Something new at LOCO’s weekly performance the other night: a hammered dulcimer. That sucker has 48 strings. Imagine the time consumed in tuning it. Comparable to tuning a piano.
The guy who brought it discovered it was out of tune (probably the heightened humidity from the rain that day) and didn’t seem to want to waste time tuning it, so played his fiddle instead. I think he played it once, though. It was hard to be sure, as I was sitting between an amplified fiddle and an amplified mandolin, and could hardly hear my own efforts at fiddle harmony.
I’m getting better at recognizing keys and playing chord voicings contributed by my teacher. Instead of trying to keep up on the sheet music, by counting the beats, I finally figured out what the chords look like on the guitar and now I watch those players, instead. Still a challenge to keep up, though, and I sometimes revert to long, slow bowings of the pentatonic scale in whatever the key is because it fits with every chord.