We'd enjoy seeing a couple of pix!

This is such sad news. Rob was a great friend to all members of FOTMD, and he liked to greet new members personally when they joined, with a welcoming comment on their page. He did this as a labor of love for many years.

Rob was a great teacher and encourager in music and song. He loved history and tradition and was a treasure trove of knowledge. We are indeed blessed that Rob posted 57 videos here in our videos section. I encourage everyone to listen to some of his songs and tunes .

I know he will be deeply missed by so many of us. Rest in peace Rob.

My deepest thanks to the folks who have again stepped up to help support this site. You know who you are.
It's often the same ten or so members each year who show their generosity. If you regularly enjoy the resources here and have never donated before, if you are comfortably able to make a donation I would greatly appreciate it.
It costs about $75/month in server and software fees to keep FOTMD running. Making a donation is easy- just use the site's Home page Paypal Donation button and use a credit card to complete it (you don't need a paypal account to do this). Members who donate $35 or more will see a "Patron" label on their profile page.
Many Thanks to those who help out!

Hi Mike, I moved this discussion to the forum about specific instrument makers and questions, so people could find it better. 

Sorry though i have not heard of Danmont Dulcimers. Perhaps someone else here will have and can respond.

I want to thank the several members of FOTMD who have made donations this holiday season.  It is so kind and generous of you to support our site during these trying times.  Your thoughtfulness is so much appreciated and keeps this dulcimer network running (for 14 years now!).  Hugs to you and may you have a warm and safe holiday season in the company of good friends and loved ones.  🥰 

What a wonderful new video to watch and enjoy, Robin!  🥰

 @montycraig , I bet you are getting excited about your McSpadden coming soon. I got an hourglass all-walnut McSpadden as my first dulcimer, and it had a voice like an angel!  My daughter has it now. You will be pleased.

 @matthewlyon , that dulcimer in your profile photo looks like a lovely instrument- is that the one your wife gave you as a surprise present?
With tall action and a traditional diatonic fret layout, it was smart of you to decide to play it in noter style! I hope you are enjoying it, both when playing with others and playing alone.

Just ran into this fine thread and I thought it was worth bumping up again - so much good advice and info in it!

I do vaguely remember reading in the past year or two that he announced he was retiring from making dulcimers.. sorry but I cannot recall eactly where I read that.

Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, Festivus, and Happy New Year to all!  (and i hope you had a happy Hanukkah, though it's now over)  

Great to hear what you've been up to @Robin-clark .  👍🏼

@richard-streib , that is a whole lot of cookies!!  🍪

I've been learning to do a little watercolor painting lately, it's a challenge!
I've also been enjoying brushing up on my cursive handwriting while tinkering with fountain pens and bottled ink, and writing in my journal.
Another decades-long hobby of mine is knitting. I really enjoy the social camaraderie in attending various regular gatherings of knitters in my area.

@beth-t , I knew as soon as you mentioned that the schoolchildren could identify a melodeon and a concertina, that you could not be located in America... and I was right, you're in Wales!  How wonderful that you are playing in that new group you found, and going around to schools to play traditional music for the students.

@jan-potts , 20 minute play sessions four times a day?- that's what you are starting with?  In my book that's a whole LOT of playing!  Kudos to you.. 🙌🏻

Oops, Dusty and i were posting at the same time... thank you Dusty for your excellent post which covered all the basics!

Hi Rachel.

What you 'see' and icons/buttons etc... will depend on whether you are using a desktop/laptop, a tablet, or a phone. On mobile devices, site action options are typically found in your phone drop-down menus for the site, rather than as visible buttons on the pages. Personally I find it easier to navigate the web version of FOTMD, on a laptop or desktop.

Groups have both a Comment Wall and their own group discussions. The Groups section of this site has groups that address particular focused subjects that might not be of interest to most members- such as Galax Dulcimers, Fingerpicking, Dulcimer Builders Group, Chromatic dulcimers, California players... you get the idea. Remember that a member will not see all the Group discussion replies until they JOIN that group.  Groups are independent and completely separate from the site's main Forums area. Groups are meant to be 'focus groups' for those who share special interests. There is a little overlap since nothing is perfect.

