Forum Activity for @dusty

Hey @notsothoreau, I agree with what Richard has said.  Initially follow whatever recommendations the luthier has for your instrument.  But you should also experiment a little to discover your own preferences.  You may find that you want one or more strings a little heavier or lighter than what the luthier suggested.  And you may find that different dulcimers respond differently to different string gauges.  Learn what you prefer for each of your dulcimers and then you can buy single strings in bulk.

As Richard says, in general, nickel-wound strings have a brighter sound and bronze-wound strings have a mellower sound.  I much prefer bronze-wound strings, but that is a matter of personal preference.  I also use so-called "squeekless" strings for my bass strings. They reduce the sound of your fingers sliding up and down.  If you play in a drone style and don't fret the bass string, that is obviously not an issue for you.  And some people don't like some of the squeekless strings because those that are coated with a plastic to fill in the grooves supposedly have a muted sound (something my ears don't hear).

You might also want to make use of the Strothers String Gauge Calculator .  You enter in the VSL (vibrating string length, or the distance between the nut and the bridge) and the note you want the open string to play.  The calculator will then estimate a good string gauge to use.  Note that the calculator errs on the light side, so feel free to try out stings one or two notches heavier than indicated.

Just think of this as one area you can explore to help develop your own preferences and thereby, your own sound.

Wow!  This stuff's really good and really interesting.  I like Jeff's percussive style of playing the dulcimer.

I don't want to start a big debate here, but how could shortening the VSL not affect the volume?  Pluck an open string. Now fret it at the octave. You will clearly see that the longer string has a lot more volume than the shorter one.  Or if you think your finger (or noter) on the fretboard is what dampened the sound, fret a string at the first fret and pluck it. Then fret it at the 12th fret. Which is louder?

And even more than volume, shorter strings have less sustain.  On a well-made dulcimer such as the McSpadden you might not notice that if you play down near the nut and use a lot of open strings, but in the second octave it will be much more noticeable.

I am not saying any of this to dissuade people from getting dulcimers with shorter scale length, for my current go-to dulcimer has a mere 25" scale length.  It is a beautiful sounding instrument, and I made that choice for the same reason Susie did: the ease of playing chords.  But there seems to me no doubt that you sacrifice some volume and sustain as you move to shorter VSLs.

That's good thinking, @notsothoreau.  I always advise people to play for a year or more before indulging in what they think will be their dream dulcimer.  There are just so many variables (scale length, fretboard width, fretboard overlay, wood types, extra frets, bright tone vs mellow tone, internal pickup, and more) that until you play for a while and develop your preferences, you can't know what kind of dulcimer you will really want.  Get a decent, playable, and affordable dulcimer at first and give yourself some time to discover what options you would want on your dream dulcimer.  (Of course, if you're like many of us, you may find that you have several dream dulcimers!)

Here is the link: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/ .  I will also fix it in the original post.

FYI: The best way to create a hyperlink in a post is to use the hyperlink tool.  Just highlight the text that will have the link and click the hyperlink icon (the fifth icon from the right in the tool bar).  Then you paste the URL and can choose to have the link open in another window or this one (I always choose another window).

Linda, proposals for groups go to the site owner Strumelia and she discusses them with the Moderators.  I'm sure we'll talk about your idea.  I can tell you, though, that a lot of the groups get started with a fair amount of activity and then go dormant.  Most of the state-centered groups are really small and don't have much going on.  When I posted about a month ago in the California Group to publicize a dulcimer festival in Berkeley, I noticed that the last post was me a year ago announcing the same festival! No one had posted in a year!  The largest state group is Michigan with 60 members, but even there the last post was 2 years ago.  And some state groups are really small. Indiana, for example, only has 12 people.

I am of mixed sentiment on this. I can understand the desire for a central place to find people in a local area, but I also fear that too much content gets hidden in groups and now we have too many groups with too little going on.  I joined the California group for exactly the reason you explain, and yet it hasn't worked out too well.

I'm sure Strumelia will get back to you.

Peter, if it's possible to stop that, it would be a YouTube setting.  I'll poke around there and see if I can find anything. 

Does Vimeo do the same thing?

