Forum Activity for @dusty

Wout, I think you have the main idea, but you might be thinking too literally.  In common American parlance, a "game changer" is an idea, technique, or event that significantly changes the manner of doing something.

So Jan was asking people what they had discovered in their own dulcimer development that significantly changed in a positive manner how they were playing and learning the dulcimer.  So yes, indeed, it is a matter of growth. But not the slow, incremental type of growth that you might get from practicing scales every day, but the growth that comes from a specific change that leads to a big leap in your understanding or ability.

First of all, this is a great question, Jan.  Thanks.

Second, I have two responses, one physical and one mental.

 When I first started playing, I had trouble controlling the dulcimer. It would slip all over my lap and sometimes even sort of tip over.  To keep the dulcimer in place I used to use the moveable arms of my office chair to hold the dulcimer on my lap. But that meant I could only play in my office.  Eventually I got up the courage to drill small holes in my precious instrument and install strap buttons.  Immediately the dulcimer became mine. I know not everyone plays with a strap, but I have found that physically attaching the instrument to my body gives me much more control over it and a much more intimate relationship with it.

 I had a mental epiphany one day trying to fingerpick, but it is something that works for any modern style of playing.   I was trying to add little filler in between melody notes and I realized that as long as my left hand was fretting a chord, any note I played would be OK. So I tried to make sure that as I played the melody I was always ready to play a chord, and then I let my fingerpicking hand just pluck strings almost randomly. I now do that when I play with flatpick, too. I'll just throw a basenote in whenever there is a break in the melody, or play a quick arpeggio, or whatever. You don't have to plan it ahead of time or even think about what you're doing.  As long as your left hand is fretting a chord, any string can be played. It's really liberating not to have to worry about hitting a wrong string. And sometimes starting with one or two strings will lead to a short idea for a melodic filler.  But it all starts with knowing that playing a chord makes any string safe to play at any time.

Nice story, Robert. I'm sure it's gratifying to finally "free" your dulcimer and let her sing.

Great news, Dana!  Woohoo!  It's time for a happy dance! 

Check out this discussion at Everything Dulcimer . You will find links to audio versions, video versions, and also tablature both for noter/drone play and for chorded play.

Jan is sorta kinda probably correct, or not.  The West Virginia fiddler Ernie Carpenter wrote the song (in the 1950s, I think) and you would expect it to be under copyright. However, I have not found any evidence that the song is copyrighted, and everyone (not just dulcimer players) seems to both credit Carpenter for its composition and also post music and tablature freely.

Vicki, you might contact folkcraft to see if they sell possum boards custom fitted for their dulcimers.

But all you really need is a board.  Peter Tommerup just uses a board originally intended for a bookself, and he puts whatever dulcimer he is playing on it.  Here he is in a duet with his wife Leann: https://youtu.be/DWfnkcGS1Y0?t=4m53s .

Seamas, one of the members of my local dulcimer group shared a pretty and simple arrangement with us. I normally wouldn't feel fre to share his arrangments, but he did give me permission to post it on our website. You can find it on the RCD Songlist page at www.rivercitydulcimers.com .

C'est super cool, ça!  Thanks for letting us know about that, Pierre!  I obviously need to get to know Malicorne better, huh?

Archie, if you are just looking for strings, you don't need a dulcimer store. Dulcimer strings are no different than guitar or mandolin or banjo strings. Steel is steel.  All you need to know is the gauge of the strings you want and whether you need ball or loop ends.  Then you can buy strings from any music store.

And the 26" is probably the vibrating string length, meaning the distance from the nut to the bridge, not the total length of the instrument, so your instrument and the other one are probably about the same size.

Lots of people seem confused about how to create a new forum discussion.  It is easy.

First, within the Forum you want to take part in, click on the "+" button to "create" a new discussion.

Second, choose a descriptive title for your discussion. The title should have enough information that others can tell what the topic is.  Titles such as "Two quick questions" or "friendly advice" are not very informative. Instead, "questions about noter technique" or "how do I use a capo" are much more helpful.  

Third, describe your question or comments in the text box, where you can embed pictures, or link to other sites or other pages on this one, insert smilies, and more.  

Fourth, click "Create New Topic."

Fifth, don't forget to "follow" your own discussion to receive notifications when others reply.

Sandra, to post an instrument for sale, start a new discussion in the For Sale Forum by clicking the "+" button.

Then you need to add the relevent information. The title should include the type of dulcimer and the words "For Sale."  Then describe the dulcimer, including details such as your asking price, and include a picture or two if you can. Click "create new topic" when you're done.

