Forum Activity for @dusty

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.

Ann, I have to agree with Ken that if a given string only buzzes sometimes, then the problem is probably not the string gauge. 

You might ask for help with fingerpicking technique in the Fingerpicking Group here at FOTMD.

Yes, Rob, Red-Haired Boy and Salt Creek are usually played in A in bluegrass circles, and in A, the note in question would be a G.  You are correct.  If you play in D, it is a C, though.  If you tune AEa, you will get that note on the 1-1/2 fret of the middle string, just as you get the C note there when you play it in D.  The dulcimer players I've seen who play Red-Haired Boy in A capo at the fourth fret, in which case they get the note on the middle string with the 6-1/2 fret. (If you play Salt Creek in A tuned DAA or DAd, there is another note at the end of the first line that you can't get, but you might be able to get Red-Haired Boy in A out of a D tuning.  I think Gary Gallier has some tab for that in what he calls his "cross-key" method.)  

But the point is that it the melody requires a note you can't find easily on a diatonic fretboard.  Can you play either of those tunes with no extra frets?  I'd be interested to hear it.  As I said, Red-Haired Boy might be possible but not Salt Creek.

I've never heard that Salt Creek is copyrighted and can point to plenty of resources that refer to Salt Creek as traditional.  It was known as Salt River until Bill Monroe recorded it as Salt Creek, but it's the same tune.  According to the Library of Congress , Monroe was taught the tune by his banjo player Bill Keith, who had learned it from a West Virginia banjo player named Don Stover.

Don, a while back I wrote a short explanatory piece called " What are extra frets and do I need any? "  You might check it out.

The simple answer to why you would use an extra fret is to get the note produced there.  For example, there is no F natural on a diatonic dulcimer tuned DAA or DAd.  So if a song has that note, you have to skip it, bend a string, or use an extra fret.  If the song is modal you can retune to get an F natural, but not all music is modal, and as Lois says, "accidentals happen."  An "accidental" is simply a note that is not in the scale.  But not all songs are limited to the 7 notes of a diatonic scale.  I am learning a French Canadian tune right now called "La Galope de la Balbaie" that necessitates the use of the 1-1/2 and 6-1/2 frets on the middle (A) string. 

The original reason, supposedly, for the 6-1/2 fret was to be able to play songs in the ionian mode out of a mixolydian tuning. Those are the two most common modes, so the extra fret obviated the need to retune.  And the 1-1/2 fret offers other possibilities.  As Jan suggests, it makes playing a C chord easy to do down by the nut since the 1-1/2 fret on the middle string gives you a C natural (also found on fret 6 of a D string). When I play the B part of Old Joe Clark I play a C chord, which all guitarists and mandolin players do as well, whereas dulcimer players are unable to do that and play a much less dramatic A chord.  That C chord also shows up in other traditional fiddle tunes such as Red-Haired Boy and Salt Creek. And as Jan explains, having an easy C chord near the nut allows you to play chords in the key of G very easily.

I also use the 1-1/2 fret to play the blues.  The most important "blue note" is the lowered third, which is an F natural in the key of D.  But importantly, that note gains its power from the fact that it is played over the major chord, so you still need an F# to play the blues. In other words, re-tuning won't help. But the 1-1/2 fret gives you the lowered third (F) on the melody string and the lowered 7th (C) on the middle string.  And since most pop, blues, and jazz melodies us the minor pentatonic scale, that comes easily with a 1-1/2 fret.  Starting on the bass string play 0, 1-1/2, 3 then on the middle 0, 1-1/2, 3, and you have your minor pentatonic scale to play over the major chords of a pop, blues, or jazz song.

My sense is that if you have to ask why anyone would want extra frets, you probably don't need them.  The 6-1/2 is pretty standard these days, so if you play with a dulcimer group, it will likely be expected that you have one.  Unless you specifically want to play non-diatonic music for which the dulcimer was never intended, you do not need a 1-1/2 fret.  Having said that, I love mine and won't give it up!

