Forum Activity for @dusty

If you are looking for a specific sound, I would suggest asking what builders make dulcimers that sound like that rather than what woods to use. Although the type of wood clearly has some effect on the sound of a dulcimer, other aspects of instrument design have a far greater influence. A Blue Lion will always sound more mellow than a Pritchard replica no matter what woods are chosen. If you have an all walnut Folkcraft, a Folkcraft with a spruce top, and an all walnut Warren May, the two Folkcrafts would sound closer to one another than the two walnut dulcimers would.

Having said that, in general, instruments that have soft tonewood like spruce or cedar for the top will have a warmer, more mellow sound than instruments that have hardwood such as walnut or cherry for the top.  That is why spruce is traditionally chosen for the tops of guitars and violins, for example.

Get a Roland, as Ken, Skip, and Kristi suggest.  It's on my wish list, too. I had a chance to use one for a spell this summer and was really impressed.  The MicroCube sells for around $150 new and the bigger MobileCube for about $180.

I also have a Fishman Loudbox Mini that I love. I used to have one of the little Honeytone amps that Marg mentions.  It was fun for creating classic rock guitar sounds and stuff, but as Kristi says, it doesn't really have enough power if you want to play a small room. I ended up selling it to someone here at FOTMD for the price of shipping.

Mark, I play in a modern chording style and what I would do is put a capo on the third fret. Then you can pretend you are playing in D but you will actually be in G.  You can also put the capo on the fourth fret to play in A. For me that's easier than learning DGd tuning, which requires new fingering for the chords.

Most bluegrass tunes have a standard key. Billy in the Lowground is always played in C.  Saint Anne's Reel is always played in D.  Blackberry Blossom is always played in G.  Red-haired Boy is always played in A.  When I practice songs that I expect to play in bluegrass jams I always try to practice them in the standard key.  And since I am one of those unimaginative people who mainly plays in DAd, I can get all those keys pretty easily.  I tune down to CGc for the key of C, but the other three keys I can get out of DAd with a handy capo.

The lower case d in DGd just indicates that the melody string is an octave above the bass string.

Barre chords are a good idea, especially if you are playing the role of the mandolin, where you want that fast percussive chop.  You get that chop from lifting up your fingers right after striking the chord to stop the notes from ringing. You don't actually take your fingers off the strings, but merely stop pressing them onto the fretboard so that your fingers mute the sound. And if you don't know a chord or two, just mute the strings and strum anyway. If you stay on beat no one will mind.

Good for you, Kusani.  Your dulcimer voyage begins . . . 

I was going to make the same point.  There are many ways to work around a melody for which the dulcimer does not contain a note.  You can skip the note, you can play an alternative note such a harmony note, you can play a chord instead, etc. But there are also ways of finding notes other than those that the frets themselves provide.

With a noter, there is a method of getting any note you want, as Robin Clark demonstrates in this video .  What he calls his "angle noter technique" allows you to get a note in between frets.  And if you play with your fingers, you can bend strings, thus also getting notes in between the frets.  Both of those techniques take some practice, but they open up a whole range of melodic and harmonic possibilities.

 Marg, a while back I posted a discussion entitled " What are 1/2 frets and do I need any ." Although you've clearly gotten very good advice here, you might find that post helpful.  My thoghts on this topic can be found there, so I won't repeat myself.

Ken and I are clearly opposites here. He plays  strictly noter/drone on a true diatonic fretboard.  I play across all the strings on dulcimers with one and increasingly two extra frets.  However, we agree on one thing: if you have an older instrument without the 6+ fret, keep it as is in its traditional form rather than butcher it for modern usage.

It looks like your efforts have paid off well. Good job!

Patricia, make sure you talk to Steve Eulberg. His first dulcimer was a Capritaurus kit.

Congrats on your two very special acquisitions, Brian.

And I really like your sensitive playing of La Mort de Coucy.  That is an original tune Neal wrote after reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror on 14th-century Europe.

Happy New Year to all my friends here.  My wish for each of you is whatever you wish for yourselves.  