It's heartening to hear that some of you will be getting together even if the official event has been cancelled.  You can't keep a good dulcimer player down!

Hi Adrian,

Rick never had a website to my knowledge, but he's still around.  He moved recently, but he had a koa dulcimer for sale a few months ago, so he must still be making them.  He is a member here:  https://fotmd.com/rick-probst .  Try to contact him.  If he doesn't get back to you, send me a personal message and I'll contact him on your behalf. (I don't think it's my place to hand out his email.)

I'm pretty sure Rick is still making dulcimers, but not that many.  He's been making ukuleles and other instruments with a steadier market.  But luthiery was always a side gig for him anyway; he has a day job, so his production is limited.

Susie, Richard is describing the dimensions of the standard dulcimer that McSpadden has sold for years.  However, a couple of years ago they began making another one with a shorter VSL.  I think it's 26" instead of 28.5".  If you play noter/drone, the longer VSL is fine. But some people who play chords prefer a shorter VSL because it's easier to finger some chords (although you lose some sustain in the process).

Micarta is a synthetic material that is used in place of ebony or rosewood.  Since legal ebony is getting harder to find (and therefore more expensive) some guitars and other instruments are now made with micarta fretboards and bridges.  I've read that it is as hard as ebony, but I don't know what it feels like to play.  If you search the internet you'll find some high-end Martin guitars with micarta fretboards, so it must be pretty good.

One interesting note: since Micarta is synthetic, it can be colored.  Most of the time it is black so that it looks like Ebony (though it probably doesn't have wood grain). But theoretically, it could be any color. Imagine a dulcimer with a hot pink fretboard!

Dana,

There are several books of Celtic music for the dulcimer.  Mark Nelson, Lorinda Jones, Neal Hellman, and Linda Brockinton all have good books out, and I'm sure others do as well.  You might also look specifically for music by Turlough O'Carolan, for a lot of those harp tunes work very well on dulcimer, and again, there are books dedicated to O'Carolan tunes arranged for the dulcimer.  Shelley Stevens has one out as does Linda Brockinton.

I have a student who is concentrating on Celtic tunes, so I am helping her work through Neal Hellman's book, Celtic Tunes and Slow Airs for Mountain Dulcimer .  The book used to come with a CD, though newer editions give you access to the music online.  The music is really good; for most tunes there is an instrumental version of the arrangement in the book and another version with the dulcimer strumming chords and Janet Herman singing.  Beautiful stuff.  If you use Neal's book, be forewarned that he uses a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs. I tell my student to ignore all of that initially, to learn the melody first, and then slowly to add some of the hammers and pulls only when it makes sense to her.  The book has a nice mix of well-known tunes and others that are more esoteric.

On my website for River City Dulcimers I also have a "hidden" page of tab for Celtic tunes that are common in dulcimer circles.  Some of the tab is my own, some is found elsewhere on the web.  None is copyrighted.  Feel free to make use of it.  And if you want to work on tab that I wrote, I am happy to provide a video or audio demo. Just send me a note.

Happy picking!

Cool!  I just realized that since my local dulcimer group meets the fourth Saturday of every month, it will almost always be on Play Music on the Porch Day!  We're going to have to take our chairs outside and share with the neighborhood!

Supposedly builders and their instruments start to look alike.

Oh no, wait.  That's dogs and their owners. 

Very cool, Ken. Nice job.

Patricia and Wayne are the coolest kids in school! 

Hi  @fordferguson . I don't have any personal experience with Black Mountain Dulcimers, so I can't offer the kind of information you seek.  But let me point out that we have a whole Forum discussion devoted to specific instruments and luthiers .  That might be a better place to pose that question rather than this discussion where people share stories of their first dulcimer.

Gale, for the record, Robin has a lot more experience with this stuff than I do and you should take his advice over mine in a heartbeat.  He plays gigs far more regularly than I and has also created phenomenal recordings.  I trust his recommendations wholeheartedly.

I can only share what I have gone through.  Over the last 5 or 6 years I bought several cheap and one rather expensive ($120) external pickups hoping to be able to amplify one or more dulcimers.  I gave or threw the cheap ones away and never use the more expensive one (which I would gladly sell for a hugely discounted price so long as the buyer does not blame me for the disappointing sound).  I also bought and later gave away a small, cheap amplifier.  I was never able to achieve anything close to acceptable sound quality.  I consider all that wasted money and time.  If you add up the external pickups and cheap amp that I bought, together they would represent almost the total cost of an SM 57 and a small, portable, Roland amp.

