Forum Activity for @dulcidom

Mountain Dulcimer Picture in Mathematics Magazine

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Thank you @nate for these clarifications. I observed the same phenomenon on my spectrograms, indeed. Let's not forget that if we make a string vibrate, the sounds perceived are those produced by the entire instrument, that is to say, air and wood. By comparing different dulcimers built in different woods, I noted a whole variety of responses, for the same frequency, depending on the wood used. These variations affected both the number of overtones perceived, their amplitudes at attack and decay, and their sustain.

Mountain Dulcimer Picture in Mathematics Magazine

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

To put it simply and summarize my previous post, it seems that the sound in the middle of the string is "warmer" and "mellow" because it is energetically dominated by low odd overtones that mimic the perfect major chord (#1 = root, #3 = fifth to the octave and #5 = major third to the superoctave). This perfection is gradually broken going towards the bridge, activating less consonant overtones of higher frequencies....

Mountain Dulcimer Picture in Mathematics Magazine

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

Thank you for this very interesting discussion.

Excited by the question,I took some measurements on the melody string of one of my dulcimers with an acoustic spectrometer. I successively plucked the string at different points along the VSL, starting in the middle (fret 7) and gradually moving toward the bridge.

The measurements showed that all the notes emitted had exactly the same scale of overtones (I measured up to the 27th...).Qualitatively speaking, none of the resulting sounds was purer than any other, wherever the string was plucked.

The only visible difference between all these sounds was the energy associated with each individual wave. I read somewhere in this thread that the octave (second overtone) might be responsible for the mellowness of the note obtained in the middle of the string, but this overtone was actually almost nonexistent at this plucking point, where odd overtones #3, #5, and #7 dominated the vibrational energy. The octave only appeared when moving toward the bridge, around frets 11-12, and disappeared again toward the bridge.

Near the bridge, too, the vibrational energy was distributed between overtones #3 to #8 with higher frequencies, in keeping with the brightness of the resulting sound, and its slightly acidic character, given that the higher overtones become a bit dissonant (this is quite noticeable for #7).

If that helps...

Connection Between Hammered and Mountain Dulcimers?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

For those interested in such historical details concerning (especially) the hammered dulcimer, I highly recommend the thesis by the late David Kettlewell, downloadable at :

https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/The_dulcimer/9332858

Connection Between Hammered and Mountain Dulcimers?

General mountain dulcimer or music discussions

If I may add a few details....

Reading the excellent books by Ralph Lee Smith: "The Story of the Dulcimer" and especially "Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions" clearly shows that the name "dulcimer" (or "dulcimore " and other variations) was already in use for the fretted dulcimer well before (at least a century) the folk revival of the 1970s. I have a little personal hypothesis about this strange disambiguation of the two types of dulcimers :

The King James I Bible, first published in 1611, quickly became the version authorized by the Church of England. The passages that interest us are in the book of Daniel: 5, 10 and 15.:

"Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made".

In this text, "dulcimer" is used to translate the Aramaic word "sumponiah", itself derived from the Greek "symphonia" (in fact, a kind of bagpipe), which the translators did not really know what to do with at the time. It was therefore the (hammered) dulcimer, very fashionable at the time, which saved them the day, thereby making this instrument an instrument of biblical times.

In the depths of Appalaches, with practically only the Bible to read, the hardy pioneers also found themselves in the embarrassment of baptizing the youngest of the family of alpine zithers, derived from the unpronounceable Dutch "scheitholt" or "zither". It was necessary to accompany the hymns, an instrument accepted by the Church, unlike the violin (the devil's box). What's better than an instrument name quoted in the Holy Scriptures? And there you have it, the Appalachian "dulcimer".

Homonymy was not a problem for almost two hundred years, when the two instruments had well separated geographical domains. It was only after the Second World War and the folk revival and the arrival of Jean Ritchie (the damsel with a dulcimer) in New York that the need for two distinct qualifiers arose : the hammered dulcimer and the pinched/plucked/fretted/lap dulcimer...

Of course, it's nothing but a(nother) hypothesis. Sorry if I was a bit long.