Howard Rugg, who has started building again and even has a website  now, is a member here at FOTMD . You might consider contacting him directly with any questions.

The History page of Howard's website provides a broad outline.  He and his brother Michael formed Capritaurus dulcimers in 1969 and Steve Jackel started working for them in 1972. Over the next few years, they developed a second line of dulcimers called Folkroots which were produced more efficiently (I won't say mass produced since they were still handmade by a small number of people) whereas Capritaurus concentrated on custom builds. In 1975, Howard and Steve formed Rugg and Jackel Music and made the Folkroots dulcimers while Michael stuck with Capritaurus.  By the late 1980s, it all came apart.  Howard and Steve sold the Folkroots brand to Folkcraft Instruments and all three of them moved on to different professional and personal endeavors, but about three years ago Howard began building dulcimers again and has incorporated some new innovations into his craft. 

Nice playing, Robert.  It makes sense that the larger box and longer VSL of a baritone would produce a richer, deeper sound with more sustain.  I think that was Strumelia's point above.  I know Blue Lion has a model called "Acoustic Jam" which is a standard dulcimer put on the same size box as their baritone and bass models.

Dulcinina, you ask several questions here, and you might consider posting them separately as their own discussion.

I am not sure what you mean by "scrunching to reach the 9th and 10th frets."  Are you having trouble reaching from one fret to another, or are you having trouble just playing up the fretboard? If it is the latter, the issue is how the dulcimer is positioned on your lap.  Sit with your lap flat but you legs apart (you can't be "ladylike" and play the dulcimer!).  Assuming you are a righty, Put the head of the dulcimer out over your left knee and the bottom of the dulcimer in tight on your right thigh.  The dulcimer should be angled out towards your left, so that you can reach the low frets and the high frets equally easily. The exact angle of the dulcimer will be influenced by factors such as the length of your arm and whether you use your pinky or thumb, but you will want to angle the dulcimer at least as much as Mark Gilston does and perhaps as much as Guy Babusek does .  Most likely, you'll be somewhere in the middle.

A beginner or starter or student dulcimer is just a less expensive dulcimer intended for someone who might be interested in playing but is not yet ready to commit to buying a more expensive instrument.  I don't know what dulcimer Jane has, but I bought a student dulcimer made by David "Harpmaker" Lynch.  It cost a mere $125.  To make an instrument in that price range, David uses birch ply instead of more expensive tonewoods, spends only a minimal amount of time putting an easy curve into the side instead of more elaborate hourglass shapes, only uses simple circles for soundholes instead of fancier shapes, uses plastic instead of bone for the nut and bridge, only offers a flat head instead of an elaborate scroll head, and so forth.  Because David is a master luthier, the intonation is dead on and the dulcimer has a lot of volume. The action is also very good.  As I said above, I have one which I keep on the east to play when I visit there.  Here is a video I posted a few years ago , if you can excuse my vocals.

A compensated bridge is merely a bridge that has been adjusted for the specific strings.  Without getting into the physics, basically the distance between the nut and the bridge should be slightly different for strings tuned to different pitches.  If you buy a dulcimer from McSpadden or Blue Lion or whoever, it is good to indicate if you will tune primarily in DAA or DAd, for they can adjust the bridge to compensate for that tuning.  To be honest, I change tunings on my dulcimers and don't notice the change in intonation, so the difference is probably only noticeable to the most discerning ears.

As I stated above, I strongly recommend playing for a few years before making a big investment in an expensive instrument.  While I personally don't believe the type of wood to be a major factor in the tone of an instrument, I do prefer softwoods such as spruce or cedar for the soundboard rather than an all-hardwood instrument. I also really like an ebony overlay on the fretboard to allow for easy fingering and resist damage by my sometimes careless flatpicking.  I prefer a flat head for ease of stringing. Although shorter VSLs are more comfortable, longer ones usually mean more sustain. Now that I sometimes play in public, I want an internal pickup on any new dulcimer I get.  I could go on, but the list of my personal preferences is no guide to anyone else except for the general principle that there are a lot of variables in dulcimer building and you have to play a while to discover what your preferences are.