If you just want a quick and cheap way to amplify your sound for an upcoming gig, there are indeed options available. But you might want to think more long-term about a permanent way to create a satisfying amplified sound. 

Gale, as Ken demonstrates, there are some very affordable options out there.  My advice if you want to be able to amplify several instruments would be to get a microphone rather than an external pickup.  The industry stand-by is the Sure SM-57.  If you look online you can find deals where you get the mic, a chord, and a mic stand for around $100. I made that purchase a few years ago and then more recently bought the Sure SM-58, which is basically the same mic but for vocals.  And I'm sure there are less expensive mics out there that would also do the job.

I just think that whatever you spend, a good microphone represents a better-sounding and more versatile option than an external pickup.  I have never been satisfied with the few external pickups I've tried.

But you might also pose this question in the Technology/Software/Amplifying Group here at FOTMD.  Some people have a great deal more experience than I with amplifying instruments.

The most common keys in folk or old timey or bluegrass music are C, D, G, and A.  You should be prepared to play in those keys in any multi-instrument jam.  And many songs have a specific tuning that they are always played in.  St. Anne's Reel is always in D, Billy in the Lowground is always in C, Red-Haired Boy is always in A, and so forth. I try to practice songs in their common key so that I am always ready to play with others.

How to get into those keys?  I can bring a single dulcimer to a jam.  Tuned DAA or DAd, you can obviously play in D. With a capo at the third fret you're in G and at the fourth fret you're in A. Then you can tune down to CGG or CGc to play in C. 

There are other ways of getting those keys (like tuning DGd for G), and if you have any extra frets playing in other keys gets much easier, but I find the capo is all I need to get the four most common tunings.

But the most important advice I can give is to remember that when you play with others, your job is to blend in, not stand out.  If you don't know the song very well, just play quietly using a minimal number of notes. Little by little you'll learn more of the repertoire.  But you should always listen more than you play. 

And it can't hurt to take the lead on one or two tunes.  Don't be afraid to just say "How about Goin' to Boston in the key of D?" and then start playing?  Others will follow along, and if you show them patience as they learn one of your tunes, they will likely return the favor.

Congratulations on your new (31-year-old) baby!

@kb9jlo , if you just want some tab for Christmas songs, feel free to use the four or five I arranged recently for my local dulcimer group.  They are all in DAd and only include tunes in the public domain.  You can find them here .

Since Frosty the Snowman is under copyright, you won't find free dulcimer tab online.  Maybe someone has it in a book of tab.  But beware that whether you tune DAd or DAA, you will need the 6+ fret on an A string to get a G# in the B part of the song.  (It's the "put" in "When they put it on his head.")

Well sorry about that; I totally misunderstood your question. 

If you just want to use tablature, then you tune to whatever tuning the tablature is for. 

No tuning is better for singing than any other.  Some keys might be easier to sing in than others, but that depends on the song and your voice.  There is one song that I can only sing in G or A, so I play it in G or A when I sing. But another member of my dulcimer group likes to sing the same song in D, so when she does, I play it in D.  And I do all that out of the same tuning (DAd), sometimes using a capo. 

Hi  @kb9jlo.

If you simply "want to strum and sing" then your question is not so much about tuning as it is determining what chords to play.  Because the dulcimer is a diatonic instrument, every tuning will have some limitations in the sense that some chords may not be possible. For example, in either a DAA or DAd tuning, you will never be able to play an F chord since there is no F natural on the fretboard.

First, I would suggest finding a chord chart.  On the Tablature page at Everything Dulcimer , you can find chord charts for DAA and DAd tunings.  In whichever tuning you choose, I would start out learning the positions for the main major chords in the key of D: D, G, and A, as well as their relative minors: Bm, Em, and F#m.   You will be able to accompany yourself singing most songs in the key of D with those chords.

