As you know, some time ago we established a policy that attendees of Sandbridge may share the basic melody with the chord progression. There are several reasons why it is time for us to revise this policy.
Why not just hand out all the music to friends and others? This should be old news. Countless hours of work go into selecting the tunes, learning them (almost always by listening), developing the chord progression, transcribing, and getting them ready for Sandbridge. All is quite time-consuming. Ask Mary Lynn about Valse Pompadour and how I agonized over the chord choices.
My time and effort (and Mary Lynn’s) are only a part of the equation. We develop the pieces for those who attend and support the workshop. It is not fair to all those folks who attend and support Sandbridge to give it away to those who do not attend.
Overwhelmingly, folks respect that the pieces exist because of ALL those who attend and support Sandbridge. Most of you ask for permission to share the written music. And our belief is that most of you follow the current policy. Thank you for that! What is the current policy, and, why do we feel it necessary to now revise it? We have asked that you share only the basic melody and the chord progression. We have come to realize that this policy is problematic on a few levels.
It has come to our attention that folks who did not attend Sandbridge in person or on Zoom have obtained copies of all the tunes for multiple weeks from the Fall and Spring. While this was in line with our policy, it sure doesn’t feel right to us.
Let’s consider some of the tunes we taught this Fall: e.g. When Angels Breathe, Saudade, New Waltz, Valse Frontenac, and Blue Violet. Figuring out the melodies along with the chord progression required an extensive amount of work. It doesn’t seem reasonable just to hand out these pieces. Most of the work is figuring out the melody and the harmonization and transcribing them (e.g. Saudade, Angels, or New Waltz).
The new policy The tunes we teach at Sandbridge are available ONLY to in-person and Zoom attendees for 10 months. Of course, all videos and PDFs from your week are yours forever, but we ask that you do not share these with others. They are for your personal use. After 10 months, we make the Video Lessons available for purchase by other players through Gumroad (we sometimes hold them longer if we plan to teach them in other weeks).
We encourage you to purchase the video lessons and encourage your friends and playing partners to do so as well. The purchase of the video lessons supports our work. We also believe that learning the tunes via video lessons is much better than just reading the written music. There is so much to be learned about the “why” and “how we got there?”
The bottom line is that we would like others to purchase the video lessons if they really want to learn the piece. Many of you already do that. We greatly appreciate it!
Exceptions For Ken’s originals, please share the melody with the chords. Why? I want folks to play these pieces. And I didn’t have to learn them from anyone! If you play with non-hammered dulcimer players (e.g., guitarists, flutists, violinists, fiddlers), you may share the melodies and chord progressions. In some cases, it may be ok to share the backup but ask first. If you aren’t sure whether it is okay to share, we would greatly appreciate it if you simply ask me Thanks, everyone. Comments to Ken are welcome.