Tom Strothers has now fixed the online string calculator...yay! It's working again at:
When i was first trying to play 'folk' music in a jam setting, I would take my little mandolin (I was not very good on it) to a night 'adult education' folk jam at a nearby community college...this was round about 18 years ago. (seems like 100 years ago now) The jam was hosted by a biology professor there, who would bring his guitar. There were Bunson burners and bottles of creatures in formaldehyde, and we all sat on lab stools. There were mostly guitar players.
One week, he brought an instrument I knew nothing about... but when he played it (Hang me O hang me) I thought it sounded like pure Heaven. After the jam I asked him about it and he showed me how easy it was to begin playing, and I had to get me one. I knew nothing about the history or traditions of the dulcimer, the sound just really blew me away...there was something primal and pure about it.
At home I got on my then-first computer (windows 95, dial-up, blue screen of death...) and learned everything I could about mountain dulcimers before I made any decisions to buy. After researching reliable makers, i ordered an all walnut hourglass McSpadden with a scroll head.
When it arrived, I got learning materials (which all seemed to be for DAd chord playing) and I happily began to learn to play. It seemed to me that McSpadden had a voice like an angel .
Later on, My younger teenage daughter began to play it too, in fingerpicking style. She sounded so marvelous that I gave her my McSpadden and that's when I ordered my Keith Young teardrop. My daughter took the McSpadden with her and now she's 34 and still has that walnut dulcimer, though she doesn't play anymore. Maybe she will again one day. 
Many FOTMD members currently have just one dulcimer- their first one. Perhaps they having only been playing for a week. Others of us have more than one dulcimer, have been playing for many years, and we may or may not still own our first one.
Well I'd like to hear from everyone about their very first mountain dulcimer - whether you got it last week or 50 years ago. What kind was it?, how/why did you get it?, and do you miss it or still own or play it? What were your feelings about that first dulcimer?
-Please don't tell us about or list your other dulcimers (I'll edit or remove posts about people's dulcimer collections or later dulcimer acquisitions). Please, I'd like this thread to have only member stories about our very FIRST dulcimer.
Don't be afraid to sound sappy, sentimental, or bitter! 
All I ask is that we be respectful of people's names and reputations.
Tell us about your first!
Ozark i just tried the strothers calculator and I believe it's currently not functioning. I sent them a message about that. Please see my recommendation for you in the beginners group where you asked this. 
We have a new feature added to our Groups function- something that folks have been wanting!
As it has always been , when you join a Group you can click the 'Follow' button in any group discussion so that you will receive a notification when there is a new post in that discussion . Thus you can pick and choose which group discussions you want to keep updated on.
But members worried that unless they visited the group often, they might not be aware of when a new discussion started in a group, and they might miss out on something that interested them.
Well now we have a new added button that allows you to also 'follow' a group's discussion area so that you'll be notified when a new discussion is created as well! -then you can go check out the new discussion and decide whether or not you want to 'follow' it.
You will no longer miss any of the 'action' in your favorite Groups! 
Hope you all enjoy this new feature.
Needless to say, you'll need to be a member of a group to be able to follow things in that group . You'll also need to have your notification settings ON in your profile Settings --> Notifications TAB...if you have them turned to OFF then of course you won't be getting any notifications at all.
Here is what you will see now on the Group's page if you want to get notified of NEW discussions in your favorite Group, OR if you want to get notified about a new post in a particular group discussion:
Beating the straws, beaters, fiddlesticks, ....it's an old fiddle percussion technique. No need to associate it with anything negative, any more so than beating a drum. Here's a great thread on fotmd about it:
http://fotmd.com/forums/forum/general-mountain-dulcimer-or-music-discussions/4572/fiddlesticks
Shawn, try going to your profile page, and then hover over your name link at top right to view the drop-down menu, which should include "Groups I Belong To"- there you can see a list of the groups you are a member of. If you don't get that menu item, try refreshing the page. The Groups you are a member of does not show publicly on your profile.
