@Elvensong - thank you very much - I am very happy to read your kind comment. 

So very beautiful! My daughter is just starting ocarina so I played this to inspire her! 

Thank you for sharing your lovely music. 

Dean

Hello Pierre-Yves,

thank you very much for the youtube video - so, do I understand it right that it is a Burgundy tune (so more to the East of France), from the area of Morvan?

Here a youtube link to the original tune, recorded in 1974 (Ariane, it's not a Breton tune )

Some of the musicians of the band had a small factory called "La Boite à Folk" where they crafted dulcimers. One of them, Marc Robine was probably the best French dullcimer player. Marc passed away in 2003. I put pic of one of their dulcimer I bought 3 years ago.

Many thanks to all of you - I was so happy to read your comments.

Mike - this tune is called "En avant blonde" a French waltz.

Strumelia - that sounds as if the mountain dulcimer is a really flexible instrument :)

I understood the theory (you have explained it perfectly) and will try it in practice - I puzzle over (do you say this in English?) the position of the half steps when I tune the melody string from d to c or g. But perhaps this will be clear when I try it.

Cynthia - I heard that you play recorder too - that´s why I uploaded this tune :)

Beautiful.  What is the name of this tune?

That's so very pretty Ariane.  

Since you are already quite musically skilled, may I suggest to you that IF you tried this tune on the dulcimer, you might want to use either an Aeolian tuning or a Dorian tuning.  I think the Aeolian tuning would have all the notes needed on the frets (since the melody does not appear to dip lower down than one step below the tonic note).  Aeolian would keep you lower on the fretboard during the tune and thus perhaps a little eaiser to play than Dorian.

For the dulcimer, if you keep to the key of D as you recorded this in already, an Aeolian tuning would then be DAC (the D being the bass string, the C being the 'melody string' closest to the player when held in the lap). When in DAC, your tonic key note of D would be on the melody string's 1st fret.

To try the Dorian mode, again in D... you'd lower your melody string further to a DAG tuning, and your home/tonic note would be on the melody string's 4th fret.  In DAG, the melody string's G is one step lower than the middle string's A. The bass string open note is the lowest note available.

It's such a pleasure to hear such an excellent musician. I love your music. I had the best musical time of my life doing concerts with German musicians.