

Whither Zither Archives
Whither Zither is a monthly column
written by Peter Berryman for the Madison (WI) Folk Music Society
Newsletter, MadFolk News.
Note: AmericaOnline
stopped webhosting in Oct '08. That is where Whither Zither was
archived. The new address, as you have found, is:
louandpeter.com/wz.html
2010 Whither Zithers (most recent at top)
2009 Whither Zithers
2008 Whither Zithers
2007 Whither Zithers
- December
2007: Make this Transposing Wheel
and Capo Guru in your spare time ha ha
- November
2007: The ASCAP song by Steve Gillette
- October 2007: Trouble in Small Venueland: BMI, ASCAP, SESAC,
oh my!
- September
2007: Fifty Years Ago: On the Road,
Peggy Sue, Sputnik and Bubble Wrap
- August 2007: Tiddely Poms: Quotations from my bootbox.
- July 2007: Pythagorean Comma: An odd problem when tuning
an instrument.
- June 2007: Wax Cylinder Collection online: Free downloads
of amazing old songs and more.
- May 2007: Blank Blanker: A generic job-song for three-syllable
jobs.
- April 2007:
Full Time Waiters: Waiting, Waiting
Rooms, Green Rooms, and songs about Waiting.
- March 2007: The solution to last month's Whither Zither, with
comments and factoids.
- February
2007: A mostly folky partly poppy
crossword puzzle. SOLUTION in March
WZ.
- January 2007: The Famous You: Whither Zither agrees with Time
and The Times
2006 Whither Zithers
- December
2006: Sander Closes Gumming: Homophones
for the Holidays.
- November
2006: I Go, Yugo, We All Go: Death
and Folk Music.
- October 2006: Music, Politics, Humor, Life, etc: Joe Glazer
remembered; the Prince Myshkins; Charlie King
- September
2006: Gizmophoria: More widgets
from the US Patent Office.
- August 2006: Foot Dillers and Diddley Bows: Make your own
folk instrument.
- July 2006: The Envelope Please. Folk Music Contests, of all
things.
- June 2006: Is this anything? An odd diagram of My Bonnie
Lies Over the Ocean
- May 2006:
George's Arrowheads: Taxonomy and
songwriting
- April 2006:
Funny Paper Bridges: Song bridges
and their comic strip counterparts
- March 2006: Oh Susannah, Susie, Sue: On beyond melody and
lyrics
- February
2006: Whither Zither number 100:
A silly index.
- January 2006: More Footsie: A few responses triggered by Edna's
Name's Feet
2005 Whither Zithers
- December
2005: Edna's Name's Feet: Do you
have a waltz name or a polka name?
- November
2005: On Beyond Lyrics: Joel's
Musing and Rob's Mystery
- October 2005: Fire, Water, and Music: The hot and the wet as
song material
- September
2005: Introductory Oh Susannah:
a complicated interpretation
- August 2005: Lou and the Girl Scouts. Barges and s'mores...
- July 2005:The Autoharper's Index, with apologies to the
Harper's Index
- June 2005: The Folksong Dipstick Matrix: an interview with
its inventor, Kum Bayah
- May 2005: Psychoacoustics: Where's that noise coming from?
- April 2005: Spring Break: A few puzzles. ANSWERS
FOUND HERE.
- March 2005: Accordion to Zither: A grim alphabet poem for
no good reason
- February
2005: Sudden Miss Worm Voice: Home
Recording tales by my sister Susannah
- January 2005: Mir, Nostradamus, and Klagenfurt: comments from
some notable commenters.
2004 Wither Zithers
- December
2004: Deciduous Teeth: Web translations
of Berryman Xmas songs.
- November
2004: The Dolceola, starring Joel
Mabus and Andy Cohen
- October 2004: WDET Detroit and Matt Watroba: The Unfolking of
Public Radio
- September
2004: As I Tread the Drear Wild:
Songs about home.
- August 2004: Capo and Phonemendator: A capo museum, and the
US Patent Office, both online.
- July 2004: Book Review of a memoir by Samuel Charters about
music in the Bahamas in 1958.