I played guitar for most of my life (not always very seriously) before discovering the dulcimer in my mid-40s.  The diatonic fretboard was very hard to understand coming from a chromatic instrument (and I still find it maddening) in ways that it wouldn't if the dulcimer were your first instrument.  But what did carry over and made me an intermediate player within an hour of holding a dulcimer was technique.  My right hand was already very advanced, and even my left hand understood fully how to fret strings, how to employ slides and hammer-ons and pull-offs and that stuff. So a lot of the technique carries over between the two instruments.  In terms of understanding the fretboard, well that's a different question.

If I get frustrated with the dulcimer (my main instrument now), I will take a break and play another one (guitar, ukulele, etc). Sometimes I'll play something on one of those instruments and try to find it on the dulcimer, thus reinvigorating my dulcimer playing, even if that lick or that song has to be altered to fit on the dulcimer.

Here is the video Dan refers to above:

Patricia, guitars were always there in my life.  I do not have a genesis story of the moment I discovered the guitar. Or the piano. Or almost any other instrument.  But the dulcimer is different. I can tell you when I first heard the dulcimer and how it affected (infected?) me.  Most dulcimer players have similar stories.  It might be nice if you began collecting those stories and shared them periodically on your Podcast.  You could ask people to send you emails that you could edit and recite, people could share audio files directly, or you could interview folks as you visit different dulcimer festivals.  It could be a recurring part of your podcasts.  Many people wax poetic when talking about their first exposure to the dulcimer. And for you guys it would be like crowdsourcing but for content instead of finances.

Ken, was just reading through some of the recipes you posted. Definitely made me hungry.  Lady Sally is lucky to have you catering (literally) to her desires.

One thought: if you find the walnuts in the Waldorf Failure to be too bitter, perhaps you could use candied walnuts. It might mean less apple or mandarin or other of the sweet stuff, but it would be a way to increase the use of one of the required ingredients. Just a thought.

 Kimberly, I responded earlier today to your identical question in the Ask the Moderators forum, where I posted a link to the DPN article.  Check it out here .

The link Lisa points us to looks good to me.

Let me also suggest that you can alwasy download the free trial version of Tabledit, which lets you do digital tab up to 16 or 24 measures, I think.  You have to pay if you want more than that. But you can always just print out a blank page from that software.

Please, call me Dusty.  Mr. Turtle is my dad. 

Travis, I play fairly often in a multi-instrument jam and move very easily among the keys of C, D, G, and A, as well as their relative minors of Am, Bm, Em, and F#m.

I tune CGc to get the keys of C and Am.  The rest I get out of a DAd tuning with the use of a capo.  The capo at the third fret gives you G and Em and the fret at the fourth fret gives you A and F#m. 

The advantage to this is that you are playing in a 1-5-8 tuning the whole time, so everything you have learned in that tuning can be used in any of those keys, and your playing can be more versatile than limiting yourself to chords, as you would have to do if you stayed in DAd and used a lot of barre chords.

And by this same system you could get the key of F (or Dm) by tuning CGc and putting the capo at the third fret.  So that gives you 10 keys already without having to carry around more than one dulcimer.

You're a good man, Rob N. Lackey.

Hey rwarren.

Over the years I've used several items from the Happy Traum and the folks at Homespun.  They are all really good.  I used a couple of bluegrass packages (including the 4-hour bluegrass workout, which I highly recommend) and one harmony singing course (by Robin and Linda Williams) as well.

I don't know the Lorrain Lee Hammond dulcimer course, but she was a pioneer in the modern dulcimer and if you are a beginner, that is probably a good product.

I have a copy of the David Schnaufer DVD and can say that it's very good, but he doesn't teach a general approach to the dulcimer as much as teach a series of songs.  I think the only general information he provides is some stuff on playing the major scale both up the fretboard and across the strings. But then he just goes into the songs.  So the Schnaufer DVD would be good only if you want to learn those songs, whereas the Hammond CD set is probably a more coherent introduction to the dulcimer.

Those are the only two dulcimer items I know of offered by Happy Traum.

I think Stephen made the important points, eli.  McSpaddens are consistently good instruments and hold their value well.

At some point in the past--perhaps Ken could tell us when--they stopped using plywood for the backs and started making all solid wood dulcimers.

They also sell kits, and I would not suggest buying one made from a kit unless you could hold it and play it first.  Just ask what the label inside the dulcimer says; it will indicate if it were made in the shop or was a kit that someone bought and made for themselves.

Lots of folks name their dulcimers.  I never named any of my guitars or mandolins, but most of my dulcimers have names. The first one I ever bought has rosebud soundholes and I named her Rosita.  Later I obtained a baritone teardrop with rose soundholes and named that one Tia Rosa.  I got my Blue Lion from FOTMD member Jeannie in Paradise and named it Queenie, partly in honor of Jeannie and partly because my daughter insisted that since female lions do the hunting they should be considered the queens of the jungle.  I have another named Lucinda and my daughter named her octave dulcimer with dolphin soundholes Splash.  But oddly, the the dulcimer I play most often is just my dulcimer.  No name.  

