Forum Activity for @dusty

Gregg, I certainly urge you to do this, for I did the same thing about two years ago after the Redwood Dulcimer Day in Santa Cruz. I started with a list of 5 or 6 people in the Sacramento area, and that list has now grown to almost 40. We have met once a month for two years now, and we've never had fewer than six show up.

I do have three pieces of advice. First, I suggest removing your phone number from the announcement above. There are spambots that troll the internet for such personal information. If people "friend" you and then send you a personal message, you can share that kind of info privately.

Second, start a discussion in the California Dulcimer Dreamin' group here at FOTMD. Obviously, the folks there will be more likely to be interested than will other FOTMD members from around the country, and if you poke around the discussions there you might be able to target some folks yourself.

Third, if at all possible, start a website. I started one about 18 months ago for my Sacramento Group, which you can see at www.rivercitydulcimers.com . You can start it for free and then later decide if you want to "upgrade" to a paid account. In your case, you will want a home page that has all the key words like "dulcimer," "psaltery," "Los Angeles," "Southern California," "San Gabriel" and whatever else you can think of. That way a dulcimer or psaltery player who does an internet search will be able to find you. And add a page where people can contact you with their email address. I average about one interested person a month who wants to join (although often they initially inquire about getting lessons). That may not seem like a lot, but over the course of several months it adds up and helps make a fledgling group more viable.

I have other advice, too, about how to make your gatherings interesting for both beginners and advanced players, but you may have experience running such groups, so I'll shut up for the moment.

Finally, let me offer that I met you a few years back at the Harvest Festival (the year Aaron O'Rourke was there). I believe you and Leo were co-leaders of the jam circle that afternoon. Both of you did a great job helping new players gain the confidence to call out a song since you were there to bail them out if they got stuck and needed someone to lead. That experience also gave me a lot of confidence, for I learned that I already knew about half the songs that were played and I was able to just follow along and play chord backup for the rest. I never had the chance to thank you or Leo, but I really appreciate the knowledgeable but friendly way you guys ran that song circle.

I hope you manage to start a nice group. In addition to my group in Sacramento, there are regular dulcimer gatherings in Berkeley/Oakland and Santa Cruz. It would be nice to have a string of groups in Cali and perhaps we could entice some great players to come through and do a California tour, visiting each of our groups for a workshop or house concert.

Best of luck!

Charles, a guitar capo will not work on a mountain dulcimer since there is no neck involved.

I have both one of those brass clamp-on capos that Bryon points to and the more traditional capos such as those Ron Ewing invented and still sells for about $20 . The more expensive brass model does not actually work any better except for the fact that it is a little quicker, so if you are in multi-instrument jams where people switch from key to key really quickly, they can be helpful. But you can get pretty fast with the Ron Ewing design as well.

Patty, each in our own way, everyone here is saying the same thing, though it might be hard to see that at first.

Let's start with just the main three chords, I-IV-V, or in the key of D, the chords of D, G, and A. Each chord is made up of three notes: the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the major scale.

D chord: D-F#-A

G chord: G-B-D

A chord: A-C#-E

Within those three chords are all the notes of the D major scale: D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D.

So the basic idea is that when you play a melody note, you want to play a chord that has that note in it. You may note that (unless you play the autoharp) you do not want to change chords for every single note, so in general, you look at the notes in each measure and see which chord is going to cover the majority of them. Sometimes you will have a choice, and then you will want to rely on your ear. And there are some other basic prinicples. In general, songs end on the tonic, or key tone, meaning in this case D. And very often they will go to the V chord (in this case A) before resolving to that D.

Before you try to figure out the chords for more complicated songs that include minor chords and diminished chords and all that fancy stuff, start out with 3-chord songs. In fact I would bet 70 percent of folk tunes only have three chords. As I've said elsewhere, I encourage people to sing or whistle or hum the melody of songs they know well while they just strum chords until their fingers are used to strumming chords and, in your case, you are getting the hang out of guessing what chord to play.

