Forum Activity for @dusty

@CaonnorC, there are actually several variables to consider as you continue playing and thinking about what would be ideal for you. Obviously VSL is one, as is the width of the fretboard. Another is the distance between the strings.  I find for flatpicking I want strings that are close together, with an inch or less separating the bass and melody strings. But for fingerpicking I don't mind a little more space in there so my chubby picking fingers have some room.  The kind of fretwire you use is another issue.  Some dulcimer players prefer jumbo wire so that you don't have to press the strings all the way to the wood of the fretboard.  That allows a softer touch and faster playing.  And some luthiers are starting to make radiused fretboards, mainly with the goal of increased comfort of the fretting hand.   It's a lot to think about. 

But for the moment, just keep doing what you're doing.  Those stretches should get easier over time.

@ConnorC, a dulcimer with a 27" VSL should be fine for chording. In DAd tuning the 1-2-4 and 4-2-1 A chords are indeed the toughest to reach, but they can be done, and keep in mind that the muscles in your fingers will get stronger and will stretch a bit, so just keep at it.  And yes, you will want to you use your pinky.  Some dulcimer players don't use their thumbs and others don't use their pinkies, but I figure I need all the help I can get.

I still have and play dulcimers with 27" and 28" VSLs, but I have to admit that my main playing dulcimer has only a 25" VSL.  The shorter scale length not only makes certain chords easier to finger, but makes it easier to play fast since my hand can stay in a  relaxed position as I cover several frets.

Marg, how did you get that organ sound?  That's pretty cool.

And that heron looks fantastic.  I wish you were beautifying my neighborhood.

It looks like you're doing very good work with those zitters. @Ken-Longfield.  That kind of preservation is obviously important.

Thought I'd resurrect this discussion thread. What are you guys working on?  building a new instrument?  learning a new tune?  putting lyrics to a melody you wrote?

I was watching an episode of the BBC series Poldark the other night and heard a charming Irish jig called "Haste to the Wedding."  I'm working on it now.  Not quite up to speed, but we're getting there.  I'm playing it on my Ron Ewing octave dulcimette, which is a 3/4-size instrument.  The smaller frets and the proximity of the strings make it a bit easier to play faster tunes.

On my MMD the bridge is definitely compensated:

I would suggest just contacting David.  He'll know what to do.

I saw John McCutcheon perform a song once that started out funny and ended up hilarious.  I can't remember the title, but the song was about some kid he grew up with in Wisconsin who would get his tongue stuck on the frozen metal swingset at school every winter. So he sange a verse or two, and then he asked the audience to sing along, but to do so as though our tongues were stuck on a swing set.  So each chorus we did that, with everyone trying to sing with our tongues sticking out of our mouths.  Perhaps the second or third chorus, he grabbed a camera and took a picture of us, all looking as foolish as we did.

He claimed afterwards that his kid told him no one would be willing to sing with their tongues sticking out, to which he replied, "I bet they will in California!"  I'm sure he amends that line to refer to whatever state he's in.

You ask a good question.  Herdim does not really publish the exact measurements of each corner, so it's hard to know if the different colored picks overlap or not.

When I first started on the dulcimer I bought a dozen of the yellow picks thinking that's what I was supposed to use.  I found it too thin and too pointy and gave them all away.

Some people like them, but I prefer a traditionally shaped guitar pick and buy Dunlop Tortex picks by the dozen.

Well, if we're including interspecies animal romance, my vote is "The Owl and the Pussycat," especially the melody put to the Lears poem by Burl Ives . 

I get teary-eyed singing the last lines: "And hand in hand at the edge of the sand/They danced by the light of the moon, the moon/They danced by the light of the moon."

One of my all time favorite pop love songs is Van Morrison's "Crazy Love."  I've never played it on the dulcimer, but I don't see why you couldn't. I used to play it on the mandolin back in the day when I accompanied a guitarist who also sang and made all the ladies swoon.

Erin Mae is the best, isn't she? She's so sweet and encouraging and she can tear it up on the fretboard!

The song @Natebuildstoys mentions, "Can't Help Falling in Love" is associated with Elvis and often played at weddings.  But what I find funny is that, as many folks here know, the melody was taken from a French tune called "Plaisir d'amour."  But the French lyrics are anything but romantic: "The pleasure of love lasts only a moment, but the pain from love lasts a lifetime."