By all means, try out as many instruments as you can and see how they feel and how they sound. Also pay attention to the videos of dulcimer players you enjoy and whose dulcimers sound nice to you and ask about them.  Be patient.  The longer you wait the more you will know exactly what kinds of variables matter to you, and the more your next dulcimer will really be the ideal dulcimer for you.

Jane, some woods do indeed create a slightly warmer sound than others, but many other aspects of dulcimer design have an even greater effect.  A Blue Lion dulcimer will always sound bigger and warmer than a Pritchard replica no matter what woods are chosen.

I suggest you listen to other dulcimer players and when you hear a tone you like, inquire about who made the dulcimer.  Then you can talk further with the luthier.

But as Dan says above, take your time.  There are a lot of variables of dulcimer construction and you need to develop your preferences before you know what your ideal dulcimer would be.  It took me about 3 years of playing before I knew the kinds of attributes I want on a dulcimer.

Jane, you've received good advice so far. Try CGc tuning and see what you think. The deeper sound might please you.

You might also increase the gauge of your bass string to .024 or even .026, but your melody and middle string should probably not be increased much.

Also, if you angle the dulcimer up a tiny bit so that it is not sitting flat on your lap, you will likely get more vibration from the bottom, which should open up the sound a bit.  You could also place your dulcimer on a wooden table and see if the increased resonance and sustain is something you like. If so, you might play with a possom board, or at least a wooden plank under your dulcimer.

I don't know if any of these changes would really produce a warmer, richer sound, but they will make slight changes and perhaps you'll like what you hear.

It probably doesn't make sense to buy whole sets of squeakless strings for dulcimers since only the wound bass string is technically squeakless.  And as Ken says above, if you play in a drone style you don't fret the bass string anyway, so don't worry about it.

I buy .24 gauge squeakless strings in bulk from JustStrings and Folkcraft which I use on my standard-sized dulcimers.  The ones I buy have the plastic coating like the Elixir strings that Kristi mentions above.  I remember Linda Brockinton commenting once that she found those squeekless strings to have a muted tone and didn't like them. I have never noticed that personally.

Congratulations on your impending arrival. My first dulcimer had a mahogany back and sides and a spruce top. Nice tone and excellent sustain.

Hey folks. Since this discussion is heading in that direction, let me just point out that we have a whole group at FOTMD devoted to home recording .

Some dulcimer players use those hard travel cases made for golf bags and check them as luggage. I know Aaron O'Rourke does that. He packs his Banjammer and David Beede in a soft double case and then surrounds that with clothes and stuff in the golf case.  Since airlines are used to handling those golf bags they don't present as much of a problem as odd-sized instrument cases.  And once you get to your destination, you can leave the golf case in your hotel room or wherever and just travel around with the soft case.

I'll probably invest in a sturdy golf bag case when work and family allow me to travel more.

Steve, in order to send a private message, first hover your cursor over your name in the upper right-hand corner and choose "Private Messages" from the drop-down menu.

Then choose "New Message."

When you get the message box, put the beginning or part of the person's username in the search box, and all the members that have those same characters will show up in a drop-down menu.  Click on the name of the person you want to contact.

Once the recipient's name has been automatically loaded into the recipient field, you can go ahead and 1) give a name or title to your message; 2) add the actual text of the message; and 3) click "send.

I hope that helps.

Hey folks, it wasn't my intention to derail this discussion by offering my fictional version of a dulcimer discovery.  I really enjoy hearing about everyone's first instrument and hope people continue to post.