And you can also do this without looking at music and without thinking about all those notes I mention above. As you play a melody on your dulcimer, stop on an important melody note. Whatever chord you play is going to have that note in it. One reason for learning those chord shapes is because you will know right away what your options are. But you can also do this by trial and error. While you play a melody note, try to find another note on another string that sounds good with it. Do that on the third string, and you're all set! You don't even have to worry about what chord that is! I did that for a long while, not really worrying about what chords I was playing but just trying different chord shapes on different parts of the fretboard until I found one that worked. Eventually I learned the fretboard better and can name those chords, but who cares? The important thing is find chords that sound good.

Thanks, Peter. That's a pretty tune.

I have two questions for you:

1) Why did you tab this in 3/8 time instead of 3/4 time? Were you just following the original score or is there some advantage to that time signature?

2) Would you mind if I shared this tab with my local dulcimer group in California? I think it would work as a nice study in basic chord shapes.

Julia, the Arranging Group here at FOTM D is the place to ask TablEdit questions. Join that group and start a discussion with the title representing the question. I've done that myself and gotten specific answers within a day.

Julia Poor said:

Does this group answer questions about TablEdit?

If so, I've been on Everything Dulcimer with someone who is having trouble with it, and I'll refer him here.

Julia

Laura and others, I didn't notice this discussion or I would have pointed this out earlier, but a while back I discussed with Strumelia and the other Moderators the possibility of a group devoted to the various tab software questions, and we decided to use the Arranging for Dulcimers Group . If you visit there you will see some other discussions where people (such as myself) ask Tabledit questions. In the future, try to use that group for this stuff so we can keep it all in one place. (I would move this discussion there but I don't seem to be able to do so.)

Thanks! And happy tablediting!

My first song was Rosin the Beau, which I learned from the Bing Futch video on YouTube . I became obsessed with the dulcimer about 4 months before actually buying one, and over those four months I watched that video so much that when I finally got my dulcimer, I pulled over to the side of the road, and played about half of that tune from memory. By the end of the day I had the rest of the tune as well. Oh, my playing wasn't that great, but it was a nice start!

Yeah, I agree about how smooth and effortless Robin's playing appears. Her superior technique makes even difficult songs seem approachable.

My favorite is still Circleville.

Sounds like you got quite the bargain there. Congratulations.

I personally have to know what a song sounds like before I can make any sense of tablature or music. In that sense, I learn by ear. But even better is watching someone play something. I can pick up a song much more easily if I can hear it and watch someone play it. In that sense, the visual and the aural go together.

But I would suggest that a lot of folks who think they cannot play by ear and yet use simple tablature to learn songs are in fact playing by ear. A lot of tab does not indicate how long you hold each note or where you pause in between phrases. You succeed nonetheless at playing songs correctly precisely because you know what the song is supposed to sound like and can play that even though the tab does not indicate all that stuff. In other words, you are indeed playing (in part at least) by ear.

I think a great way to learn your instrument is to put it on your lap and try to find the melodies to simple songs that you know really well. I bet you can pick out Mary Had a Little Lamb or This Land is Your Land or whatever. Start with kids songs not only because the melodies are usually simpler, but also because you know those really well. As you get better at "hearing" the difference between a note on the second fret and a note on the third fret, for example, you will get faster at picking out those tunes, and soon you'll be able to work on more complex tunes.

And if you work with chords, those simple songs only have two or three chords. And you know the chord will be one that contains the note you are playing for the melody. That generally means that you will only have two choices for any given melody note. I bet you can figure out which one sounds best.

Of course, more complicated music is . . . well . . . more complicated, but playing by ear is not something that is innate or genetic. It is something you learn. I can do it pretty well because I started playing the guitar at age 9 and did it mostly with no instruction, so I spent years of my life trying to figure out songs that I wanted to play. I wasn't always successful, and I am not always successful today either, but I have gotten better at it, and you can too!

