Kantele Journey

Taking up the Kantele is a journey through another land, mainly Finland, and one where I do not speak the language. But I think I have met a guide, and I will be contacting her about learning to play the 10 string Kantele. It is none other than Diane Jarvi, and I had the pleasure to make her acquaintance a week ago. I have been thoroughly enjoying the new albums of hers that I picked up, and it's renewed my excitement in really learning to master this instrument and a learn a wider variety of techniques. Diane studied Kantele at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, and has done workshops on playing the Kantele across the region. One thing I am considering is added a strap to my 10 string so I can play it standing up. Here's a little bit of inspiration for me and all you other Kantele fans out there: All in Finnish, of course! I'm learning some words and phrases here and there, and working on a song in Finnish right now that is quite lovely. This journey began with my lovely five string kantele in 2010, and now continues with the ten string here in 2012. It is an odd journey, but it's rich and fascinating, filled with unexpected twists and turns. I learn and sing and play as I go along, and it is delightful and my soul glories in it.

Finnish Folk Music

Falling in love with the music of my Finnish ancestry was easy. It is beautiful and many songs can be played on my five string kantale. The Finns are known for their rather dark sense of humor, but there is another way of looking at it. Marjorie Edgar was a collector of Finnish folk music in the first half of the twentieth century and she had this to say about it:

Finnish dance tunes are gay and Finnish humor is charming. The latter appears in many of the songs, and there are so many hearty rollicking tunes that one wonders if the usual American idea of "the gloomy music of the northern countries" Is not a misconception. Even the melancholy airs, of which there are plenty and among the most lovely, have no feeling of self-pity; they are rather detached in spirit and have a mysticism of a purely Finnish type, as unconscious of its quality as a stream or a spruce would be.

On the other hand, I personally have a tendency to get into some down moods. But it's not depression, I've decided, it's just my Finnish nature. It's taken me until middle-age to realize that it's OK when things don't go your way, and if you truly love something, keep at it no matter what. At the same time I need to be practical and pragmatic, but pursuing my love of zithers relentlessly is my ultimate musical goal. Another way of putting it is a uniquely Finnish term called sisu. From Wikipedia:

Sisu is an ability to finish a task successfully, as defined by Roman Schatz in his book From Finland with Love (2005), and decisiveness. Usually sisu means the will and decisiveness to surmount challenges against impossible odds.

I've never considered myself as disciplined, but rather stubborn and determined. Add to that a willingness to do the work, and I think I'm beginning to understand sisu a bit. I have goals, in that I want to share Finnish folk music and the Finnish folk instrument of the Kantele by writing some music books in the next year. To that end, I've begun learning a program to create tabulature for the Mountain Dulcimer, plan on learning the 10 string Kantele after I build it, and I just learned about Finnish music camp. I missed it this year, but I'll keep an eye on the website for next year. For more on Sisu and the Finnish mentality, check out this video on car racing. It makes me proud to be half Finnish.

Some Assembly Required

Six months ago I bought a new Kantele kit, which I never mentioned here in my blog. Why would a zither enthusiast like myself not mention this you may ask? After all, I was incredibly excited about the opportunity to build my own kantele, and I poured over the videos showing my how to build it. But it was a secret, because I bought one for my twin sister Jane too, and our birthday is June 17th. So I kept them in the closet and only brought them out once in a while to look over the woods and kit parts. She still can't believe that I never even dropped a hint as to what I did, getting us twins each a kantele kit. I had to get them in January because they were on sale. It's my Finnish frugality flexing it's muscles I suppose. So now, FINALLY, I get to gush about this new project that I'll be working on. Jane's not going to have much time until fall to build hers, but I might just have to start mine early. I've already waited six months after all!

So that's what I will be making for myself, and helping my sister make hers as well. I am so looking forward to having a 10 string kantele! It's going to be so much fun learning new songs and having someone to play some duets with. I bought the kits from Music Makers, and they came with all the parts including the correct size drill bit for drilling the holes for the zither pins. When I stumbled upon it online, I was so excited that I knew that both my twin and I needed one, and since Jane loves woodworking, it was the perfect gift. Since I found them just after Christmas, the next best thing was a birthday present. The other thing I loved about it was the chance to order from a Minnesota based business, think globally and buy locally as they say. The only catch was keeping it all a secret for six months. Only my husband knew what I was up to, and he kept the secret as well. Did I mention I was EXCITED! And honestly, I can hardly believe I kept this whole thing a secret myself. But now the kits are out of the closet and I can start assembling my new 10 string kantele. Yay! Another instrument to play!

Kantele Spring

It's another beautiful Spring day in Minnesota. The sky is blue and the breeze is blowing dandelion fluff all around. Too bad we don't like dandelions too much in these parts, I liked them well enough as a child. In the neighborhood I grew up in, we would pick the dandelions when they were in full seed, make a wish and blow them off the stem. If the seeds traveled all the way around the world and back again, your wish would come true.