Well, during the infamous "Blizzard of '78" I had had enough of the New England cold.  At the age of 13 I sold my record collection to get enough money for a train ticket to the west coast.  I traveled with nothing to eat but a jar of peanut butter and a couple of apples. But I had an old Marine Band harmonica to keep me entertained.  The train across the country seemed to take weeks, but it was my first time leaving my native land, so I was entranced watching the scenery roll by. The train dropped me in Los Angeles, but Union Station did not look like California to me.  Somehow I found some local buses to get me to Santa Monica, which looked just like the movies: bikini girls playing volleyball, muscle men roller skating, you get the point.  I still had no place to sleep and no food to eat, but I was adopted by a group of evangelical surfers. Yes, these folks claimed that G-d spoke to them through the ocean waves.  I never learned to surf with these folks, but they did feed me and offered me a ride up north. We drove up the California coast, and on the drive I got to practice my harmonica, for when they weren't surfing, these kooks were smoking weed and singing a mixture of gospel tunes and Hawaiian surfing songs.  Indeed, I smoked my first joint with these kind folks, but also ate my first tofu and seaweed soup.  I have to admit that I learned more about music and food than I did about the Bible.

We eventually got to Santa Cruz, but that's where they left me. One day we were hanging on the beach and I fell asleep while they surfed the waves. But when I woke up, they were gone. I figured I'd check some of the church soup kitchens, which they frequented, but while I lay there on the beach I saw a small dark object in the ocean. I couldn't tell what it was, but in the haze of the sunshine I kept watching it as it slowly moved to shore. It must have taken a couple of hours, but when it was just beyond the break in the waves, I waded out there and found this soggy, weather-beaten wooden canoe paddle. At least that's what I thought it was at first.  After it dried out  I could make out a label on the inside that said "Capritaurus Dulcimers."  I knew nothing about astrology, but I had heard of a dulcimer before.  I traded my harmonica for a hamburger and a set of guitar strings, strung that thing up, and began playing.  I just sat cross-legged on the Santa Cruz boardwalk and started picking out simple tunes.  And what would you know?  People started giving me change!  Yes I was busking on an instrument I didn't know how to play. But people saw this 13-year-old kid playing a weird instrument and dropped money and sometimes food in my lap.  I don't know whether those surfing hippie Christians led me to this instrument or whether it was astrological fate, but I knew at that moment that my life would only have meaning because of the dulcimer.

Oh, you know the rest. I was discovered by Ry Cooder, given a recording contract with Atlantic Records, hired as VP of folk music at Mel Bay Publishing, appointed by the President to be Curator and Artist-in-Residence at the Smithsonian, yadda, yadda, yadda.

OK.  None of that is true at all, but it's better than my telling the truth: A middle-aged, balding man living in the suburbs and driving a mid-sized sedan, I saw a dulcimer on YouTube and then bought one for myself.

I think it's safe to say that at best, the Roosebeck dulcimers are inconsistent, which would make sense since their construction seems to move from one country to another, presumably wherever labor is cheaper.  Some folks have gotten lucky with nice instruments and others have what we call dulcimer-shaped-objects, more appropriate for hanging on the wall than for making music.

Sleepingangel, don't beat yourself up over this. I was pretty lucky in finding a good instrument for my first dulcimer, but it can be hard to know what to do. I really wish McSpadden and Folkcraft would make an entry-level instrument, but since their base models start at over $400, beginners look elsewhere. Many of us suggest the student model dulcimers that some luthiers such as David "Harpmaker" Lynch sell for about $125. But without that advice, many people look to the less expensive instruments out there, which is hit-or-miss.  

What do you meant that the "spacing of the strings is wrong?"  Are they too far apart?  Too close together?  Either way, a new bridge and nut should fix the problem.  A more important question is whether the frets are spaced correctly. You can test that with an electric tuner.  Tune your open strings and then check each note as you move up the fretboard. If the intonation is off, you can definitively tell the seller that the instrument is defective.

Patricia, I love the video you posted of Erin.  The audio quality is amazing.  Is that your little mic I see attached to her dulcimer? It was nice to meet her on her trip to Cali this summer.

After I finish a little work and pour a glass of wine, I'll be listening to your latest podcast.  Thanks for all you do to celebrate the dulcimer!

Thanks for the thoughts, Wout.  There was a jug bass there, but the guy who brought it is a beginner musician and isn't very good.   He doesn't really understand the role of a bass and was just kind of mimicking the melody line.