We all have our dorky moments, Phil. As long as the harmonica tab is for the 10-hole diatonic harp, you should be able to use Tom's charts no matter what key the song is written in.

Phil since harmonica tab shows which holes to blow in or draw from, it doesn't matter what key the harmonica is in. You can use the very helpful charts Tom posted earlier to convert that harmonic tab to dulcimer tab.

On the other hand, there is plenty of dulcimer tab for that song already. Here is Steve Smith's arrangement in DAA and DAD from the Everything Dulcimer Tab Archive.

Phil, I find all music theory is made easier if you can look at a piano keyboard. From C to D is one whole tone, or two half tones. From C to C# is a half tone, and from C# to D is a half tone.

So if music is written in the key of C, then every note and every chord has to move up that same amount: one whole tone or two half tones. An F note becomes a G note. A G note becomes an A note. A B note becomes a C# note.

For a visual aid you can also use the Circle of Fifths instead of a piano keyboard.

All you need to know to transpose is the key the music is written in and the key you want to play it in. In this case, the big red C is at the very top, and the D is two steps in the clockwise direction. So for every note or chord in they key of C, you move two steps in the clockwise direction to get the corresponding note or chord in D. We see again, an F becomes a G, a G becomes an A, and so forth.

The basic idea is that the relationships among all the notes have to remain the same, so the interval between the original key and the new key will be the same as the interval between any note or chord in that original key and the corresponding note or chord in the new key.

This stuff is hard if you try to do it in your head, but if you can look at a piano keyboard or the Circle of Fifths, it is much easier.

phil said:

I think I under stand that. but the problem I have is how do you change something form the key of C to the Key D I seem to can't get a handle on how to do that.

Since I have ESP, it would not be appropriate for me to "guess."

That's remarkable. You have a really special dulcimer there.

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.

Ain't it the truth! Just a few years ago I was asking questions like would my fretboard get warped if I put on slightly heavier gauge strings. Now I'm an old timer tellin' the youguns you much tougher it was in my day.

Dan Goad said:

there ain't no "betters" around here. Some of us have just been playing around with them for a tad longer than you have. You'll be giving out advice before you know it.

Cute toes.

You are correct. That is not right.

The strings should feed over the top of the pins.

Additionally, the pin on the top right in the picture should be for the bass string. The pin on the top left in the picture should be for the middle string. The pin on the bottom left should be for the melody string furthest from you, and the pin on the bottom right should be for the melody string closest to you.

I suggest getting on new strings. But replace one at a time in case the bridge is moveable. Otherwise you'll have to post a question about how to position a bridge, and then we all have to learn physics together. (Actually, it's not that hard, but it does take a few minutes working with a tuner.)

My suggestion would be to change the way you think about the question itself. When folks sing in harmony, they are singing the notes of a chord. One of those notes is the melody part. So instead of thinking in terms of harmony parts, why not think in terms of melody and chord. If your wife is figuring out the chords that back up the melody, then all you have to do is find the right voicing for that chord on your dulcimer so that you are playing the melody note.

What I mean by that is best explained by an example. Let's say your melody note is the F# that is round on the second fret of your dulcimer tuned DAd, and the chord is a D. You might choose to play 0-0-2, for that gives you the melody note and two notes of harmony. But you might also choose 4-3-2, or 032, or 232. And those chords are D chords (or 2-note approximations of D chords) and you should play around with your arrangement and see which one sounds best.

Or if the melody note is the A on the fourth fret of your DAd dulcimer and the chord is a D, you might try 0-0-4, 2-3-4, 4-4-4, 6+-4-4, and so forth. Play around with those different chord voicings and you will find the harmony notes that you think sound best. And then maybe the second time through you could change chord voicings for a different arrangement.

I don't think it is a bad idea to study harmony arrangements, but I know that those arrangements are based on the chord structures of the songs. To me it makes more sense to learn those chord structures themselves rather than learning one or more harmony parts that stem from those chords.