Second, find the chords for a particular song you want to learn.  There is tons of this stuff online because so many of us strum guitars.  If you just Google "Frosty the Snowman chords" you will find several examples, including this one .  But notice that the chords in that arrangement are not in the key of D; they are in the key of C.  You might get lucky and occasionally find chords in the key of D, but you will want to learn how to transpose from one key to another.

Third, if you can count to 8 and know the alphabet from A to G, then you can transpose.  Rather than explain all that here, let me offer you this transposition chart for the most common keys:

To use this chart, find the chord that is indicated on the lyrics sheet and locate the comparable chord in the key you want.  For example, when the lyrics sheet for "Frosty" indicates a C, you play a D.  When it indicates an F, you play a G. When it indicates an Am, you play a Bm.  And so forth.

This system will work so long as you can sing in the key of D. Depending on where the melody lies, that will be possible for some tunes and impossible for others.  If the melody is too high or low for you, you will have to find a key that works. When you do, you can use this same chart to find the right chords to play.  With a dulcimer in DAd or DAA tuning, you can find the right chords to play for the keys of D, G, and A, but other keys will be harder.  That is when your initial question about tuning comes into play. Instead of DAd or DAA, you might tune CGc or CGG.  The same chord chart you used before will still work, but when you use the fingering for a D chord, you will be playing a C chord.  The transposition chart above will again help you figure that out.  Similarly, you could tune EAe or EAA and play in the key of E.

That should be enough to get you started.  Tune in next week for a lesson on using the capo!

And thank you, Marc, for that article.  I hope you don't kind that I downloaded a pdf copy for my own purposes.  I also greatly enjoyed your more recent DPN article on "Partons la mer est belle." 

Thanks, Lois, for your work in helping us find this hidden material.  Much obliged! 

 Lois, I've been playing with the Internet Archive site, but I seem to only find information about when copies were made of the Dulcimer Sessions site. I can't find any actual pages.  I'll keep trying and let you know if I'm successful.

Lois, once upon a time it was http://www.dulcimersessions.com/ .

 Thanks for the link, Ken. I was looking for this a while back and couldn't find it.

Back in July I sent an email to Lois Hornbostel asing about this issue and suggesting that if Mel Bay was no longer willing to host the Dulcimer Sessions material we could find another site to do so.  Just today I received this brief reply: "I'm working on it."

Let's hope she succeeds.

Robin, it's a skill, isn't it, to be able to hear the essence of a melody without all the clutter? And fiddles add a lot of clutter, that's for sure.  I sometimes examine several examples of sheet music for a tune I'm working on.  By looking at what they all have in common, you can sometimes isolate the core of a tune. Sometimes when I hear a fiddle tune I feel like the Austrian Emperor in the film Amadeus, who tells Mozart that his music has "too many notes."

Maybe you can lend me Mark for 15 or 20 minutes.  A guitar accompaniment to my flatpicking version of "Pig Ankle Rag" would help out a lot (and maybe hide some of the imprecision in my picking). If I knew how to do even basic home recordings I would record my own guitar rhythm track, but I have no idea how to do that.  Poor, poor ignorant me.

This is a good topic for conversation, Robin.  Thanks for posting.  I may indeed have multiple responses.

There are lots of tunes that I would love to play but don't really "hear" yet on my dulcimer.  But there are also a couple I've been working on a really long time. I've been practicing "Pig Ankle Rag" for a few years now.  It took a while just to figure out all the notes for both the A and B parts.  Then it took a while to figure out the syncopated rhythms. But I've been playing the tune for a long time, just working on getting it smoother and cleaner.  Someday I hope to post a version that I'm happy with.  But playing the song is also just a great flatpicking workout, so even if I never get the tune ready for prime time, I know my technique is improving as I keep working on it.  My pinky in particular has been strengthened immensely by trying to play the tune.

Marg, most reputable luthiers will refund your money upon return of a dulcimer if you are not happy with it. You might be responsible for the shipping costs, though.  The same is probably true of music stores, although if you played the instrument before buying it they might be less than enthusiastic about the return.  As for friends, well, I think you have to determine that on a case-by-case basis.

But I also think some responsibility rests with the buyer.  If there is something truly wrong with a dulcimer, such as the intonation for example, you have every right to return it. However, if, for example, you buy a baritone dulcimer and just decide you don't like the lower register and want a standard dulcimer instead, well, I personally don't think the luthier or store should be responsible for your indecision.