When I played bass I did a version of what you describe, just moving from the tonic to the third, the fifth, and then back to the tonic, for example. But that was getting tedious, I think.  I was able to throw in some bass runs when the chords were changing, but I got a little stuck on those tunes that sit on the same chord for a while.

By the way, I was using the tapewound strings you recommended. I love the tone.

I joined a jug band group last night and played this acoustic bass for about 1/3 of the tunes. It was fun, but I still have a ways to go.  I just don't have enough ideas of bass riffs to play when the melody sits on one chord for a while.

Bob, I watched that whole thing and still don't quite understand how it works. It sounds pretty cool, though, like magical bells.

I don't have an answer to this question, not because I nail every tune I attempt, but just the opposite. I try to play a lot of tunes on the dulcimer, and most don't work out. Some I have never gotten (at least not yet) and others were put on the shelf for a while only to be resurrected successfully later on. 

There was one tune that I worked on really hard and could not get it at all.  I got frustrated and just threw the tablature off my desk.  But about a year later I was cleaning up and found that tab behind a bookcase.  I sat down and tried to play it, and lo and behold I was able to do it!  What had seemed impossible was now easily approachable.  The lesson for me was to never give up, but also not to get frustrated. If something is not working, put it away for a while and come back to it later on.

I also want to comment on Bob's remarks at the beginning of this conversation. I first discovered the mountain dulcimer from Stephen Seifert's video of Whiskey Before Breakfast, which had long been one of my favorite fiddle tunes.   I was entranced by Stephen's soft but quick fingering and the beautiful woody sound of the dulcimer.  Of course, I wanted to play that song and worked on it for a while.  Eventually I posted a version on Stephen's Dulcimer School, expecting to get some tips from him.  And he did offer some helpful comments. But others commented at how good it was, a couple suggesting it was ready for public performance.  That experience taught me not to measure my playing by the abilities of someone else, but only by my own desire to present my own musical ideas.  Nowadays, I only play the song a little better than I did three years ago when I posted this video , but I don't let the fact that Stephen blows me away to stop me from offering my own version of the tune.  

There are a lot of ways of being musically expressive, and even if you can't play as fast as someone else or with as many notes as someone else doesn't mean you can't find a way to say something with a song.  One cool lick might say more than a whole verse of virtuoso improvisation.  I have learned to play within my limits and to still find ways of inserting my own musical sensibilities into the tunes I play. As I've said elsewhere, if you start with a pretty tune and play it on a beautiful instrument, the real trick is to stay out of the way and not mess things up.  If I tried to play as fast as Stephen Seifert, I would mess things up for sure.

The short answer is yes, that is an A7.  

It is standard, however, in the dulcimer world to refer to chords beginning with the bass string and then moving towards you, so the chord you describe would simply be 324.  Another easy A7 is 123. And remember that in DAd tuning, all the chords are reversible, so 324 can also be 423.  123 can also be 321.  Easy, isn't it?

I have one of those quick release brass capos that look real fancy. It costs three times as much as the Ron Ewing capos and works almost as well. 

Seriously, Ron Ewing's capos are the simplest and also the best. They are also affordable. What more do you want?

That's wonderful, Strumelia!  Thanks for posting.  Paul is a phenomenal player.

The A part does indeed seem unresolved because it goes to the IV chord.  Interestingly, the modern version of the song makes that same move but a bit earlier but then goes into a melody that resembles the B part of Foster's original. The A part of the modern song seems to be a kind of mashup of the two parts of the original.

Sounds like a great time. Maybe someday I'll be able to make the trek from the left coast.

Tull Glazener sells a workshop arrangement of "Over the Rainbow." It comes with a melody and harmony part in tab and a CD that goes over the arrangement measure by measure.  You can find it at his website .

Gale, I would check with the folks at Folkcraft before doing this.  The box might indeed need greater reinforcement to handle the heavier strings.

About a year ago I asked Janita Baker at Blue Lion about buying a baritone to use as either a baritone or a bass dulcimer and she suggested that stringing it for bass would throw the intonation off. So other kinds of adjustments might be necessary.