Peter, the book looks very informative and well organized. I just sent you a personal message, too.

It happens to the best of us. Just tell people it's a rattlesnake rattle given to you by a blind shaman when you played a rendition of Shady Grove that cured him of gout during the blizzard of '78. Hey, it's a better story than "I dropped my pick."

Having spent lots of time in Jersey (and more to come later this summer) I think it fair to say that there are a lot more guns than there are dulcimers.

Some of those guns might be for hunting in the Pine Barrens or Poconos, but those in the Meadowlands have less noble functions.

Maryann Lang said:

guns and dulcimers - yup I think this former Jersey family is thoroughly redneck now! (and lovin it!)

Well you can imagine me installing strap buttons on my own on my very first dulcimer. I was drilling holes and covering my face in tears at the same time!

But that strap made all the difference in the world. The instrument "became mine" immediately. I can position it exactly the way I want regardless of how high my chair is or how far my legs are apart. And I can play more vigorously, not worrying about moving my precious instrument. I would have given up on the dulcimer had I not found the courage to install strap buttons.

If I were a dulcimer, I would say, "Strap me down and tickle my strings!"

Seriously, I had so much trouble getting my dulcimer to stay in one place until I installed a strap. I know it's not for everyone, but with a strap you don't have to worry about sitting at the exact same height to create a flat lap or anything like that. You can adjust the dulcimer anyway you like it, even tilting it up ever so slightly to allow the back to vibrate more (thus obviating the need for a false back or possum board). And tilting the dulcimer also solved the tennis elbow (strummer's elbow?) I was developing early on.

By the way, how do you make a possum bored? Just read him War and Peace !

Good point, Jan! David is a remarkably innovative luthier. Check out this video where he demonstrates the warm, mellow sound he gets with a "decoupled" tailpiece and how sticking something as simple as a credit card underneath the tailpiece results in a more traditional dulcimer sound.

Armsmere, a few years ago I tried to get people at Everything Dulcimer to start rating luthiers. I wanted to buy a really nice dulcimer and needed some guidance. But there was great resistance. The dulcimer community is very close-knit, and no one wanted to hurt anyone's feelings by stating formally in a discussion somewhere that one person's dulcimers were better than another.

It was suggested to me that I simply watch videos by people whose playing I enjoyed and whose dulcimers sounded good and ask them what they were playing and why. Eventually, I ordered a dulcimer from Ron Ewing and bought used dulcimers by Blue Lion and Modern Mountain Dulcimer. I also acquired but had to part with a Laurel Mountain dulcimer and a John Stockard dulcimer. All--though especially the Blue Lion and MMD--fall into the modern loud, mellow guitar sound category rather than the traditional high silvery sound, but all are great instruments. There are others, too. My suggestion is just to pay attention to what is being played in videos and if you are lucky enough to attend a dulcimer festival, just ask people if you can play their dulcimers for a moment. There are lots of great instruments out there and I'm sure you'll fin more than several that will please you.

By the way, I would add Laurel Mountain to Ken's list. Mary used to work for Folkcraft when they were in Connecticut but decided to stay behind when the company relocated to Indiana. Her standard models resemble Folkcraft in size and basic design with only minor differences. But she does really nice work. I miss the beautiful Laurel Mountain I was obliged to sell in order to partially pay for my Modern Mountain Dulcimer.

Terry, can you tell us what style of dulcimer you play? Do you play melody/drone, do you chord, do you play across all the strings?

If you you play melody/drone, I would suggest Going to Boston. It lets you slide up and down the fretboard just like you do in Wildwood Flower.

Wow, Ruth, you are just a font of autoharp knowledge!

Thanks for that link! I don't know if I'll be making a banjo out of groundhog skin any time soon, but I'd sure like to!

The hardanger fiddle looked like one of the more interesting instruments in the documentary, perhaps because it is so recognizable as a modern violin with the exception of the sympathetic strings that echo a former era.

What a treat that must have been for you, Robin!