- June 2004: Hiawatha Ruminations: Rhymeless Verse from Barnes
and Noble
- May 2004: The Hep Folkslanger: Slang for folksters inspired
by Antarcticulation
- April 2004: Short Quotes Unremarkable In Depth (SQUIDS) in
song lyrics
- March 2004: Universal Laws 2: Gravity! Gravity! (A sequel
to February's column.)
- February
2004: An assignment for you: Find
Universal Laws in song lyrics.
- January 2004 Zipper Tripper: Zipper songs sung loud make good
No-Dozers on long drives.
2003 Whither Zithers
- December
2003 Spray Them Gold: What to do
with LPs when the turntable gives out.
- November
2003 Ringing Out A Room: A diagram
to help conquer bad sounding rooms.
- October 2003 Shocks and Mufflers Revisited: Word-gathering
walks in 1841, 1988, and 2003
- September
2003 More Nonsense: Light Verse
via MacGuffin, Mondegreen, and Mountain View
- August 2003 Wella Wella Bing Bang: Lyrics that don't make
any sense.
- July 2003 And The Snow Was Deeper, Too: Being small time
music pros in the olden days.
- June 2003 A Dream, a Drama, and a Device.
- May 2003 Twitching and Plucking: Weird gigs and lurching
synapses
- April 2003 Lonesome Therapy: Lonesome songs for a lonesome
time
- March 2003 Sometimes vs Usually: What exactly is a "House
Concert" anyway?
- February
2003 Jingo Jingles, Crimson Cream,
Flimsy Whimsy: Songs and ego extensions
- January 2003 Cultural Purity: Art and advertising. Feedbag
Cookies.
2002 Whither Zithers;
- December
2002 The Country of the Winter
Miracles: Web translations of Xmas songs.
- November
2002 Maine Attraction: Matthew
Szostak and his Hurdy Gurdy.
- October 2002 Not listlessly: Songs containing or made entirely
of lists.
- September
2002 Bad writing, Totem talk, found
poetry: a glut of inspiration
- August 2002 My former instruments the Toggle Bass & Blues
Tube, plus Art Thieme
- July 2002 A short discussion of recordings and live gigs
inspired by a friend's e-mail.
- June 2002 A Beatnik update, followed by an imaginary folk-video
hallucination.
- May 2002 Bandware. My own peculiar duo's particular amplification
procedure.
- April 2002 Beatniks and folk music: Appreciating appreciating.
- March 2002 Baitbox Treasures: Rewriting magazine article
titles for inspiration.
- February
2002 Prat like That: Music is such
a peculiar thing to hate.
- January 2002 Interesting folk music question: What is a "Sinatra
song"?
2001 Whither Zithers:
- December
2001 Bob Ross, hypnotic painter
of bad art; noodling vs doodling.
- November
2001 The Texton Theory, Attentive
and preattentive vision, model airplanes, music, and art.
- October 2001 A few ideas about exactly how music can be a healing
force.
- September
2001 Aviation events, folk festivals,
and the outdoorseyness of folk music
- August 2001 Doug Henkle's amazing FolkLib Index website,
and a brief interview with Doug himself.
- July 2001 So What's With The Buttons? The most common accordion
button layout explained in tedious detail.
- June 2001
We Shall Overcome: The story of
the song, and Joe Glazer, one of its early singers.
- May 2001 A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes: Software rhyming dictionary
VS an old fashioned book type with paper pages.
- April 2001 Chew and Walk Gum: The branching (multitasking)
brain listens to a song.
- March 2001 More Whence than Whither; finally a little something
about actual zithers.
- February
2001 A Limburger Ballad, written
for WI Public TV and the WI State Historical Society. Cheesy.
- January 2001 Epenthesis, the diphthong, the schwa, the glottis,
made up words, and Rattlesnake Mountain.
2000 Whither Zithers:
- December
2000 Partial interview with Wil
Bremer and Julie Luther of Spruce Tree Music of Madison, which
is 20 years old, with link to the full interview.
- November
2000 Lydia Maria Child, "Over
the River and Through the Woods," Medford MA, "Jingle
Bells," and hardtack.
- October 2000 Toys R Us: A simple setup for home CD-quality
recording direct to your computer.
- September
2000 Who put the Corn in Cornet:
Brand new used brass instrument of my boyhood revisited.
- August 2000 No Whither Zither this month. Here's an explanation,
and a photograph relating to last month's episode.