Charles, if those dings and scratches were earned in the line of duty, then they only add to the character of the instrument.

Well perhaps as a warm-up to your week-long summer festival, you might take a weekend this spring and come up the coast to the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering. I think it's the first weekend in May this year. You could probably take Amtrak and jam the whole ride up!

Kimberly, I would second the idea of announcing ahead of time some of the tunes you are going to play. Some groups choose a song book together that everyone buys. In my group I post a list of our songs with tab on our website so people can practice before coming to the group.

In general you will want to play much slower than feels right, assuming you have lots of beginners.  It is standard in Irish sessions to play each song three times, but when people are trying to learn, that may not be enough.  When teaching songs, you may have to play more than that.

And although it isn't common enough in dulcimer circles, I spend some time demonstrating and discussing how to join the jam even when you don't know the song.  It was not written in stone on Mount Sinai that everyone has to play the melody all the time.  Teaching people how to add rhythmic or other types of accompaniment when they don't know the song will help everyone feel included.  Most people in my group play across all the strings, so I teach them how to isolate the chord changes and just play those as backup until they learn the entire melody. That also allows us to play some songs up-to-speed some of the time and still include everyone.

Condolences, Dana.

I still have my first dulcimer, though I don't play it very often.  Still, I can't get bear to part with dear Rosa.

When I decided to buy a dulcimer I checked all the local music stores.  None sold dulcimers.  But one told me (on perhaps my fourth or fifth inquiry) that they sometimes stock one or two.  About a month later there was one on the shelf, but it was unplayable.  I could tell it was cheap and crappy and what some would call not an instrument but a "dulcimer shaped object."  So I began scouring the internet for luthiers who were nearby.  I found one --Johny Nicholson of Unicorn Woodworks--whose phone number indicated he was in Northern California. But when I called it turned out that he had moved to Idaho.  I was stumped, for I wanted a decent dulcimer but I was afraid to buy one without seeing and playing it first, and on the west coast, dulcimers are few and far between. But when I explained all this, Johny told me that he still bought his wood from a shop in Berkeley, meaning twice a year he drove his little car along the highway a few miles from my house.  So on his next trip, we made a date.  I literally met him off the highway, where he got out of his car and opened his trunk, revealing not a bunch of illegal drugs, but three dulcimers. I chose the one with the rosebud soundholes, partly because the mahogany back and sides made it the least expensive of the three. But I played them all, enough to know that the intonation was good, the sustain was great, and this was a real instrument and not a mere collector's item.

On my drive home I propped the instrument up in the back seat so that I could see it in the rear view mirror, even though I had also bought a soft case. But I was so eager to play, I couldn't complete the 20-minute drive home. I pulled off the highway and into a fast food joint's parking lot, jumped in the back seat, and started to play.  In the three or four months from the time I first saw a dulcimer on YouTube to the time I bought my sweet Rosa, I had watched Bing Futch's demonstration of "Rosin the Beau" so much that I was able to play it (not very well, of course) from memory that very first day!

That was over 6 years ago.  Since then I have purchased more expensive and fancier-sounding dulcimers, but I still have Rosa.  Because so few people know of Johny Nicholson and Unicorn Woodworks, were I to sell it, I would not get close to what the quality of the dulcimer is worth, and for that reason as well as pure sentimentality, I still have it.  The tone may not be as big and round as my other dulcimers costing three or four times what Rosa cost, but Rosa still has that precise intonation, the great sustain, and a pop or punch that many fancier dulcimers lack.  Plus, she was my first.

Thanks, Robin. Every now and then I see a Sunhearth for sale. I know they are very well respected dulcimers.  There was one I should have scooped up on Ebay, for it had a very low asking price, but the seller didn't know who the maker was.  In my dumb honesty, I sent him a message telling him in was a Sunhearth, and suddenly the asking price went way up, beyond my means at the time.

And a lot of people praise their Jerry Rockwell dulcimers. I wish I could hear one live.