Forum Activity for @strumelia

The following was sent to me by Richard Troughear:

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I visited Terry Hennessy yesterday in his little village of Kangaroo Valley, New South Wales, Australia.  As you know Terry made the mountain dulcimer played by Richard Farina in the 1960’s, fixing his place in the modern history of the instrument.  In 1965 Jean Ritchie thought it was “the jazziest dulcimer I ever saw!”.  Terry has continued to make dulcimers of high quality up until recent times.

But after a life as a stone-mason, a theatre set designer, a puppeteer, a jug band player, a television presenter, service in the Royal Air Force, a story-teller par excellence, and a world class dulcimer luthier, he is now 88 years old and in the twilight of his days.  His health is rapidly declining.

Terry has always loved to talk to dulcimer makers and players about the instrument, but in Australia there are not many of either.   For those players and makers in the wider dulcimer community who know of Terry, and would like to make contact with him, now is a good time to say hello and wish him well.   I know he would appreciate the thoughts. 

Terry’s email address is:  

hennessydulcimer@iprimus.com.au  

His long-time partner Christine might need to read emails to Terry.

regards,
Richard Troughear

It reminds me a bit of the Puerto Rican cuatro (which I used to play when I lived there many years ago). They both have ten strings, but the cuatro has 5 courses, arranged in pairs. It too is rather small, but your tiple looks as though it's even smaller, judging from the proportions with the tuning gears.

What is the scale length on your tiple? Looks to be quite short, maybe close to violin/mandolin scale?

Dan, I'm really sorry, but I'm afraid we will not be able to add new Soundcloud clips anymore for the foreseeable future.

Soundcloud has changed the way they allow third party calls/embeds in a way that makes it difficult to code. The developers at Jamroom would have to jump through hoops to meet the new criteria SC has instituted, and it's just not worth the time and expense for the developers to code new workarounds. Who knows, maybe SC will relax its requirements in the future again, but word is that SC is losing money and that might not be in the cards.

Luckily, our existing SC clips are continuing to function and play for us here... for now. I hope we can keep them working, but there are no guarantees even for that.

For now, if fotmd members want to add an audio clip, you'll have to use the old fashioned choice of uploading your audio file directly to fotmd, like we use to do on our old Ning site.

So sorry for the inconvenience... I'm just as disappointed as you are about this.

Tennessee dulcimer maker Bill Taylor has passed away. Here is an obituary:

https://www.knoxnews.com/obituaries/kns040386

That's funny!

Bobby is that on a bicycle? Good for you. Looks pretty there. 

Corvus- lol, whatever floats your boat.

It is deeply sad that John Shaw passed away. His music and creativity will continue inspiring others for a long time to come.

You should be able to see or access a text box so that you can respond to them with your own comment right there after their comment. 
Are you doing this on a desktop/laptop, or on a tablet/phone?

Perhaps there are a few old traditional tunes that appeal to you that you might like to try out in drone style on this dulcimer. Think DAA tuning, and maybe Start with Go Tell Aunt Rhody. You could also try the beautiful Aoelian mode tuning of DAG, and play Shady Grove. It might be a lovely thing to do when you are feeling like playing something beautiful and haunting, without needing to play chords on all strings. Think about it.. worth a try maybe since you already have the perfect dulcimer for that.

Have you sold things on Ebay before? If so, then that's a fairly easy way to sell it, though you have to ship it carefully. If not, perhaps Craigslist, or contact any dulcimer club within driving distance. You must decide whether you are willing or able to ship it.

If it has no cracks or damage at all, then i imagine someone might pay anywhere between $350-600. It's a tricky time for guessing values now due to pandemic. But I'd think $450 would be a logical price with the case and without counting shipping.

If you want to sell it, you really can't be worrying about it going to a 'happy home'. You kind of have to assume that whoever buys it would be happy and deserving.

Love that gourd banjer!  The moon inlay! And the copper tacks?