The wish I have now is to take some of the traditional Finnish tunes I've learned on my lovely five string kantele, and create TAB for the mountain dulcimer with it. I've tried struggling with MusEdit, which is a free program with some nifty features. The problem is it doesn't always do what I tell it to do, and since it's free, there isn't a manual. Let's just say it has a few glitches that are not about to go away. In fact the website appears to be gone, so it looks like it's time to get real and pay for TablEdit.

My order has been placed, so I know what I will be doing on the rainy days this Spring, getting all my music down in TAB format. It's a wonderful tool, and now that I've written 1 2/3 songs (really, can't seem to get the middle part of that second song down yet) I'm excited to see them written in music. It's an exciting time for me while I wait for my Dream Autoharp. They have received my first payment, so they can start building it any time. For some reason the mail took it's own sweet time, so the check sent on the 24th of April didn't arrive until the 10th of May. So my dream was in limbo during that wait, now it's in Pete's capable hands. So my zither obsession continues, complete with dreams of obscure instruments in the zither family that never existed. Really, that's how deep these stringed instruments get for me, right on into my subconscious.

Well, it's not raining now, so I've spent enough times tapping away at this keyboard.

Next Week: MUSIC PARTY!!

Instrumental Roots

I am 100% Minnesotan, with equal amounts of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry. My mother was 100% Finnish and was born in Minnesota from Finnish parents, and my father was 100% Norwegian. Naturally, when my musical inclination led me to find the Finnish national folk instrument, the Kantele (pronounced KAN-te-leh), I had to have one. It was so exciting when my Kantele arrived, my Autoharp was with a luthier at the time getting some work done, and I had been without an instrument for a couple of weeks. She looked just like the pictures on the Kantele shop, and is made out of pine and birch, two trees common both in Finland and Minnesota.

My lovely 5-string Kantele has been my quiet companion ever since. I play her outside and at home when ever the mood hits me. I had discovered this lovely little folk instrument when I was searching for Autoharp music online. I found some recordings of the concert Kantele, a 36 string instrument, and was intrigued by the similarity to the Autoharp. Why did I take up the Autoharp in the first place? Maybe the music was in my blood all along. Both intruments are part of the zither family, so I realized that I really liked zither instruments, and my ears would prick up and I would pay attention any time a zither was mentioned.

One instance was at a concert by Ruth Barrett, when she said the fretted dulcimer is also a zither. The difference  is that it has a fret board running the length of the instrument. Aha! And my interest in the mountain dulcimer began. It turned into a mild obsession when I discovered the Dulcimerica Podcast on Youtube. And the rest is history, as I am now the proud companion to a beautiful mountain dulcimer.

But wait, there's more. It seems the origins of the American mountain dulcimer trace back to European Zithers, specifically the scheitholt, which was brought over from the old country by the Pensylvania Dutch. The Scotch-Irish of the Appalachian mountains adopted and adapted these zithers, using the same fretboard and drone quality creating the wonderful folk instrumenet we know today as the mountain dulcimer. It turns out there is a Norwegian instrument in that family, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

There exists a variety of box zithers in Europe. The German scheitholt and the Swedish Hummel have been suggested as the predecessor of the langeleik. However, in 1980 a langeleik dated as early as 1524 was uncovered on a farm in Vibergsroa, Gjøvik, Norway. This instrument predates any documented occurrences of the scheitholt, the hummel or any other similar instrument.

And so my instruments of choice have roots in my ancestory on both my mother's and father's sides. I was raised to be musical, starting with the piano when I was just five years old. Music is part of my heritage, and I'm very excited to be exploring the folk music of my ancestry. Minnesota is also a haven for folk musicians generally. Something about the long cold winter causes us to want to sing across the dark night skies with one another, I think. For me, my zithers give me great joy even just playing by myself. The cats seem to like it too.

From Kantele to Dulcimer

With my next music party just a month away, and my autoharp out of commission, I need to get more tunes for the mountain dulcimer. While I have the wonderful book by Neil Hellman on Celtic music for the mountain dulcimer, I really want to explore my Finnish heritage in song as well. Lucky for me one of the major tunings used on the Kantele is the key of D, so tonight I made up my first Mountain Dulcimer TAB from the book "My Kantele is My Teacher" by Lani K. Thompson that I got a year ago. I picked a very simple tune for the first one, because of my lack of skill with my MD as well as it's my first time coming up with my own tab. I found this is a really good way to learn more about what makes a song a song. Even this simple one, which is just eight bars long, had something to teach me.

My experiment worked very well, and I should have a Traditional Finnish folk song or two memorized in time for my music party. It helps that I'm taking my staycation the week leading up to it. So I will have no excuses for either having a messy house or a lack of playing ability. Most of my musician friends have RSVP'd as maybe. I will have to do a little begging and cajoling to get then to commit to coming to play. I'm kind of obsessed with learning to play better at the moment. I want to pick up my instrument every chance that I get. At least I won't embarrass myself too badly in front of my party guests!