Marg, I don't know how to remove a fret, so I can't help you there.  However, the lack of knowledge has never discouraged me from speaking up!     

My advice is to be patient and not rush into altering your dulcimer in this way.

As others have explained, it would be easy to harm your freboard when removing a fret, and you certainly don't want to do that.  

Skip might be right that if you keep playing and consciously think about the small space available for the 9th fret, your technique will improve and this problem may cease to exist. 

And if you keep playing for a while, you might find uses for the 8-1/2 fret as you get more used to it. 

For the three reasons above, I suggest waiting a while before making a final decision to remove a fret. You can always do it later, but in 6 months or so you might find it unnecessary or even undesireable.

You might also use this as an excuse to get another dulcimer!

"All music is folk music.  I ain't never heard a horse sing a song."

-- Louis Armstrong (. . . or maybe Leadbelly . . . or Big Bill Broonzy . . .)

Some of mine have names: Rosa, Lucinda, Mr. Salty.  One or two remain nameless.  

Mr. Salty got his name when I was playing for my kid's 1st grade class and someone said it looked like a "peanut guitar."  Indeed, the hourglass shape does resemble the shape of a peanut and the lacewood resembles the texture of a peanut shell.

I'm sorry to hear that.    But thanks for passing on the news.

Dana, if you only change the tuning one note in either direction, you probably don't need any kind of bridge compensation.

I like those lower tunings for fingerpicking, but I also like higher tunings for flatpicking.   I would encourage you to play with your Ginger tuned to G and explore it for the different tone you get rather than trying to turn it into a standard dulcimer. And if you play with someone on a baritone dulcimer, the two of you will sound great because you'll both be tuned to the same key but one octave apart.  Yummy stuff!

Dana, my previous post didn't really explain what a key is, and maybe that's what your initial question is.

Most songs center around a single note, a key tone (often referred to as the "tonic").  You can think of that as the home base of the song.  Oh the song will meander to other notes, but it will always come back to that home base. But you can also play that song with a different key tone or a different home base.  The meandering will move to different notes, but they will maintain the same relationships to each other and to the key tone.  Think of that home base as the key.  If you play a song with your home base on one note and I play the same song with a home base on a different note, we will sound OK individually, but we will clash when we play together. Each key comes with a set of notes that are likely to be used in that song and a set of chords that are likely to be used to accompany those notes.

When you use DAd tab to play while you are tuned GDg, it works because the relationships between the notes are the same.  However, you will not actually be playing in the key of D (with D as your home base or key tone); you will be playing in the key of G (with G as your home base or key tone).  So you will clash with dulcimers playing that same tab tuned DAd.

I hope that helps. If you want more, we should probably move to the Music Theory Group and start looking at the Circle of Fifths and other fun stuff that scares people unnecessarily.

Dana, if you tune your Ginger to GDg, you can play everything you currently do in DAd.  You will sound great. You will be in a higher register and a different key.  Everything will be wonderful and you'll have fun. You can also tune to AEa and be in an even higher register.  

Unless you start to play with other dulcimers tuned DAd, that is, for then you will not be in the same key.  There are ways to play in G out of a DAd tuning and in D out of a GDg tuning, but that requires some more understanding of keys and the fretboard.

If you tune a Ginger to DAd you probably will need different gauge strings. McSpadden surely has recommendations for string gauges for a DAd Ginger and you can also use the Strothers String Gauge calculator , inputting the VSL and the desired tuning.  That calculator errs on the light side, so feel free to use strings slightly heavier than what it indicates.

When you buy a Ginger from McSpadden, they use a slightly different bridge for DAd or GDg tunings.  Can you switch tunings without a compensated bridge?  Yes, and you might find it plays perfectly well. If you have a sensitive ear, however, you might find the intonation slightly off.  If you want to tune your Ginger to DAd, then try it and see how it sounds.  If you notice an intonation problem, you will want to get a compensated bridge.

But you already have dulcimers tuned DAd.  Why not keep this one tuned GDg or AEa so that you can play in those keys and the higher register?  I think you'll find it a refreshing change.