Dulcet Tones: Amplifying and recording your dulcimer
A series of workshops on how to get the best amplified result from your instrument and equipment

Dulcimers are beautiful, resonant instruments rich in harmonics. But these very characteristics can make it difficult to amplify or record them. We’re offering several workshops that we hope will help people address some of these challenges. We’ll look at both live sound reinforcement and home recording setups. Specific topics are flexible based on the interest of those who sign up, but will include topics like microphone and pickup choices, using an amp for practice and performance, and various techniques for recording your instrument at home, including making decisions about which equipment and software to use.

Dates: 3/18, 3/25, 4/1, 4/8 (all Saturdays) Time: 12pm PDT (3pm EDT), each session is 90 minutes

Cost: $160

Location: Online, via Zoom Workshops are limited to 20 people Workshops will be co-taught by Tesser Call and Brian Walker

The instructors:

Tesser Call is a Freight and Salvage (Berkeley, CA) sound engineer with more than 20 years of experience doing live sound reinforcement, specializing in acoustic and ethnic music. In addition to working at the Freight, she works freelance doing live sound in the California Bay Area. She has worked with artists such as John McCutcheon, Bruce Molsky, and Alasdair Fraser, and she has toured with the Old Blind Dogs, the Black Brothers, and the Martin Hayes Quartet.

Brian Walker is a longtime Freight and Salvage sound engineer with 40 years of professional experience as a house sound engineer, a touring front-of-house mixer for bands such as Montreux and the Turtle Island String Quartet, and a recording studio engineer. He specializes in recording acoustic music, and during the pandemic, he developed a curriculum for his online class series that is designed to help musicians recording at home get the best possible results from their equipment.