"Q: What is the difference between a dulcimer and a fish?
A: You can tune a dulcimer but you can't tuna fish."
Sorry, but this doesn't make sense as you "can tuna fish". As in:
Q: What's the difference between a bagpipe and a fish?
A: You can tuna fish.
Implying of course that bagpipes are always out of tune.
Look on youtube - there are loads of videos of people playing didges while simultaneously playing other instruments. It looked to me fairly easy to make a stand to hold the didge in a comfortable position so you can just press your mouth to it when you want to play.
Hardest part of course is learning to play. It's easy enough to make it sound, and put rhythm into it too. But conquering the circular breathing is a nightmare. I've got to say I failed !
Unfortunately I left my copy at home after I went off to university and in the fulness of time they binned it along with everything else I'd left there. Including the stave dulcimer. At least I took my proper dulcimer with me...
Well i've been wondering what the first tune I ever played was and now you've answered it for me. I watched that TV series and made myself a `stave' dulcimer just like they said. And bought the book. Now you've jogged my memory i remember playing Au Claire de Lune from it. So that's it.
John Henry said:
Even tho' it was a very long time ago I have no trouble 'naming that tune'. It was "AU CLAIR DE LUNE" ! How can I be so precise ? 'Cos I'm looking at the book I learnt it from, "Make and Play the Dulcimer" by John Pearse (copyright 1970) Ignoring the 'Make' content, I rate the shortish 'Play' section of that book as one of the best absolute beginner scripts I have ever come across, simple and uncluttered, with some very useful illustrations. Must admit to some bias here tho', the book has sections on using a 'noter', and 'feathering' four ways, no less , including 'beating' (as you see, I have been playing on the 'dark side' for a very long time, lol) The availability of the book coincided with a weekly TV series "How To Make and Play The Dulcimer", and the emergence of a Folk/Rock Group named 'SteelEye Span', which included one 'Tim Hart', who sometimes played ..........Mountain Dulcimer !
JohnH
79 - FOTMD is a really great site. Well done you.
Why would this be any different to playing noter drone on a 3 stringer ? In any case you get very little volume advantage from double strings. Just more tuning to do all the time !
Dusty, I certainly have changed strings in the last 40 years - last time was about 20 years ago and they're sounding fine, though the ones I kept as spares have long since crumbled to dust.
Dusty Turtle said:
John, I'm not sure there is a reason to change that setup. In the first response above I described the standard way dulcimers are strung, but I don't know if there is a reason for that other than the benefits of standardization.
However, if you haven't changed strings in 40 years, I would definitely suggest doing so.
After reading all the above I thought I'd better get my old MD out and check my own stringing layout. Phew...turns out my stings wind on over the top of the pegs like they're supposed to. Unfortunately, the stringing pattern is even odder than the one here. On the nearside of the dulcimer, tuner nearest the nut is the bass string, the tuner furthest from the nut is the middle string. On the farside of the dulcimer the tuner nearest the nut is for the first melody string, the tuner furthest from the nut is the second melody string. In my defense all the strings have nice straight runs to their tuners !
At least I've got the tuners fitted the right way round.
It's been strung this way for over 40 years now so I'm not about to change it !
I used to sing in a choir and still do some harmony singing Christmas times. In my experience the melody is generally the soprano line in modern arrangements ( though in older `West Gallery' arrangements the melody is often the tenor, so beware !), the alto is often written for the section of the choir who can't sing and so it has a very limited range of notes, the tenor is often a good strong harmony part while the bass gives roots to the chordal structure. It's not always like this though and the melody can actually be spread across the four parts so watch out for that. In the case of west Gallery - approximately 1700 through to about 1850 in England, the roles of the sopranos & tenors are often, though not always reversed, so the tenors are the melody and the sopranos do a good strong harmony. Presumably this is because of the likely make-up of the choirs they were written for, with men being dominant at the time in public activities.
It looks to me like originally the bridge was further up the fretboard and someone has decided to move it backwards right to the end, then having to move all the fret positions to match. I can't imagine why anyone would go to all that trouble but if it sounds good now, maybe it wasn't so good before?
Does anyone actually ever use those frets way up above the tenth fret anyway? Most of us strum there anyway - well I do, you can tell by the wear on the fretboard surface - as the sound is less tinny than when you strum over the `strum hollow'.
That's a nicely worked scroll so the original builder can't have been lacking in skill...
Maybe I'm just not as funny as I think I am...
I was making an attempt at humour, Peter. But your onion flute does indeed sound very similar to a crumhorn. They had a brief (50 years or so I believe) period of popularity in the late 1500s I think. They are a fairly simple reed pipe - double oboe type reed in a wooden pipe with a windcap over the reed to protect it, the lower end of the pipe bent up presumably imitating a horn. Limited to a 9 note scale they have a deep for their size buzzing tone.
Just watched the video you put up - it sounds great, and also when you strum along on the dulcimer. You can hardly tell that you're not playing melody on the dulcimer as well. Is this why the crumhorn had such a short existence, because the onion flute could reproduce the sound with such little effort?
Presumably you could make up a wire `harmonica holder' type thing to have both hand free so you could play and kazoo at the same time?
I'd more or less abandoned the Mountain Dulcimer until I found FOTMD which brought me back into the fold enough to make me start making them again - a TMB and a Swedish Humle so far.
I have to say that FOTMD is the best `social media' site I've ever come across to do with music, so well done Strumelia for starting it off, and of course everyone else who's kept it going by contributing to the site.