Wow i bet it has a wonderful deep voice. How are you tuning it Don?

Yay for Don Pedi !!

One little thing- that set you picture has all same gauge except a thicker bass wound string. That means it was generally intended for a tuning where middle string is tuned same note as melody string(s)... such as DAA.

Using these strings for a DAd tuning is certainly do-able and should work ok, but for 'optimal' results in DAd you would want a middle string that is slightly thicker than the melody strings. For example 11-11-14-22w instead of 11-11-11-22w.

John i had never even tasted tomatillos until about 4 yrs ago. At first i thought Hmmm....odd.  Then got seriously hooked.  LOL  Now i grow both tomatoes and tomatillos as my 'most important' Summer veggies.

I've been picking a ton of tomatillos in our garden lately.  This week I canned 24 pints of green tomatillo sauce, adding onions, garlic, cilantro, and red peppers.  There were several other bowls of them than fit in this photo. Now we'll have enough green sauce to last til April or May. 

Very good question Richard.

It's also referred to as a false bottom.

@illmade2 , have you received this instrument yet?  Are you experiencing any irregularities in the shipping/tracking info?  Was this an ebay purchase?

I have deleted Tod's post. If it happens again please let me know immediately, folks, and I will take action that insures it doesn't happen again.  Thanks!

Oh my. What a 'squishable' nose Gary has! 

Our cat Teddy taking a nap in our bed today...

The Latin root 'dulci' means sweet. Nobody knows who exactly invented the words dulcimer or dulcimore. It goes far back in time, to medieval references to hammered dulcimers. 'Dulcimore' is simply one of various old fashioned variations of names for the same or similar instruments.

Right, Dan! So many quaint old names for mountain dulcimers were in use years ago in the US.   Indian walking stick, dulcerine, duck slammer, even sometimes just called a Music Box.
I first noticed the particular name 'dulcimore' being used much more frequently by Dan Cox just a few years ago. Before that (for the 30 years i have studied and discussed dulcimers), we all simply talked about 'traditional mountain dulcimers' and 'modern dulcimers'. 'Dulcimore' rarely came up except in online conversations where we were listing quaint old fashioned historic or regional names for our instrument.
Whether Dan intended it or not, I consider him to have spearheaded a movement where now it seems to be pretty much standard procedure to refer to traditional mountain dulcimers as 'dulcimores'.  Since it's handy to use as a shorter name than constantly saying or writing 'traditional dulcimer', and has a lilting quality, I'm all for making things simpler when discussing our favorite instrument.  But I do think that Dan deserves the credit for 'reviving' the name 'dulcimore' into now common usage and understanding.

It's what you were referring to when you said: "...that I could just count up a few frets to make that tab work"

1)  No- the standard 'reverse tuning' of DAA would be ADA... reversing the middle and bass strings, NOT doing anything to the melody string. In both DAA and ADA, your tonic note would still be the note of D. (found on one of the drone strings and on the melody string at 3rd fret.)

2)  I don't know what you consider to 'standard tab'... for what tuning? 
Easiest way to test all this: Play it while doing your counting up thing and see if it sounds right, and if you have all the notes you need for the tune. My bet is that it won't translate well if you are fretting on all strings and chording. If that's the case, then retuning to an optimal tuning for the tune and the tab will be the easiest solution.

The +3 tab conversion really works best if you only or mostly play/fret on the melody string (drone style playing). It's more complicated when you fret notes on all strings and/or play chords. You can try it, but I have no idea how it'll sound.

A tuning can often play tunes in more than 1 mode. That's why we are not technically correct in saying "dorian tuning" for instance. What I try to say these days, which is more correct, is that "this tuning is great for playing dorian tunes". The purpose of 'tunings' is to make it easier to play various kinds of tunes. A particular tune might be easier to play in DAG than DAC, for example. You'd have all the notes you need in places that are easily available depending on your style of playing. This is particularly important on non-chromatic instruments like the dulcimer, which is typically 'missing' certain frets.