Musings about Music

It seems like a day doesn't go by when I don't find myself contemplating music. Yesterday I put a post up about FolkThyme internet radio. I love having it playing while I write my blog posts, it reminds me how diverse and how meaningful folk music can be. But in this post I want to talk about my love for my autoharp, and about my history with it. When I was in grade school we had both a piano and an autoharp in the music room. This was back in the 70's and I lived in a nice suburb of upper middle class families.

I remember I had the opportunity to take the autoharp home and play it. I laid it out on the living room floor next to the piano, and pushed buttons and strummed away on it. I strummed and strummed with the pick until it leapt out of my fingers and right down the hole in the autoharp. From what I can remember I was pretty upset about this, tried to shake the pick loose, but it just didn't work. So I strummed and strummed some more with my fingernail until my little 9 year old fingers hands were sore from holding the buttons. As I recollect I only had it for the weekend. The other thing I remember was June Carter Cash playing the autoharp on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, holding it upright. When I asked my music teacher about playing that way at school, she told me that the correct way to play the autoharp was with it lying flat.

Remember when I said that I put it on the floor next the piano? Well, my first instrument was the piano, I think I was six when I first started taking lessons. It was fun at first, but later I was made to continue because I had to learn to commit to something. Some kind of life lesson my parents wanted me to know. I finally quit when I was about nine or ten. Then it was time to sign up for band, and I wanted to play the flute, but all little girls wanted to play flute so I was steared toward the clarinet. So for four years I played in band, but it was a small band and the Senior High band members were all also the schools marching band. This I did not want to do. But music was a part of me now, so I joined the choir.

Singing became my main musical outlet, and in my teens my sister and I each got guitars. I struggled with it with my soft girly fingertips. I loved my guitar for at least one whole summer, but I never took lessons, though my sister did. But I kept singing and my guitar collected dust, I wanted pretty long nails, which seemed more important to me. Later in college I flirted with the piano again as an elective class. I really liked it. A lot. But pianos are kind of big and expensive and hard to get up the stairs to an apartment. Then at some point I took up the twelve string guitar because I always loved the sound. I spent a good year with it, but only barely learned 3 songs though I practiced a lot. Again I didn't take lessons.

The next musical transition was trading my twelve string for a flute. Because, you see, I wanted the flute not the clarinet all those years before. This time I did take lessons. It was really fun, and I wonder where my flute music went to. The flute is in a closet somewhere. You would think that I would learn something by now, get a smattering of music theory or something. Well, I can read music for the most part, but there are all kinds of complexities out there that are way above my head. I've got some pennywhistles lying around here somewhere which I have an audio tape and book.

Finally the Autoharp comes back into my life. I saw my friend Becca Leathers playing one with her band Riverfolk. Now, it had been some time since I'd seen live music. It's funny how time passes when you are dealing with trying to be an adult. It was so wonderful, and they are so good, that I fell immediately in love with their music and enchanted with the idea of taking up the Autoharp. That was June of 2009, and I'm still playing my Autoharp. Thanks in part to taking some lessons so I'd learn how to play it properly.

And here I have to say that I feel spoiled, priviledged, and honored to have the opportunity to take lessons from Karen Mueller: 1986 International Autoharp Champion & 2006 Autoharp Hall of Fame. While living in Lawrence, Kansas, Karen took first place in the Kansas State Dulcimer Championships in 1984 and 1985, and was a finalist at the 1985 National Dulcimer Contest in Winfield. She lives here in the twin cities and teaches at Homestead Pickin' Parlor. She travels all over doing workshops as well. And she gave me a mountain dulcimer lesson on her instruments so I could try before I buy. As I said in a previous post, I have signed up for The Dulcimer School due to financial considerations. But I'll take lessons from her again, when I get stuck and need some extra help with either the Autoharp or the Mountain Dulcimer. I'm on my own with the Kantele, but for the book and what I can find on the internet.

A long post, but I just needed to work through the steps in my journey through instruments as I stand on the verge of taking up yet another one. And I forgot to mention the doumbek that I took up for a while. Still have one, they're too fun not to have at a music party.

Practicing the Autoharp

With all the excitement of the Advent of My New Mountain Dulcimer, I've neglected my Autoharp. Sad but true, it had been sitting in a chair cheerily waiting for me to pick it up for the past couple of weeks. Over the weekend I went into Dulcimer Input Overload, and I just can't bring myself to watch another dulcimer video for a few days. For a while I was practicing my Kantele, an essential part of toughening up my fingertips in preperation for the dulcimer. So my autoharp languished in it's chair expectantly waiting. Tonight I decided to at least tune it, then I had to make sure it was in tune by playing a song. I frustrated myself by playing one that I don't have the cord changes down completely, and then I played one I new a little better, and another, and another. Before I knew it an hour had gone by.

Yes, I still love my autoharp, and I need to get a couple songs down better over the next few weeks, because when my dulcimer arrives, it will have to take a holiday again. I am impatiently waiting, and feeling a little frustrated. I am taking a couple of long weekends in May, to get my gardens in order and then finally, finally, play with my new Mountain Dulcimer. I'll add details about that in my next post. A girl needs to gush about her new toy after all.