Very cool. It's amazing how great she can play all those various instruments.

Great suggestions, Ken, in part because I know all those tunes. I already added "You are my Sunshine" and will probably add the two "Valley" tunes as well. Maybe the rest will make next year's list.

Kenneth W. Longfield said:

Dusty, a few we do here in the east are Down In The Valley, Red River Valley and You Are My Sunshine. There is also Clementine, Rocky Top and Tom Dooley.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Geekling, when you speak of the "jam in front of the festival" do you mean the small group that plays right in the entry to the church grounds? That jam is indeed intimidating and is not really a jam; it is more like a group of friends who already play together. But the festival holds another all-instrument jam towards the end of the day in which people sit in a big circle in that big room where they have lunch. People of a variety of levels join in, and Leo Kretzner leads the whole thing in a really inclusive manner. When I first joined I passed when it was my turn to call a tune, but the next time around I called out Southwind or Rosin the Beau or some tune I knew pretty well. I also just listened during a bunch of tunes I didn't know, and played chords for those whose structure I could figure out but whose melody was too fast to learn on the spot. But as I mentioned, I did learn two or three tunes over the course of the jam and for my first one, I was happy with the number of tunes I was able to play along. Now here we are two or three years later, and I've created my own list of 40+ jam tunes and I know them all! It's amazing how many tunes I've picked up over the last few years!

You two would look so cute playing a courting dulcimer! I can certainly see why that would be on your wish list.

Geekling, I think you give us too much credit when you say our Sacramento group is "well thought out." It has taken us over a year-and-a-half to evolve to the structure I describe above. But now I think it works really well.

I'm not surprised that you say you need to have a tune in your head even if you use tab. After all, tablature doesn't give us very much. Especially that sparse tab that just provides fret numbers tells us nothing about how long to play each note, for example, so the tab assumes you already know the song.

Robin makes some good observations about ensuring that beginners are encouraged to join jams even if they don't know most of the songs. There is nothing wrong with muting the strings with your left hand and just strumming for rhythm. There is nothing wrong with just playing the easy parts of songs. I often join only by playing chords and not playing any melody at all (though I understand that as a guitar player for the last 40 years hearing chord changes comes easier to me than most). As Robin suggests, these ways of joining without fully knowing a song accomplish a central goal of getting people comfortable just playing with their instruments. Beginners need to know that it is encouraged to join in these ways.

Here and there online are several guides to jam etiquette, but what is not really found is advice on how to join jams if you don't already know the music.

Two surprises: I forgot "Shady Grove" until Robin reminded me (it is in my mind the quintessential mountain folk song) and no one mentioned "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." I know that's not really a dulcimer tune so much, but it seems to be central to the whole notion of a tradition shared among generations.

I decided to create a page on the River City Dulcimers website for my list and links to tab available online: common dulcimer jam tunes . It's still a work on progress, but I thank you all for your comments so far and welcome any others you have.

Robin, I, too, have been starting to "read" SMN, although I am not very proficient at playing directly from it. But following my daughter's beginning piano lessons over the last few years has been a nice refresher course. When I was a kid I could read SMN but in a very practical manner. I played trumpet one year but was switched to the baritone tuba the next. Baritone music was written in the bass clef rather than the treble clef, but what made the transition easy was that the fingering on the valves was the same between the two instruments -- well, almost the same. I think the baritone plays a fourth or fifth below a trumpet. So the fingering I had learned still played a major scale, but in a different key. I never actually learned what the key was and never really learned the note names on the bass clef (I knew how to figure them out, but could never identify them quickly enough). But I learned the play the baritone from SMN only by noting the distances between notes on the staff and the corresponding distances in the notes I would play. It's possible that way of playing hearkens back to the days when the musical staffs were not standardized and could be centered on any note. But I also think that method is close to the way some professional musicians play.

As you suggest, they do not see a note on the staff, translate it to the corresponding letter, and then look for that note on their instrument. I think they see relationships among notes on the staff and also see those relationships on their instruments. (I would think that visualization is easier on keyboards and fingerboards, but I bet brass and woodwind players see them, too.)

