Timothy's Blog

In the year 2000 I was excited about all the well-received music I’d been able to do for Shenandoah National Park, and I’d begun playing music in the Park itself.  I wanted to branch out from there to Virginia’s State Parks, where I also was performing, especially at our nearest ones, York River State Park (for whom I’d composed and recorded two pieces on the album Celebration of Centuries, ‘James and York Bluffs’ and ‘Spartina’) and Chippokes Plantation State Park across the ferry in Surry.  So I was considering what could be added using the remaining pieces I’d composed in 1995 for the National Parks Suite and in 1996 for the defunct album project Such a Gift.

I was asked to play music in the Jones Mansion in the Christmas season of 2000.  While there my music caught the attention of Holly Walker, a State Parks program director from Richmond, so I told her of my dream of making an album of pieces for the State Parks.  To my surprise she said that they were actually looking for a CD to be sold in the park shops, so she set up a meeting for me with the Director of State Parks, Joe Elton!  When I met with Joe he had the marketing guy, Tim Skinner, sit in.  I explained my vision, and Tim took over the collaboration.  They asked me how long the album might take to produce, and I said it would probably take several months, and they asked me if in the meantime we could put together an appropriate compilation of tracks from my existing albums, thus having two new albums over the next two years.

Often people ask me which of my albums would be best for personal quiet times, meditation, yoga, dentists’ offices, babies’ naps, chiropractor clinics, massage therapy, reading, going to sleep, … you get the idea! Instrumental music is frequently desired for peaceful experiences, and my instruments can be highly regarded as appropriate for relaxation.

Well, the music in my head is actually pretty dramatic and exciting, but I always did intend to make a mellower album than the others, and the time seemed to have arrived in 1999 after the Williamsburg album Celebration of Centuries was done. I made my usual tune list, again a very long one.

This will be my longest post about my albums --- and it’s perhaps the most trimmed-back!  Here on this Ridge was clearly the big turning point in my music-making.

In 1994 the holiday album Incarnation showed me I could successfully produce recordings of my own music, so I moved right into production of a general-themed CD called Wayfaring Stranger .  The instruments and the Celtic and hiking material could sort of be called themes, but it was mostly just a music CD for listening.

In music the French word ‘motif’ simply means a group of notes that you use to start a musical composition and to refer to throughout the composition for unity.  That’s all!

Maybe the most famous example of a motif is the set of theme notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony:  ‘Di-di-di-dah’ (used in the Second World War as Morse Code for ‘V’ for victory) --- and if you listen to that matchless symphony you can hear Beethoven developing an entire movement --- with references throughout the rest of the whole work --- from that simple set of three notes, G-G-G-Eb (in the key of C minor).

In February of 2000 I purchased my present dulcimer, a Dusty Strings D600 (the eighth one out of the shop, the one Ray Mooers sent to Sam Rizzetta to confirm the design) --- and I decided to try developing a new technique using separated hands, stylized sort of like a pianist does it, together with the rich low range of this particular dulcimer model.

So I chose the key of A, and I chose to use all of the major and minor chords from the key so I could explore the use of each of their locations on the bass bridge.