And I mean no offense, but dulcimers have such beautiful curves, they have to have female names.  I guess Lexie and I just don't agree on that.  Maybe a Tennessee music box could be called Fred or Barney, but an hourglass has to be female, especially if its voice is as alluring as the sirens' song.

Having those two options of how to join a forum is excellent. If you've been following it regularly, you would only want to see the most recent posts. Otherwise, you can join in the beginning and catch up. Some of these changes will be second nature to us all once we get used to the nuances of our new home.

It all makes sense. (But that doesn't mean that I'm not scared by the way Strumelia wields that red pen -- like an English teacher on a warpath!)

John, I am confused. Why would you want to make your screen narrower and narrower?  Instead of changing the shape of your screen, use CTRL - to decrease its size and CTRL + to increase it. That way the aspect ratio stays the same.

On my laptop, I can reduce the size of the screen as much as I want and it all stays visible and functional.  When I increase its size, it works until 150%, when it looks like Dan's screenshot above. But no matter how the site is laid out, if you increase more and more eventually you will run out of space. You can break the laws of man, but not the laws of physics.

I don't see any differences between IE, Firefox, and Chrome in terms of the size of the screen.

Dan, I'm sorry you're having trouble here, but your anger seems misplaced.  As testified to by others, the site is working on iPads, Kindles, Nooks, and both tablets and phones using Adroid. So your insistence that there is a coding problem with the site is suspect at best.  Not only that, but Strumelia, myself, and others have spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to help you.

I will say this as plainly as I can. The toolbar should not be there. Instead, on mobile devices, you get the mobile menu icon, which is that series of 6 white squares and rectangles. I can see it on your screenshot, so I know it's there. When you click that, you get a menu that has all the options of the toolbar. Please give it a try.

Dan, if you purposefully zoomed in, then the only issue is that the tool bar that would show up on a website viewed from a pc is now in the mobile menu icon, meaning those white squares and rectangles.  Click on that and a new toolbar will appear with all the options you would normally see. It did not exist on the old site because that site was not enabled for tablets and smartphones. This one is.  The mobile interface is not identical to the regular website view, but once you get used to it, it should function better.  (For the record, I still use my pc whenever I actually want to do anything other than listen to tunes.)

Hmm . . . are you saying I'm dumb?  Them's fightin' words. 

You are correct, almost.  I do indeed see that same toolbar when I go do "Discussions."  When I go to my Home Page, however, I have a drop-down menu rather than a tool bar.  And in some areas (Music, Audio, Groups, etc.) there is neither a toolbar nor a dropdown menu.   The mobile menu icon is always there, so navigation is always possible, but it seems odd that there are different possibilities in different screens.

P.S. I was only kidding about fighting.  I would only punch you with my lips on your cheek  .

Strumelia, using my Android phone (a new Samsung Galaxy S6) I do indeed see the mobile menu icon when I go to the FOTMD main page. In that sense, I can navigate the site fine.

However, if I access the site directly from an email notification, not only does that icon appear on the upper left, but I also have another tool bar (which takes up two rows in portrait mode) that lists "discussions," "newest posts," "my posts," "settings," "categories," and "your settings." When I go directly to the FOTMD homepage, I do not see that toolbar.

And yes, Dan's screenshot looks like he is zoomed in too much.

Dan, you might need to reduce the size of the screen. Depending on how big your tablet is, that might make it hard to read the words, but it looks to me like you have it sized at least to 125% if not 150%, and you can't get the whole screen. You mention zooming in above, but I think you need to zoom out.

For the record, I just tried for the first time to access the site from my Kindle HD 7, and it works great. The site automatically resizes when I switch from landscape to portrait mode and I see the entire site with all the buttons.  The print is a little small, but I have glasses that make me see like a marksman. 

However, I did just try to view the site from my Android phone, and I find the tool bar is hidden in ways similar to Dan's screen even though the rest of the page fits fine. Maybe there is an Android problem.

I don't necessarily have an opinion about whether one should learn melody or chords first, but I can corroborate Travis's assumption that most guitar teachers start with chords.  I think the reason is simply that with a few chords one can quickly accompany one's singing. It is also the case that most single note work on the guitar is built out of left-hand chord positions (I am not joking that it took me 15-20 years of playing to figure that out, but I am almost entirely self-taught).

I certainly wish you the best, but I do agree that a guitar player who is not familiar with the dulcimer may not be the best teacher. You might consider Skype lessons from a dulcimer teacher.  Just the fact that you are asking about rare chords makes me think your teacher may not really "get" a diatonic fretboard.