Marg, that little dulcimer was made by FOTMD member  Peter W . You might contact him if you have any questions.  Notice that in addition to the swivel possum board, he has a small box situated directly under the fretboard.  The purposes of a box are to 1) amplify the sound, and 2) improve the tone.  To achieve the second, cardboard won't do, which is why I suggested cedar cigar boxes.

Yes, you want at least one sound hole. Since your fretboard is already made and the dulcimer fretboard sits on top of the box (instead of recessed into it like a guitar), your project is much easier than most.

Check out FOTMD Randy Adams playing a fretless cigar box dulcimer .  You can see how he set up the soundholes and how he arranged the two boxes underneath his fretboard.  Randy used two cigar boxes, but check out this Tiny Guitars version with three (and frets, too, along with a pickup).

Leo, the issue you are dealing with now is simply a question of where to post a comment or question on a given topic. I wish more people here would think about that instead of just posting in whatever forum or group they find first.

Each of the last few years someone sent out email notifications about the Kindred Gathering, and I think there were announcements here and at ED.  For some reason none of that communication happened this year.

If you want to post somewhere that you are going and wondering who else may attend, I would suggest either the General Mountain Music Forum or the Group pages for the California Group and the Northwest Players Group.  However, I will warn you that the Groups have been a little inactive over the last few months. Maybe everyone's off at festivals.

Leo, just to follow up on Strumelia's explanation, the Activity Feed is not a space unto itself. It it just a list with hyperlinks to what's been going on anywhere on the site (not just Groups, but the Forum, Events, Videos, etc.) so that people can join hot conversations here or there.  When I stop by FOTMD, the first thing I do is check the Activity Feed on the main page (not the one on my home page which only lists MY activity) so that I can see what's new.  As your last comment did, when you post somewhere it will show up on the Activity Feed.

If you want to create a listing for a new dulcimer festival such as the Harvest Festival of Dulcimers or the Kindred Gathering, start on your own page, click "Events," choose "Festivals" and then click "+" to add a new festival. When you do that, the activity feed will show that "Leo Kretzner has created a new event" and other people can click on that to see what you've been up to.  Once you have a festival listed once, it might be easier the next year to edit it by putting in the new dates, new guest artists, etc., rather than starting a whole new listing.  When you do that the Activity Feed will say "Leo Kretzner has updated an Event."

If any of this seems confusing, keep in mind that you asked your question in the right place, so you must know what you're doing, right?

Marg, if the fretboard is long holds the bridge and the nut, then it would be easy to take it off the cardboard and find some nice cedar cigar boxes.  Glue them together and glue the fretboard on top.  It should sound better than the cardboard.  But if the bridge is separate and not actually attached to the fretboard, then you have to know what you're doing to match the vibrating string length with the fret spacing.

Any cigar boxes will do, but those made of cedar will sound much better.

Sweet story, Dana. The animals howls when I play.  Nothing peaceful about it, I guess. I've been meaning to learn Larry's wonderful tune.

My monthly dulcimer group will be meeting on August 26, so I'll definitely be playing, though we'll be in a music shop, not a porch.

Hey @mascis, if you can drive to Blue Lion, you can drive to the Redwood Dulcimer Day in Santa Cruz in August. Perhaps I'll see you and your Ledford there!  I'd love to see this special dulcimer.

Dulcinina, about 5 years ago I started a dulcimer group from scratch. I had perhaps three or four email addresses that I collected at a dulcimer festival about three hours from where I lived. One of those original people agreed to host the event at her house.  Initially I recruited pretty heavily, looking through the member lists here and at Everything Dulcimer to find anyone within a few hours and invited them.  The first gathering we had perhaps 5 people, but we met every month and now the only times we've skipped a month has been when our meeting date was too close to a major holiday.

Towards the end of the first year I started a website to list tab for the songs we were playing and announce our meeting dates.  That website helped bring in a lot of people and I still get a new inquiry about every other month.  There are some tricks to building a website in order to get "hits" on search engines, so make sure you put the name of the town or at least a nearby city, the state you're in, the word "dulcimer" and any other obvious words on the home page of your website.