The "Forums" section of this site has general subject areas, and in each of those areas you can create discussions/threads. It is always fully visible and you don't need to 'join' it. It functions similarly to typical traditional online forums.

You can 'follow' both Groups and Forum Discussions to be notified of new posts in that discussion.

It's a good idea to search a subject to see if you can find answers that have already been given. If not, then feel free to create a new discussion thread for your specific post.

I do realize a tutorial on how to use this site might be quite useful to some folks.  However, it would take me weeks to create a tutorial. Aside from my not having the time to devote to that, I know from many years of experience that most people wouldn't read through it anyway- they'd see a big tutorial and then they'd just go ahead and skip that and post their question directly, as they do now.  

The closest we have to a tutorial is this "How Do I..?" forum discussion... which does seem to help answer some of the more common questions, and it gets revised from time to time. It seems to work 'well enough' from a practical sense.

I hope this helps!  😍

I read something funny today online:

"Tradition is peer pressure from dead people."   😂

A thread for drifting from subject to subject, just for fun!

Glad to hear it's working for you Macy Jayne.

And again... welcome back!  

OK I just now posted a test video, a YT video called  Clyde the Limberjack.

It worked fine for me.  As I wrote in the thread I linked to below, I pasted in the full browser URL link when adding the video. I did NOT use the "share" link that Youtube provides when you click on 'share' on your youtube video's page.  Are you guys doing this?

Macy's link that she posted in the first post of this thread looks like the Youtube-provided "share" link (it has a question mark in the middle of the link, but no "watch?" in the middle of the link... as my full browser link has.)

To add a youtube video, you have to copy and paste in the full URL address of the video that's in the window at the top of your web browser.

Please do that and tell me if it works. It just worked fine for me.  Do NOT use the youtube "Share" button link.

Thanks for any further details.

Yes but are you following both the suggestions in the thread that I just linked to?
It's hard for me to 'guess' what exactly you are doing.  Instead of posting a general link to your YT video here in this discussion, can you please copy/paste here the exact thing that you are putting in the site field that is resulting in your getting the error message?

Hi Macy Jayne, good to see you here again!

Can you please look through this thread and tell us if it solves your issue?:

https://fotmd.com/forums/forum/site-questions-how-do-i/17093/add-a-video-will-not-accept-youtube-link

It's not easy to give quick answers to such questions. Some good info has already been posted to your question, but really I'd suggest doing some reading of books and articles written by both Ralph Lee Smith (such as "Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions") and Jean Ritchie ("Singing Family of the Cumberlands").  Those two books in particular are enjoyable reading and filled with descriptions of how mtn dulcimers were played and built before the 1960s 'revival'. Reading books and articles on mtn dulcimer history, and on early American folk music history in general are a wonderfully enriching way to learn all that is currently known, without trying to limit it to a few sentences. I remember almost 25 years ago, curling up in a big chair to read Jean's story of her childhood and her musical Kentucky mountain family, loving how every page swept me into another place and time.

In the Positive Thread... I'm just wondering what some of you are doing for the holiday season!  Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukka, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, or you just 'do cozy things'...  tell me what plans you have to make winter meaningful or enjoyable.
Are you looking forward to a family gathering or cooking a special meal?  Do you have a musical event planned or going to a cool concert?  Are you getting a new instrument to play?  Adopting a pet?  Reaching out to an estranged relative?  Traveling to a place far away?  Knitting some festive socks or making some other homemade gift?  Working a double shift so others can enjoy the holiday?  Having the neighbors over?  Honoring the memory of a loved one?  Setting up bird feeders for wildlife to enjoy?
Tell us how you add something positive to your December/January. ☃️ 🕯

@Lisa-Golladay 's post covered the practical pros & cons quite well.

It's always a great time to get interested in banjos. (or dulcimers!)

Speaking further about sound box sizes-  I also have an all-curly-maple hummel (mtn dulcimer like in many ways) which has a very large and deep sound box/body... and even though it's all maple it has a big resonant mellow tone. My maple mtn dulcimer has a very shallow depth body, and thus its voice is crisp and clear, less 'mellow'. They are both all maple but very different body dimensions and so have different tones.