The melody does fit on the dulcimer fretboard really nicely, though, and even people who are not folk music fans recognize it, so it's a good one to have in your repertoire.

Something I learned recently is that the slot in the nut should not be flat. It should come to a little point, so the string sits in a single point rather than resting on a level surface.  In other words, the slot looks like a V if you look at the nut from the string's point of view, but if you look at it along the nut itself, the slot inside should look like a ^ rather than be flat.  If a string sits along a flat ledge inside the nut, it can move around and buzz.

I have a nice small dulcimer that had a buzz on only one string and it was driving me crazy, but as soon as he heard it, the repair guy at a music store diagnosed the problem. He took about ten minutes filing the slot to increase the point, and the problem was solved.

I'd be surprised, though, if McSpadden made that mistake in the original build.

And I should also say that I sometimes get a buzz on strings and I'll just change the strings and the buzz goes away. I can't explain why older strings would buzz, but it's such a simple fix I've never worried about it.

Your string gauges seem reasonable to me.  I use 26", 16" and 13" on my 25" VSL dulcimer tuned DAd.

Cool topic, @hugssandi.  Not long ago I started playing (but not singing) a Welsh love song from the 18th century, called "Bugeili'or Gwenith Gwyn," or "Watching the White Wheat."  It tells the supposedly true story of Wil, a young farm laborer, and Ann, the daughter of a wealthy farming family.  Her family did not consider Wil an appropriate spouse and arranged for her to marry another.  Overcome with sadness, Wil left the village.  After some time he had a dream of an impending death, so he returned, thinking Ann's husband was dying. Instead he found that it was Ann who was dying of a broken heart.  Supposedly they are both now buried in that same village. 

I posted an instrumental version of it about a year ago, and you can find both choral and harp versions on YouTube, but I love the Mary Hopkin version in Welsh .  You can also see this funny Tom Jones version in English .

I think there are two points of confusion here.  One is that dulcimers and guitars have traditionally had different construction. Whereas guitars clearly have both a bridge and a saddle, dulcimers sometimes have a saddle inserted directly in (or on, if it is floating) the extension of the fingerboard, and sometimes there is a single wooden piece (which may or may not be braced) with a broad bottom and a much narrower top, functioning as both a bridge and a saddle.  And recently many dulcimer luthiers have indeed been opting for guitar-type construction with a clear bridge and saddle.  Because of this variation, many people, myself included, almost never use the term "saddle" and just refer to the bridge regardless of whether we are referring to the part attached to the soundboard or the part with grooves through which the strings lay.  But I've been corrected by more than a few professional luthiers when I've used the term "bridge" instead of the more precise "saddle." 

As long as they understand what VSL I want and how far apart I want the strings, they can call it bubble gum and I don't care.

Interestingly, over the past 2 weeks I've had three people whom I had never met contact me to take online dulcimer lessons.  None of them are within 2 hours of me, and one is in another state.  Perhaps people are becoming more comfortable with distance technology or perhaps people are just deciding that they might as well learn an instrument while sheltering at home.  I don't know the reasons, but it's nice to be able to share music at this time.

@Cindy-Stammich, we've been buying groceries for my mother-in-law, too.  She tells us what she needs and we leave it outside her door.  Once or twice, just to get out of the house, she has driven over to our place for the pickup, and yes, it is so hard not to hug her, but she is so vulnerable that I would never forgive myself if she got sick because we were careless in our contact with her.  I want her to be around when we get a vaccine, or enough tests for everyone, or however this ends.

There are two different reasons for pick clack. One is the sound of the pick flipping as it strikes a string.  That sound is much more pronounced with thinner picks than with heavier ones.  And some pick material also makes less noise than others.

The other sound is the pick hitting the fretboard.  But that is why people talk about technique.  Your pick should not be going so deep into the strings that you hit the fretboard. Rather, you should be gliding along the top. Addiitonally, angling the pick so it is not parallel to the string but only hits it on the side (for righties, that means the left side going out and the right side coming in) also reduces the noise the pick makes and helps avoid getting in between the strings to hit the fretboard.