Hope this helps!

Marg that appears to me to be a tuning one would use to play in the lonesome-sounding Dorian mode.

Are you playing the melody on the melody (d) string when in that tuning? And... are you playing in chording style, or in drone style? (drone style meaning you are not fretting the middle or bass string). 
I do have a couple of tabs on my noter drone blog for dorian tunes.  Basically, it's like playing in aeolian except further up the fretboard, and thus you have several extra available notes below the Tonic/home note which is on fret #4.

Wonderful points, Nate. Americans have sadly gotten away from the norm of every family having several members who play an instrument at home or at family or community gatherings. 

You can always simply remove one of the doubled pair of melody strings if you want just single strings, people do it all the time. Remove the one that will result in string spacing you like.

$200 is extremely low for a new dulcimer that is not a cardboard model. If you can set your budget to $300 or $350 you will have additional options. Or, used dulcimers will be a bit cheaper.

That said, most of the cardboard dulcimers sold these days are actually pretty good dulcimers, they play smoothly and they sound nice. They make great super-low-priced starter instruments that remain useful later on for travel and camping, etc.

Steven, I pretty much agree with this.  Though I do love some of my oldtime steel string banjers too, they have their own pretty bell-like tone appeal. 

Ken, many factors contribute to a unique sound from every banjo. Pot material does actually make quite a difference, as do different types of wood. I have a friend who made an entire banjo out of ebony. It was a thing of beauty and extremely heavy. But sadly, it sounded way too quiet and not resonant at all, because of the denseness of the ebony, which would not transmit sound vibrations at all.

@don-smith , i too think banjos can be made successfully out of most hard woods. If you have a chance look up stuff about banjo maker Jeff Menzies - he moved to Jamaica years ago and while living there he used all kinds exotic woods to make gourd banjos... whatever wood was available from trees that fell or discarded local wood. His banjos sound wonderful. I loooove gourd banjos, but I only have one, made by Jeff.

I'm very happy Don! 

@don-smith , maybe the first, simplest beginner tunes from my noter/drone players Blog would help:

https://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-player.html

https://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/2009/02/dulcimer-land.html

Wishing you and your wife all the best...

Yes, it's a bit different, and certainly quite different than Facebook too. 

Don- unfortunately, a typical hole reamer and a peg shaver are both intended for tapered holes and tapered pegs. We are talking about straight holes for the (straight) metal tuner shaft. A reamer would create a tapered hole in which the metal tuner shaft would then wobble.

BTW you can 'like' a discussion or a photo or a video etc, but you cannot 'like' an individual post in a discussion.
Thus, you will see the green Thumbs Up button at the lower left corner of this discussion (to like the discussion), but you won't see a Like button on Skip's individual post, for example.

Some banjo players have successfully enlarged a pegbox hole that was 'a hair' too small by wrapping some fine sandpaper around a pencil and carefully working it back and forth in the hole a little at a time. That would certainly be an option with a dulcimer that is not terribly valuable, and for holes that 'almost' fit your new tuner shafts.

I'm confused about what you mean:

Did you buy a complete new set of geared tuners, or just the plastic buttons?

Are you trying to replace the whole tuner, or just the plastic buttons?

Is it the buttons that don't fit on the existing tuners?... or the whole new tuner shaft that doesn't fit in the wooden hole?

My mistake, i did not examin the photo well- those older tuners are not 'planet' or plantetary tuners, they are regular geared tuners.

If you can't see a brand ID on the old tuners, the way i see it is you have two choices: 1) carefully ream the existing holes so that the tuners you just bought will fit,  2) try to find a website that describes various uke tuner shaft sizes, and 3) get an exact measurement of the existing holes diameter so you can look for tuners with the right size shafts to fit the existing holes.

For a dulcimer that is not greatly valuable, i would suggest option #1.  Just my own thoughts.  :)