i ordered the pick and hopefully I don't lose it. I also was using a tiny, cylinder shaped piece of wood and that worked pretty well. I haven't gotten to try to play it because I lost the piece of card I was using for the pick. When it came in I started to mess around with it and it was pretty fun.
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