Eventually, a nearby music store heard about us and asked if we'd like to meet there instead. I thought people would prefer the privacy of a home, but moving to the store helped us get a lot more publicity, and we've been meeting there ever since.  We've had as many as 20 people show up (a lot for the west coast) but never less than 6.  For a while the music store was using the social site Meetup to announce our gatherings, and I'm sure we got some people that way, but we don't do that anymore.  I've thought about putting up flyers at other obvious spots, but we seem to have enough people so that kind of publicity hasn't been necessary.

One trick to keeping the group going is to make sure it appeals to people of all levels.  We begin our weekly gathering with a free beginners lesson. I think that's important if you want newbies to join.  Eventually people stop considering themselves beginners and skip that part, but it's good to keep it open. The second hour we devote to group play of our common tunes, a list that has been growing slowly.  Our third hour is a kind of song circle when people can play a song solo, call out a tune for group play, or just "pass" and sit and listen.  This third hour was created at the request of the beginners who wanted to hear what the more advanced players were playing, but it is a nice space for intermediate and advanced players to have an informal and friendly audience to work on new arrangements before they're fully ready for prime time. At the end we enjoy some finger food and friendly banter.  This organization, which evolved over time, has been key to keeping our gatherings interesting for people of different skill levels.

I personally try to use the heaviest gauge strings that sound OK on a particular instrument.  Sometimes it takes some experimentation to find out what that is.  Heavier strings sound less tinny rounder.  They might require heavier callouses, but I find the improved tone to be worth it. Also, if you like to bend strings, you have more control with heavier strings since there is more resistance.  Also, because heavier strings are louder, you can play more delicately and still get decent volume, so they allow a greater dynamic range.

It never occurred to me to swap out wound strings for plain steel. Maybe I'll give that a try.

That looks like fun! 

I am not even sure the design in question is usually considered a "bleeding" or "weeping" heart, both of which imply loss and sadness.  What about a "trailing" heart?  I have definitely heard that term used.  I think Ron Ewing refers to trailing hearts as a soundhole option for his dulcimers.  It might even be a reference to a rosary vine, which is sometimes called a string of hearts or trailing hearts plant.

Of course, it is very likely that there is no one stable meaning to a single image, but that different luthiers think it means different things or even nothing at all but just looks cool.

Bob, your dulcimers are indeed beautiful.  I like that heart inlay in the end block.  And I've always been in awe of the delicate work evidenced in nice rosette. How pretty!

This is a cool discussion topic in which I participated back when I was a newbie, could barely play a few tunes, and only had one dulcimer. Ah, those simple days of yore!  I still have that first dulcimer, by the way.

My most recent purchase is a McCafferty dulcimer.  The inlay on the fretboard centers on the fifth fret with a wolf silhouetted against a full moon. And then for position markers (on frets 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12) there are little stars positioned in such a way as to appear random but still mark the appropriate frets.  The four soundholes are quarter moons, with one little star, as you see in this picture.  My daughter insists that only one name is appropriate for this dulcimer: Luna.  So be it.

marg, here is Pristine2's homepage here at FOTMD.  He clearly has not been active recently.

As you can see from the ED discussion, even the explanations for the hearts differ among different luthiers, and those explanations may indeed be particular to those individuals rather than representing some broad folk tradition.  My uncle makes autoharps with a dog footprint as the soundhole. Why?  Because the autoharp is man's best friend?  Because music has left its imprint on his soul?  No. Because he likes dogs.  According to Ralph Lee Smith, Homer Ledford began making dulcimers with diamond-shaped soundholes for two reasons: to be different than other luthiers who were using hearts, and because they were easier to cut with a simple chisel.  Practical, rather than symbolic reasons.  But he received so many requests for hearts that he went back to making hearts instead (see Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions , 2nd edition, page 116).

It would be nice to find some interesting symbolic meaning to the trailing hearts, but it might be that we have to make something up.  If that's the case, don't worry; we have enough "tall tale tellers" at FOTMD!