Dulcimer a la mode will give you easy songs in various modes.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5962094-dulcimer-a-la-mode-with-cd
The Wonderful World of DAA is another good starting place.
Sad news. The other Tuesday (4 June) we had our Sheltie, Angus, put down.
Big hug, Paul.
@tssfulk I imagine Bosse may be getting to spend time outdoors soon.
@David-Bennett Did Sally play Gray Cat on a Tennessee Farm?
Yes, we'll be heading for southern Sweden (Skåne) in 3 weeks. :)
Nice! We need more dulcimer players in Europe. :) Have fun!
Bosse (She's a girl, but has a male name. Ask my daughter why.) She's a "dvärgvädur," which seems hard to translate. Maybe Mini Lop, Hollad Lop, Dwarf Lop.
She's normally in my daughter's room (we live in an apartment), but every summer she gets to spend some time outdoors at grandma and grandpa's in southern Sweden.
"The Unquiet Grave" in Aeolian Mode.
The other day I started reading The Urban Fantasy Anthology by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale. The very first story, set in 1970, was "A Bird that Whistles" by Emma Bull about a young banjo player who meets a charismatic, handsome and great musician. I was immediately greeted with a great opening sentence, "The dulcimer player sat on the back steps of Orpheus Coffeehouse." The musician, a fiddle and guitar player, was just trying out the dulcimer, but there were references to "Shady Grove," other folk songs and tuning the banjo to "mountain minor."
Where else have you encountered dulcimers in films or in books?
I really want an e-ink Gvido ( https://www.gvido.tokyo) but they are outrageously expensive. 
I'll probably end up getting an A4 e-ink reader like the Boox Max2 instead if the double screens music readers don't go down in price ( https://onyxboox.com/boox_max2).
Regarding learning by ear vs. sheet music: This is a complex issue and both sides have their purpose.
I think that if you look at the oral tradition vs. printed books, you can see a parallel to learning music orally or by written sheet music.
The oral tradition although it could be epic in length, used repeated rhythm and rhyming patterns to help people learn the story/poem/legend/etc. Written words allowed authors to break away from those patterns to produce more complex written styles. Although not impossible, it would be hard to memorize a novel by Tolstoy or James Joyce.
I play in a symphonic orchestra, and cannot even imagine trying to learn a symphony by ear. Yes, it could be done, but it is much easier to read the music. When you have lots of different instruments and complex arrangements, sheet music allows competent musicians to play together without even having heard the music before.
A good classical musician will hear the written notes in their head while reading music. It's very internalized after years of practice. I've been playing my secondary instrument (euphonium) a lot at home the past year, but I noticed how my body doesn't react as instinctively as when playing trombone. With trombone I see the note, my arm moves without much conscious thought, my lips buzz the pitch and the sound comes out. With euphonium, my fingers aren't as automatic as my slide arm. So although my lips are ready with the pitch, my fingers can get tripped up or delayed. LOL. The same should be with dulcimer playing, although dulcimer has the added complication of different modal tunings, so the brain and body need to learn them all.
When you look at the folks tales and folk songs versus books and classically written music. You see where the the author/composer's intent has little with the former, and each reteller/resinger creates a new version but within the tradition. The stories are songs are truly the people's. With books and symphonies, etc., you can interpret what the author meant or how the composer wished the music to be played. Even if readers and musicians can create their own interpretation of the works, the creator of the original is very much at the heart of the work.
Learning folk music should lean more heavily on the oral tradition (with the help of sheet music and recorded music for those that need it in the beginning), just as classical music should lean more heavily on the written tradition (with help from a good ear and hearing other musicians playing the piece).
When my first child was born here in Sweden, I started looking for American folk songs to sing to him. There were no American folk singers around in Örebro to learn from, so I ordered a book from the Internet, played the melodies on the piano and sang along. Then I started hunting the Internet (then via Napster LOL) for recorded versions of all the songs. I started singing without the sheet music (hard hold a music book while also holding a crying baby), using my ear to create my own version of the songs, mixing the various versions of lyrics and playing around with embellishments. So it was a mixture of sheet music at first for the new songs (or to refresh my memory for songs I heard/sang as a child) and then a healthy dose of playing by ear and experimentation.
So neither side should look down upon the other. Great musicians can come from either tradition.
I started with flute in 5th grade, then switched to alto saxophone in 7th grade. Since then, I've played around with several recorders and the tin whistle. But for the last couple of years I've gotten into playing Native American Flute.
Great! My oldest son (17) plays the recorder really well and messes around with a bansuri flute from India, but he keeps talking about getting another flute. Which Native American flute makers can you recommend?
I'm a bass trombonist and euphonium player. The dulcimer is my first try at a stringed instrument.
