Warbles, Croaks, and Harmonics

Did you ever wonder what notes the birds sing or the frogs are croaking? We live in town but can still hear frog calls at a nearby golf course and have warblers (yes crows too)warbling all day. I love the sounds of nature. I'm hoping we'll hear the sound of rain again soon because we need it. I love the rustling of the leaves in the tree, the buzz of the bees (I could pass on the sound of mosquitoes), and a windchime ringing in the breeze. I made a new windchime made from old silverware. It's fun to see hanging in the yard with the bamboo and the metal pipe windchime. Each has their own tones.
A few days have gone by without playing the dulcimer. I have DDPT (dedicated dulcimer playing time) tomorrow. It's fun to play songs and to learn songs but sometimes just improvising can be fun. Exploring the sounds that even one string can make. Harmonics are some of the sounds that many people don't realize that dulcimer strings can make. Lightly compressing a string on the dulcimer at it's midpoint - fret 7 and playing the string and then lifting your left hand finger over the string and produce an angelic sound that I'm sure our ears are only hearing part of. As far as another sounds of dulcimers - have you ever sneezed near a hammered dulcimer? A HD will sound for quite a while after the sneeze as the vibrations do their thing. Music, sound, notes, tones, melodies, and even silence (no notes) put together with the others create endless opportunities. Even our 26 letter alphabet has more rules and limitations - needing some vowels, limiting the total number of letters together in a word, or even the aspect of different languages where people standing right next to each other may not be able to understanding each other. In the music world - there are the possibilities, there is the crossing over cultures and being a universal language, and there is plenty of room for new composition and on-the-spot playing.
I have enjoyed sharing dulcimers with others - to teach, to demonstrate, to educate and to write songs. About a week ago I put together another song parody. A parody uses an existing melody but with new words. I made a song up about the history of this neighborhood to the tune Darling Clementine. I think writing a song - and it doesn't have to be long - should be something everyone does at least once in their lifetime. And, summertime is a good time to do it.