Woot, I enjoyed all of those videos, thank you for making and posting them. 
It's funny how one can get some good deeper tones when the 'thumb-side' bone is held a lot more UP than the far bone....but it seems the result is always poor when the thumb-side bone is held a lot lower than the other bone.
I couldn't understand a lot of your words in the videos though, because your voice was too soft and low. Can you tell me more about those very dark and flat ones you were demonstrating?
P.S. it was nice to see you!
The holiday season is fast approaching! Here's a timely reminder with a link to some common holiday songs that are copyrighted or public domain: common-christmas-carols-are-they-copyrighted-or-public-domain
Also, try 1 up, 1 down, like Cuffy does here:
Wow, i'm so happy we have a little group of us now here having fun learning to play!
Helen, though the grooves help keep the bones from sliding out of your hand slowing while playing, I think as yuo get better you may find you don't need them. The advantage of not having grooves is that you can more easily change the positions of the bones experimentally, and you will find that this changes the tone and volume more than anything else- more than the type of wood even. I have several different types of wood bones, and any type I can make louder or softer, crisper and ringy or dull and mellow- simply by changing their position in my hands. Try experimenting a lot with that.
Yay!
Sheryl- haha you got me on that one. ;D
One would have to used UNWAXED floss, and any filament or hair would need to be rosined up I think.
I always get my biggest callus right at the tip of my longest middle finger. I laugh because when I recently got into my bones playing frenzy, I actually got a small callus started on the side of one of my fingers where the bones rub against it.
I would think she could test out the switch before actually buying a left handed dulcimer by flipping the dulcimer around and just going through the motions of making chords and strumming in her opposite hands...without paying attention to any 'wrong' sounds that result in the test. The question would be if she can make and hold down chords with her hand that has tremors. One other thing to keep in mind is that it's a little harder to resell a lefthanded dulcimer than a normal one.
I would think a large flexible pick made from cutting a big triangle out of a stiff plastic deli container- try the side, the bottom, and the lid for different stiffnesses.
I know our wonderful FOTMD member Lexie might be able to give some excellent advice here- i hope she jumps in! 
Thanks so much, Tumbleweed. :)
Wout said:
"My ten years old son just hides my bones, but I have a rather large collection."
That reminds of the joke: "Our parents moved around a lot when we were growing up. But we always found them." lolol
Notice how Happy Birthday doesn't even have a "B part"? ...'cause the candles are melting and so is the ice cream, so hurry it up! 
My upstairs office is directly above Brian's downstairs office. For bones practice, I'm supposed to go in the other upstairs room to cut down on the racket...oops I mean rattle. And 10pm is the bones curfew, which I think is quite reasonable. lolol
Hey I'm just happy to have other bones nuts to talk to!
Hmm...wondering if you could tune your bass and melody strings down a bit to C (middle string up to C), and then use a pencil or dowel to make barre chords across all your strings, and just play the melody if the songs are following a familiar structure, or else find your three I IV V main barre chords that match the tune's key. Might not take long to figure out the key, and by knowing your zero fret is C, you can find the tonic barr chord right away and you're in business. This could work fine especially since you have the 1.5 and 6.5 frets. It'd be less to think about, no chord fingerings to keep remembering and switching, and might work well for that unusual situation, surrounded by key-changing guitars all night.
Another option is to tune to CGc and do the same, making barre chords after you locate the tonic location for each tune they play. Doing from the home base of C would be easier to calculate on the fly than starting in D on the open strings.
Life-altering game changer in all my music playing, on any instrument, has been two pronged
...and for me they've gone hand in hand:
-discovery of dronal tones and older intervals and dissonances...and how they can move me to my soul.
-embracing rhythm/beats/percussion as an equally important aspect (if not most important) as notes or melody in my music making.
Bob, you and your son are totally rockin! 