"Good" sound can mean something different depending on personal taste.  Both my all-maple instruments sound wonderful, but they sound very different from each other!

My Keith Young curly maple dulcimer is all maple, even the fingerboard, and it sounds great and is in perfect condition after 26 years. I used it for this site's logo . Maple has a nice crisp sound, as opposed to slightly 'mellower' tone of walnut or spruce for example. It's also pretty hard, so (I'm guessing) would be a little less likely to get dinged. That said, I feel the volume and dimensions of the sound box tends to be a bigger factor in the tone of the sound than the type of wood does.

Reminder:  Members are allowed to have no more than two threads at any given time in our For Sale forum. Please contact me or another moderator for help in removing threads you no longer want active. Thanks!

Hey, i resemble that remark, Dusty!  

Well that's gonna be fun!  🎼

Yes, Teddy is the grey boy, on the right.  :)

If you are going with nylon strings, I really would recommend Nylgut brand, their set for "classic" banjo. Dulcimers and banjos have similar scale lengths and sometimes tune to the same octaves and notes. I've used both steel and various gut and nylon strings on all my banjos for about 25 years. I've found that on banjos, other brands and types of nylon strings feel overly bouncy, take a long time to 'settle', and tend to break too often. The worst in my experience were fishing line, and the Aquila nylons. The Nylgut strings have a nice tension, settle within hours, and very seldom break for me. They were a game changer.

Good luck on your fiddling adventure... (you already know we are Fans of Nate and all his endeavors!)

Being married to a wonderful fiddler, I know what a challenge it is to learn to fiddle and not sound like a dying cat. I second what Dusty said but would refine it say it likely takes more like three years to not sound horrible. HOWEVER!- you being NATE you might well take to fiddling like a duck to water.

Keep us posted and don't be afraid to post some early clips of your progress.  We can take it, scritchy-scratchies and all! 

I always used to find that a mtn dulcimer gets drowned out in a recording of several musicians on different instruments, if the person who is recording does not take special steps with the microphone placements to ensure otherwise. If you have a fiddle, banjo, mando, and dulcimer and mic all of them equally or just have a mic placed in the middle of the group of musicians, the dulcimer sound will be almost lost among them. When playing in real life, it's a little easier to hear the dulcimer among the live group. That's just from my own experience though.

The old forum discussions on either of the two ED sites are not archived or accessible, i believe. If I'm wrong, someone please point us to exactly where/how they are located. The only things archived from the original ED site were Tabs, Events, Articles, and club listings I think. Not forum discussions. I'm not even sure where the ED Articles are archived anymore. Many of them were also published in Mel Bay's dulcimersessions  .com website, which no longer exists either.  

It's that time of year when the flowers and veggies are all getting overgrown and ragged looking. Time to start pulling things out, pruning, tidying up a little area here and there as the plants become exhausted by it all. I've learned the hard way to not procrastinate too much on end-of-year garden cleanup. 

Happily we're still getting some real nice tomatoes. Not lots of them, but just enough to enjoy the bacon/tomato/mayo sandwiches we love to make this time of year.  

Thanks Ken... I fixed Rob's link.  :)

One of my favorite songs of my youth- April Come She Will. From Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence Album, 1966. I loved the song then when I was 12, but it's even more meaningful to me now that I'm older.

Written by Paul Simon, usually sung by Art Garfunkel.

Lyrics:

Truly a timeless song.
Here is Art Garfunkel singing it in 1966:

Cheap school instruments= plastic recorders, plastic ukeleles, cardboard dulcimers, plastic or metal p.whistles.

I've always wondered why schools don't use penny whistles instead of recorders. They are cheaper and are based on a simpler counted-hole method of scales, like the dulcimer is. I've noticed a distinct similarity between dulcimers and p.whistles in terms of playing different modes- both are based upon the ionian mode, with aeolian being quite accessible as well. (ionian home on 3rd fret dulcimer, 3rd hole whistle) Both are easily played in the most common keys as well. P.whistles would certainly be much more portable and durable for kids to take for practicing at home.