The other comment you make that I think is especially useful for everyone learning to play is that you concentrate on phrases rather than individual notes. We learn language that way, after all, why not music, too? And little by little we start to notice that certain phrases repeat in various songs, just as chord shapes do.

Thanks so much for your comments.

Geekling, I think I remember that beginners jam. I walked briefly through the room and could see some difficulties there. In my opinion, a jam with experienced players can exist with no leader, with players taking turns calling a tune and starting it off. But beginners are exactly those who need a leader, someone familiar with the songs who can play them correctly and at a steady tempo so that others can follow along. Obviously, the leader in a beginners jam needs to be patient and play really slowly, but a bunch of beginners unsure of their own playing trying to make a go of it on their own just asks for trouble.

But your comments also reveal the different ways we learn. I honestly cannot learn songs from tablature. I need to hear a song played and get it into my head. During the jam at the Harvest Festival I probably learned three or four songs. The first time through I would just listen, getting a sense for the song's structure (AABB, ABC, whatever). The second time through I would try to find some of the important notes or phrases in each section. By the fourth or fifth time through I could get most of the melody. Then after that, I could go off on my own, use tab, and fill in the blanks. But I always fail to learn songs at workshops when everyone is handed a piece of tab and then they go through it slowly one note at a time. I never get the feel for a song that way.

In my opinion, the best scenario is an all-inclusive, beginners-welcome jam in which people go around a circle calling out tunes. The person calling the tune should ideally set the tempo and start playing. So a really advanced player might indeed start playing pretty fast, leaving others to just strum chords, play percussion on the backs of their dulcimers, or pick out a note here or there. But others will start playing at a slower, more approachable pace, allowing beginners to follow along. And there should be a leader to step in, so if someone starts a song but then gets a little lost, the leader can step in and take over. A lot of learning how to play with others is learning how to keep time and skip notes or whole sections of songs. When you play by yourself and you get stuck on the fourth note of a song, you can just stop and take your time to get it. But in a jam, the song keeps moving, and it's important to learn to play such that when you get stuck you skip a few notes or a whole section and pick a point in the future when you can jump in with everyone else. (Supposedly the great hockey player Wayne Gretsky used to say you should not skate to where the puck is, but to where the puck will be.)

At the local dulcimer group here in Sac that I started about 18 months ago, we now divide our time into three sections. The first is a beginners lesson in which the beginners get together in a very small group of two or four with a more experienced player and go over some basics. During the second section we all get together and play through our small but growing repertoire of songs, mostly arrangements by Ron Beardslee, Paul Furnas, or myself, which are pedagogical in nature, meaning we arranged a tune in order to work on some aspect of playing. (For example, I arranged a version of "Shall We Gather at the River" specifically to work on slow, steady, back-and-forth strumming. My arrangement of "Beach Spring" centers on the use of left-handed techniques such as slides, pull-offs and hammer-ons. Ron has arranged several songs that teach chord positions, so each song is based on a single chord shape that moves up and down the fretboard.) We all play those songs together, and usually between 4 and perhaps 10 times each one. The idea is to play them long enough that people can really start to learn them. But we also stop and talk about how to play difficult sections so that there is some clear learning going on. And the third section of our gathering is a true song circle where we take turns playing songs. Some choose songs for everyone to join in, but this section of our gathering is also for more advanced players to "show off" the more complex stuff they're working on. The advanced players get practice performing in front of a small (and adoring ) group and the beginners get exposed to music and playing techniques that they would never see if they only stayed in beginner groups. Interestingly, it was the beginners who requested the song circle, for they wanted to see what Ron and I were playing when we were not teaching them songs, but I have to say I've really gotten a lot out of it, and knowing that I'll have that small audience encourages me to keep working on new stuff and really try to get whole songs down pat.