If they sound fine leave them alone! I've only recently got back into playing my dulcimer, actually after finding FOTMD a few months ago. So I opened my dulcimer case and pulled her out after shutting her away over 20 years ago. Not only did it sound fine but it was still in tune! And I'm still playing it with those strings though the spares I had, which were shut away in the case with the dulcimer had all oxidised to dust. I guess there's something to be said for greasy fingers!
And what do they mean by `5 times bigger'? Length? Width? Volume? If it's the latter, then you've probably more than done it.
I've got to go with what Rick says here, though for me it wouldn't even have to be playable. Can't beat actually owning a piece of history.
Anything else - well if you know what you want, you either already own it, you can make it yourself, or you can pay someone else to knock it up. Don't be surprised though if it turns out to be a disapointment!
I don't have DAD really - just the one dulcimer I made in school in woodwork class about 42 years ago. Plus an almost completed Tennessee Music Box which I hope to finish this week.
There again I do have BAD quite badly - that's Bagpipe Acquisition Dissorder:
Breton veuze in D
Welsh pibau cyrn in D
Welsh pibau cyrn / Bulgarian gaida hybrid in D
Replica German schafferpfeife in F
Medieval double chanter bagpipe in G
Swedish sackpipa in A
French cornemuse in G
Bulgarian gaida in D
Apart from the Bulgarian gaidas I made all the rest myself so not a huge dent in the family budget...
I use ABC notation all the time. It's a great way to store a lot of music scores and pass them on as they use very little memory, it all being just writing. There are a lot of freely available software options depending on your operating system. I used to use ABC2Win but when we upgraded to Windows XP it wouldn't work properly so I use ABC Navigator instead. Only downside of that one is that it doesn't include a beginners guide to writing ABC. For the uninitiated the ABC above for Little Liza Jane - you would highlight it, and copy the whole thing into an ABC file on your computer, then using your ABC program when you open it it transforms it into a nicely laid out score. The program will even play it back to you, including endless repeats and at whatever speed you want, which is great for learning new tunes. ABC Navigator uses a quite pleasant concertina-like sound.
On the whole I find it very easy to use and after a bit of practice to write tunes out in. So much so that if I was jotting a tune down in a notebook now I'd do it in ABC, then when I got home I'd type it into the program and it'd play it for me.
Brilliant. One downside is that it only works for a single melody line. So great for folk music, but not if you want a score that includes a harmony line. Another is that ABC written on one program might not be entirely compatible with another, so if you've downloaded a song, you might have to change it a bit to work on your program. Looking at Liza above, I can see in fact that it wouldn't play properly on ABC navigator - it wouldn't like the unfinished bars at the end of line one and 3. Easy to fix though.
Just do a search for ABC notation and you'll find useful `how to' guides.
It's right in front of you - why would you not look at it? Many other instruments of course you play reading from sheet music, so you can't look at your instrument. I've come across people who can't play their violins unless there's a music stand in front of them with the music on, but when you watch them most of the time they're not looking at it and even have their eyes closed - but take the music away and they can't play!
Also the dulcimer is mostly played to oneself while pianos etc are often being `performed' for others. Does it really matter, just do what you're comfortable doing.
It may be an unusual fret pattern for regular dulcimer players but it's not unknown elsewhere. The scheitholt depicted by Michael Praetorius in 1620 has the exact same pattern. And it's not farewell Old Joe Clark - the mixolydian scale starts on the 4th fret. So if you've gone for DAd tuning that'll give you the ionian scale in d, whereas DAG would give you mixolydian in d at the 4th fret. Guess you'd have to restring it with a thicker melody string for that though.
Here's our band with octave fiddle playing at a beer festival in Haverfordwest castle a couple of years ago with an itinerant djembe player we acquired at the gig. It was before we added a harp to the lineup and I'm afraid the fiddle is kind of drowned out a bit with all the background noise going on.
Not as much as you might think. We were always quite careful not to push the kids towards music too much in case it put them off! We did encourage them to learn an instrument at school - clarinet for Micky, trombone for Dan - all the rest they've done for themselves. Must have worked though as they've both got the bug and in fact Micky is studying music at University.
We do play in a band together though - `Estron' - specialising in Welsh traditional music. That's me and Danny on Welsh bagpipe, Micky on ukulele, a friend, Holly on octave fiddle (looks like a violin but plays an octave below one) and another, Jess, on harp. I guess we get together for a practice about once a month on average and do a few gigs on top of that.
As to the bass clarinet, I find them easier to play than a normal clarinet, but much harder to hold while you're doing it! Most orchestral types have them resting on the floor on a spike but Micky plays hers hanging from a sling round her neck and holding it more like a saxophone.
Leslie - I do miss playing the tuba. It was a battered old thing but I did enjoy playing with the brass band. It was actually a junior band, I got roped in after my daughter joined as I had to hang around anyway waiting to take her home again.
Which reminds me, Helen, I only mentioned my own instruments. I have 2 daughters, both at University now, but when they're home, the eldest, Micky, plays clarinet, bass clarinet, and ukulele while the youngest has a trombone, a set of bagpipes, two guitars and a cello.
First instrument I ever had was a stave dulcimer I made myself but no longer have. This was soon followed by an hourglass which I'm still playing 42 years after I made it. But since then I've wandered from the fold a bit.
I now have 8 sets of bagpipes from different lands, in different keys, all but one of which I made myself - these are my main instruments. I also play piano accordeon regularly, hornpipes, clarinets, a whole bunch of flutes including whistles, recorders, piccolos, Native American flutes, one in E and a NAF droneflute in G. And I used to play Eb Tuba in the local brass band but had to give it back to them after I stopped playing with them.
And now I've got a Tennessee Music Box and Swedish Humle.