Personally, I enjoy heavy picks that allow for much greater timing accuracy, so I have little problem with that first sound.  And when I record or perform I use a ridiculously expensive pick that someone gave me which produces almost no sound at all.

But I still sometimes get sloppy with my picking and hit the fretboard, especially if I get to playing pretty fast. That's one reason I like my McCafferty with the extended strum hollow since I don't have to worry about my less-than-perfect strumming technique.

There's nothing wrong with adding some percussive sounds as we play, but it ought to be on purpose, and as Irene says, we might not want it on every song we play.

Terry McCafferty makes what he calls an "extended" strumhollow.  Bascically he cuts off the fretboard a few frets early to creater a longer and more usable strumhollow.  How many of us actually fret those little tiny frets above 14 anyway?  Take a look at his instruments and you'll see what I'm talking about.  I love playing with the extra long strumhollow.

It might be that @Natebuildstoys saw Stephen with one of Terry's dulcimers.  He's been playing them a lot the last few years.

I've been concentrating recently not on a single song but a whole bunch of songs from the American west around the mid-19th century: Strawberry Roan, Lorena, Billy the Kid, Green Grow the Lilacs, and The Maid of Monterey.

@Richard-Streib, I don't know where I heard this, but supposedly the "Buffalo" in "Buffalo Gals" was originally whatever town the band was playing in, so it might be "Albany Gals" or "Charlotte Gals" or "Montpelier Gals" or whatever.  The song was often sung as the last song of the night and was an invitation to the ladies in the audience to hang out with the band after the show.

It's crazy that parents would let their kids run around with other kids, as though there were no social consquences to those kinds of interactions.  Some people just don't get it.  I've been going for a short (and slow) 3-mile jog with my daughter most days.  We jog to a large park and in the park do indeed see other people out and about.  But for the most part people are respectful about keeping their distances.  When other joggers approach from different directions they both move off to the side to ensure sufficient distance between them.

On Sunday my neighbors invited me to play music with them in their front yard.  I brought my own chair and my own water. We sat about 10 feet apart and even wore masks.   We did talk about the fact that since we were far enough apart the masks weren't necessary, but we wanted to model behavior for our kids.  It was fun, and my first real (in-person) interactions with non family members, although it was hard to hear the vocals underneath the masks.  We did a few John Prine songs for obvious reasons, an old Ray Price tune to which Ian & Sylvia Tyson added some French lyrics, and one of my favorite Iris DeMent tunes, "Sweet is the Melody."  It was fun, but also sad.  Barbeque season is starting and we won't be able to have those neighborhood parties with people grilling food, kids running around, people grabbing ice-cold beer out of coolers, a handful of musicians keeping the melodies floating around, horseshoes, water balloons, and watermelon seed spitting contests.  Now I'm getting nostalgic for the innocent pre-virus days.  It's hard to hug people when you meet in Zoom. In fact, that last sentiment is a line in the DeMent tune I just mentioned: "An arm's just an arm 'til it's wrapped 'round a shoulder."

I joined initially mainly out of curiosity, but have not been too active there. I miss the old site, but just because this place has the same name and basic organization of content doesn't mean it's the same.  What made the old site was the people there, not the name of the site.  And most of the more active people there are interacting here.  I do think it matters that the administrator is anonymous, especially when he/she participates in discussions (which is often).  I also have mixed feelings about his (or her) having just appropriated the domain name instead of coming up with something new. 

Jan, I'm glad your test came back negative. At least there's that.  It really seems like your friend is in a tough spot.  As for cards, I honestly find it so time-consuming to pick out a pre-written card that's right (male cousin, mother-in-law, step-grandson, ARGH!, then Valentine's Day, Birthday, Get Well, Condolances,  ARGH!) that I just have a collection of cards with pretty phogrphas (close-ups of flowers, a peacock's feathers, autumn leaves reflecting on a lake, etc) and nothing written inside.  I prefer those to the pre-printed ones that try to idenitfiy the event and the relationship of the recipient.

Funny song, Lois!

Amidst all the horrific news of increasing infections and increasing mortality, it is indeed heartwarming everyday to see people looking out for one another, a testament to the caring nature of the human spirit.