- July 2000 Quotes from and a response to an email from Mark
Moss, editor of Sing Out! magazine, who disagreed with
last month's Whither Zither.
- June 2000 MP3, Napster, downloading music, the demise of
the CD, the subsequent personalized band trinket boom.
- May 2000 Gilda Gray the song, Gilda Gray the legend, theme
songs and jingles, prostate cancer.
- April 2000 Part two of my article on the debate about changing
one another's lyrics, reprinted from Sing Out! magazine.
- March 2000 My article on the debate about the ethics of changing
someone else's lyrics, Part One, reprinted from 1998 Sing
Out! magazine.
- February
2000 Bad gigs, Bob Dylan as Krusty
the Clown, love of performing, The Hidden Dimension and
society's zones.
- January 2000 On fomes, fomites, vectors, punk, hysteresis,
Nancy, Sluggo, and the Oxford Companion to the English Language.
1999 Whither Zithers:
- December
'99 A Whithery Zithery tribute
to technology and how it helps us document and, hence, dig our
lives, more easily every year.
- November
'99 The story of my own peculiar
youth, musically speaking. Not gripping, but on the other hand,
unenlightening.
- October '99 The second half of an interview with departing
ten-year president of the Madison Folk Music Society, Mike Tuten.
- September
'99 The first half of an interview
with departing ten-year president of the Madison Folk Music Society,
Mike Tuten.
- August '99 A sampler of song titles harvested from the BMI
archives.
- July '99: Michael Cooney's coming to town. Here he talks
about how he got started in folk music.
- June '99: Black Sheep Cafe of Amherst MA, songwriter Lorre
Wyatt, strokes and music, left brain and right brain.
- May '99: Zither info request, email from Russia, Komar
and Melamid with the Most Unwanted Song.
- April '99: A few words, personal and otherwise, about accordions,
including a photo of Lou's inspiration, Henry Bilde.
- March '99: Cheeseheads in California: Memories of a typical
tour.
- February
'99: Apologies to Maureen Gerarden,
Thanks to Mike Tuten, More Robert Service, and Madison in the
days of Stephen Foster.
- January '99: The Californa Gold Rush songs of John A. ("Old
Put") Stone and the Klondike Gold Rush poems of Robert Service.
1998 Whither Zithers:
- December
'98: An abbreviated interview with
Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen.
- November
'98: A Prairie Populist revisited,
David Rea revisited, Fritz Schuler and the Golden Ring Folklore
Center, Oberek defined, Judy Rose's autobiography.
- October '98: Festival At the Fort in Omaha with David Rea &
others, Shawano festival with Larry Penn & others, a book
about the prairie, what's an Oberik?
- September
'98: A quick description of the
protective outer bag for the case described in the August column,
with link to photos of the project.
Mention made of this being episode #12.
- August '98: Saving an old beat-up hard shell case from the
trash can, with the help of Velcro and Naugahyde.
- July '98: Grandson of Whoopee John, Polka Names, Roll Out
The Barrel, Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Minute.
- June '98: Descending minor third revisited, plea for comments
on changing lyrics, interview with Norman Kennedy by Matt Watroba.
- May '98: Geoff Muldaur, The Anthology of American Folk
Music edited by Harry Smith, melody not quite on the beat.
- April '98: Songwriting tips, reprinted from an article written
about five years ago for Sing Out magazine.
- March '98: John Koerner, Utah Phillips, Faith Petric, Sam
Hinton, health, age, Dr. Demento, and more John Koerner.
- February
'98: Descending minor thirds, spoken
intonation, the major pentatonic scale, Irving Berlin and the
black keys.
- January '98: Menorahs and rosaries, e-mail about willies &
looping, Wallace and King, concert acoustics.
1997 Whither Zithers:
- December
'97: Owatonna MN, Steve Cloutier,
& the JamMan; universal vs. personal willies caused by melodies.
- November
'97: Nova Scotia, Si Kahn, &
misreading; Club de Wash anniversary; Dan Small, Warren Nelson,
and the Outdoor Wisconsin theme song.
- October '97: Introduction (this was the first column); Rob
Lopresti & urban legends; Satterfield Electronics; Sam Hinton
& the mouth harp.
MadisonFolk
Music Society (www.madfolk.org)
Lou and PeterBerryman
web site (louandpeter.com)