Maybe this is a long-winded way of saying that I think beginners would get a lot more out of a jam with patient leaders rather than a jam with no leaders and only other beginners.

Wow, you guys are great! The challenge for me has been to resist just listing songs that I know and like to play. And as I said, I've only once been to a dedicated dulcimer jam but have a lot more experience with bluegrass jams, old timey jams, and just plain old campfire sing-a-longs. It is likely that some tunes (Saint Anne's Reel? Whiskey Before Breakfast?) are on the list for their ubiquity more at bluegrass jams than at dulcimer jams. But I like most of your suggestions (there are a couple that I never heard of!), and all of them that I already know will be added to the list. A few (June Apple, John Stinson #2, Columbus Stockade) will be added to my "to learn" list and may get promoted if I learn the tune in time.

My plan right now is basically to do what Robin and Ken suggest: to list the tunes with links to the main two or three websites (ED most obviously) that contain tab. There is also a copy machine at the venue, and I think it might be good to have some hard copies of tab for people who don't plan ahead or drop in at the last minute or can't play at all by ear. If I get super-ambitious I might make several copies of tabs for each of the songs, but I can do that at work and pass the cost on to my employer. Since I mostly telecommute I end up using my own cash for ink and paper and stuff like that on a regular basis, so it seems like a fair trade.

Rob, I am sure you are right about regional variations, but the list I've come up with was based on my sense of common tunes that I've seen online either here or on a couple of the jam tunes lists at various other websites from around the country. It's kind of funny, but I think here in Northern California the only regional variation is that every jam has to include a Grateful Dead tune or two. Seriously, last year at this same event I attended a song circle at the end of the day. A few of us were playing many of the songs on the list above, but there was also a group of listeners who just sat quietly with smiles on their faces. Then someone started playing and singing "Ripple" and everyone in the crowd began singing. I mean these are old (and yes, I mean old) deadheads who probably can't remember what they had for breakfast, but they know every word to "Ripple" and have been singing it for 40 or more years! (I commented elsewhere that they used to take acid and now take antacid, but the song remains the same!And for the record, I'm not knocking the Dead; I attended more than my fair share of shows, too, and especially like their acoustic stuff, not surprisingly.)

Thanks, everyone, for your advice and suggestions!

Thanks for the suggestion, Geekling. Since "Rhody" is one of the songs that people sometimes learn as their first one, it makes sense to add that. To be honest, I don't expect a whole lot of beginners. The jam I am running will be concurrent with one of the workshop sessions, so I would think that most beginners would be more comfortable in an actual beginner workshop rather than an open jam. But later in the day will be a formal song circle, so maybe this list can help guide both sessions.

I initially got the idea for a song list from the Harvest Festival of Dulcimers. Before the one year I went (when I met you and Keith) I worked specifically on some of the songs on their list.But that Festival includes hammered dulcimers and the jam was open to other instruments. The Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering is only for mountain dulcimers and I doubt other instruments will show up. I don't plan on linking each song to a specific tab arrangement, but I will provide links to two or three websites where people can find tab for almost all the songs there, and if I get really ambitious, I'll try to show up with several copies of tab for at least some of the songs. When I was at the Harvest Festival, the person who sat next to me at that jam had gone through their list of songs with a copy of Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam book, and flagged each song on the appropriate page, so when people called out songs she just flipped to the right page in the book and had her own tablature.

Patty, I already added "Turkey in the Straw," as a matter of fact, and "Sourwood Mountain" is a good one, too. I think I learned that from a video that Robin T posted here, so I'll review that video, re-learn the song, and add it to the list.

I'm sure the jam will include some singing, too, so I know we'll be singing Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene," The Grateful Dead's "Ripple," John Prine's "Paradise," and more. But I wanted to provide a list of some of the more typical dulcimer jam tunes. And I've been really surprised how many of these tunes I already knew even if I don't play them regularly.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Robin. I am trying to stay focused on typical tunes for dulcimer jams rather than just list tunes that I like to play.