I braved the grocery store today for the first time in a couple of weeks and was so glad to see the shelves filled with eggs, meat, and bread.  Those three items had been hard to get for about a month, so maybe the panicked buying (that was causing me to panic) has subsided. 

What a great way to start, with a smiling Robin and her bright and melodic dulcimer! You can even hear the birds chirping outside their open window.

@Lois-Sprengnether-Keel, feel free to contact me directly for questions about the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering. We are on the verge of officially announcing the virtual version, and when that happens I'll update the event listing here .  The original plan for the virtual event was to do all the same workshops.  We're working on revising things (and reducing the price) for on online gathering, so check back with me later on and I should have more definitive information.

I think the hammered dulcimer workshop was only on Sunday and everything on Saturday is for the mountain dulcimer. 

It's too bad so many dulcimer festivals and concerts are getting canceled.  We are going to try to do the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering entirely online.  Let's see how that goes. That bad part is that we won't be able to all gather together.  The good part is that people from around the world could join. Maybe it will be a new way to get together that we'll want to continue even when sheltering in place is no longer necessary.

What a cool guitar, @lisavb. I've been eyeing some guitars recently, but since I hardly play the ones I have it's hard to justify another purchase.

For the record, I also cut my own hair recently, which is why no one will be seeing any pictures of me sans hat.

They were the strong, dominant alfalfa sprouts that like to take command, known colloquially as alphalpha sprouts.

Late last night or early this morning, I received my bi-weekly delivery of fresh produce from the farm-to-table service I subscribe to.  Everything is grown within a 200-mile radius of my home, and it all arrives super-fresh. I just prepared a salad for lunch, with red-leaf lettuce, radishes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and alphalpha sprouts.  I added some cold sliced beef left over from dinner last night and made a nice vinaigrette highlighted by some fresh-squeezed meyers lemons from our tree out back. I haven't even eaten it yet, but it looks so yummy!  The beef came from a delivery service, too, so I was able to put all this together without leaving the house.  Now where's my fork?

I feel a bit guilty for living so well while this viral cloud has shut down nearly the whole world.

@Tom-g, our schools here closed just around that time, too. It's great that you are able to use this time on such a rewarding project.  Action on older dulcimers was often high because those playing with a noter don't need the action as low as those of us who use our fingertips.  The dulcimer sure looks lush and beautiful in the picture!

Last night I had a virtual happy hour (the beer was real) with a few friends from college.  We were spread across three time zones but got together online to chat for a little while.  It was nice to catch up with them and their families and to share some laughs and nostalgia.  Under normal circumstances we would not have done this, but it's a good example of how collectively confronting this pandemic can bring people closer together even while we engage in social distancing.

What a cozy-looking cradle to raise some cute little tomato seedlings.

Here's a little tongue-in-cheek silliness.  I put new lyrics to the old blues tune "She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride" and came up with "She Caught the 'Rona and Left Me in Quarantine."

There's some tab from the old Everything Dulcimer website available at www.dulcimertab.com.  Just look it up alphabetically.  I can't vouch for it, though.

hummingbirds, bluebirds, and bees

frolick among my citrus trees.

were it not for these

and the fresh spring breeze

I'd be panicked about

this dreaded disease.

That's pretty good, David.  I had a similar idea.  I put new lyrics to the old blues song "She caught the Katy and left me a mule to ride." My version goes "She caught the 'rona and left me in quarantine."  I played a few verses at the virtual version of my local dulcimer group last weekend.  I originally intended a serious song, but there are a lot of funny words to rhyme with quarantine and I just had to include them, so it ended up pretty silly. If I get a chance to make a recording I'll post it here.  

I have a medium-sized bottle of Purell which I would gladly give someone if they came to my house to cut my hair.  We could just do it in the front yard.  If you see me wearing a hat, it's not for style; it's just hiding the gray jungle underneath.

I've been doing whiskey in a quart jar.  Oh . . . wait . . . I meant to post in the Unhealthy Living Forum. 

Seriously, I'm a fan of sprouts but have never grown my own.

That's very touching, Butch.  Thanks.  Even though you don't sing the words, the music is so soft and sensitive that it fully captures the spirit and mood of the song.

I'm glad you were able to get tested, Jan.  Good luck!