Just a quick note on Janita Baker's use of the DAA#d tuning: you can't strum. She fingerpicks, and that A# string allows her to get all the chromatic notes, which is why she can play jazz and ragtime and stuff. But if you follow her tablature and try to strum across all the strings, it will sound terrible.  The tuning only works for her style of fingerpicking.

Try this one: https://www.oldtownschool.org/classes/adults/fiddle/tunes/ . I think those are all MP3 files.

Janet, I am no expert on Apple products, but my understanding is that older versions of Quick Time can play midi files.  Try to install QT 7 and see if that works.

Another (more time consuming) solution would be to use one of the many free online audio converters to convert the midi files to mp3 files.  If you put "Free online audio coverter) in the Google search bar, you'll find plenty of options.  Don't use any that ask you to register or demand payment.

Michael, if you can afford it, you might consider sending your instrument back to Folkcraft and asking them to install a pickup.  Find out how much that would run you.

If it's too much, Rob's suggestion of the Schatten Dualie is a good idea.  I've never used one myself but I've heard good things from several other folks.

 John, once you've logged in and your UserName appears to up on the top toolbar, hover your cursor over your name. A drop-down menu will appear, and one option is "Account Settings."  You can see all the variables that you can change on your account.  You will see two lines for "password" and "repeat password." Put the new password you want in both places.  After you save that page, a pop-up will tell you that you need to indicated your "existing" password to make that change. The "existing" password is the auto-generated one that you were sent by email. Once you enter that, your new password will be active.

Jan, I can see why the upright cart might take up less floor space, but it also limits the kind of items you can carry. Smaller items in the bottom would be a hassle to grab, I would think. My cart becomes a kind of catch-all, where I can toss a bottle of water, my keys, someone's business card, a string winder, a jacket or hat or whatever. The festivals I've attended apparently don't have the same space issues yous peak of. But I tend to find a little spot to make my own where I park my cart and then take whatever instrument and other supplies I need to any given workshop. At the Berkeley Dulcimer Gathering about a week ago, we emptied out a couple of classrooms to gather the chairs and music stands for larger groups. I just put my cart in one of the empty classrooms, and that became my little spot, not only to store my stuff but to get away for a quiet moment here and there. It was right next to the room I used for the workshop I taught so it was really convenient. But you are right; if I had to take the cart with me everywhere I went, it would be a hassle.

When I played at a small arts fair with a few other folks some time ago I had to bring two dulcimers and a guitar as well as some mics and cords and other stuff. When I arrived I heard the other musicians wondering if I needed help carrying all my stuff and wondering if they should try to call me to find out where I was. They got a kick out of my cart of instruments when they saw me. And I've also used it to play for my daughter's class in school, when I cart in a whole bunch of instruments: a ukulele, a mandolin, an autoharp, a six- and twelve-string guitar, a couple of limberjacks, and, of course, a dulcimer. I have to admit I get a kick out of walking around the school with my cart of instruments like a modern troubadour.

I used to use what I called every boy's dream red wagon. It was a Radio Flyer all-terrain wagon, with big nobby tires, wooden panels for the sides, and so forth. But I had to take it apart to get it to fit in my car, so I had to carry tools with me wherever I went.

Then my daughter started playing in the fancy soccer leagues where teams travel to weekend tournaments, and we saw all the seasoned soccer families with these collapsible wagons. We got one. It's great. I've taken it to my last two dulcimer festivals, hauling around two dulcimer cases, a file box of tablature, a thermos, a music stand, a chair, and more. It's light, it folds up easily, holds lot of odd-sized stuff, and it helps you create that "home base" wherever you are.

It's on sale now at Dick's Sporting Goods , but I don't get a percentage, so I don't care if you buy one there or not. I also just checked some of the consumer reviews. Lots of complaints about the smell. I don't remember it being that bad, but we keep ours in the garage, so it probably aired out before we ever had to use it.

Babs, remember that guitar straps have to hold up the weight of the guitar, but a dulcimer is going to be supported by your lap, even if you hold it in place with a strap. If the screws that come with the strap buttons seem too long, feel free to use smaller ones. I have done that on two of my dulcimers.

A couple of other pieces of advice: as Jan suggests, put some soap on the screw before you screw it into the pre-drilled hole. It will make it easier. And screw by hand; don't use an electric driver. Just take it slowly and you'll be fine.

Also remember that you might not need a strap button on the head of the dulcimer. You can just loop underneath the strings and around the head. That way you can avoid drilling into the body of your dulcimer. There are lots of inexpensive products you can buy to facilitate this. Chech out this Planet Waves quick release or this leather device by Martin . And some straps come with leather strips to attach to the headstock instead of a hole to attach to a strap button.