Yayyy...we both met the challenge! 
Sheryl, we did about six takes for this video. This one was the last take, and the only one where I couldn't resist putting in that final 'last word' click 'cause the silence was deafening... which made us both laugh. 
Tom, the lucky break of Dom actually coming to our town inspired me to try yet again with the bones, and this time it began to 'take'. I love that we all inspire each other!
OK Bob, now you have to put yor money whar yer mouth is!:
-still rough, but I'm happy to be at this stage after two months of steady practice...lots of room to improve going forward!...
http://fotmd.com/strumelia/youtube/1797/bones-practice-with-fiddle-sept2015
Hey Bob, is this challenge still on? Are you going to post a recent video of yourself on spoons?
Wout I'd love to see a little quick video demo of you playing the sculptured bones you have...?
Tom, that's cool, a boxwood set. They must have a very clear tone, it being such a hard dense wood.
I've been practicing. This evening in fact I played for about an hour along to Brian practicing his fiddle. At this point I can keep semi-decent rhythm 'most' of the time, though I don't have much of any fancy moves yet. Because I'm no longer making a horrific random clatter, Brian now doesn't seem to mind my playing along sometimes as he practices. 
I'm pleased with my progress over the past two months, especially so because I had tried and failed on bones several times over the past few years.
I find my left hand is mostly just doing plain time stuff, while my right hand does the triplets and such. It seems to be veering to that naturally, and I'm letting myself just develop whatever feels good. I remember the advice about how you could take a dozen beginner bones students and have one teacher teach them all the same way...then if you look at them a year or so later every one of them has their own unique style.
I like my wooden bones most of the time, they are easier to handle...but I have some ox shin "Lark" thin bones that have that porcelain-like bone tone that Im trying to work with too. They seem to require a whole different hand position and technique, so that presents additional learning curve I'll have to work through.
For the wooden ones- my favorite right hand pair is a maple Whamdiddle brand pair in the 'short/narrow' size. Then in the right hand my fave pair so far is some Whamdiddle poplar in regular size. I suspect if we practice a lot we can probably make most bones sound pretty good no matter what the wood is or whether we split pairs up.
Is that the dulcimer in your avatar picture Robert?
That's truly a wonderful tale, Ann! :)
Tom's a member over there too, Sheryl! YOU could join there just because you like to listen, too, you know. ;)
I see, Sheryl- good sleuthing, my friend!
If you go on this site: http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/ you can play just about any of the videos there and have some good minstrel banjo tunes to play bones along with on your computer, along with a LOT more by Tim Twiss. :)
Worth repeating, several times.
David,
if playing DAd tab and in DAd tuning, you will be playing in the key of D. You can lower all your strings by one step and be in CGC tuning, and you can still play using the same DAd tab, but you'll be playing in the key of C.
Sheryl I have most of Tim Twiss's recordings, including his Grape Vine Twist cd- good stuff to practice with! Brian and I are actually playing Grape Vine Twist on fiddle/banjo lately. I have almost every minstrel era recording I can get hold of. I'm curious as to how you came to get Tim's cd- do you play minstrel banjo?
Tom- what are your fave minstrel banjo cds to practice bones with? I like the Joe Ayers, Bob Flesher, and the Camptown Shakers stuff particularly.
Cool- so Wout you are practicing to old English or Irish tunes?
Sheryl to an old country song?
When I'm practicing alone, I'm playing to Civil War era minstrel tunes and songs on cds. Here's an example of stuff i play to: https://youtu.be/VI-Ukj7c78E?list=PLSMm3dUxYUnV5epZOGii-FCbDrPdVQsFU
Or I practice just with no music, practicing very basic rhythms over and over. When I play to Brian's live fiddling, he's doing American oldtime tunes at various speeds.
Then you'd need to make an actual photo album so one can see all the images side by side... either here in your profile page Photo section, or online somewhere in a photo hosting site.
