Number of dulcimers
General mountain dulcimer or music discussions
Thanks Jan, I couldn't have put it any better myself and yes I too have experienced this very thing myslef. To quote you:.....
"Now, with dulcimers--after a bumpy start-- I finally have a better focus on what I want (and why)--and that focus is narrowing all the time!"
My collection of 25 did nothing but tell me what it is I'm happy with and what it'd take to produce a viable instrument for self entertainment and for accompanyment with my wife or other instruments. Woods again not so important, but durability and play is most important to me. I've entrenched myself to the desire to own and play six string instruments (dulcimer that is) and have them tuned to the key of G or baritone in the dulcimer family even though I'll be as apt to play the melody line with harmonies along with it. This is what made it so easy to select the features of my next Probst instrument and know what would be important to me in the purchase. It's still hard to shake some of the interests of that collection namely the beautiful woods and laminations of woods found in a Nic Hambas dulcimer or the haunting sounds produced by His bowed dulcimer as well. It just happens to be a truth that I do not exceptionally play a bowed instrument and that of a bowed dulcimer so I know to stay away from them as they are only an expense to an otherwise overburdened budjet of dulcimer collecting.
I'm still a fan of the unique and different and that produced many of the dulcimer examples in my former collection and is something I have to constantly guard against lest it happen all over again. That and there are entirely too many dulcimers out there to collect (I'm talking types of dulcimers here) and if you only had one of each (doable unlike every mineral in the world) it would still be way to many different instruments to try and master. A slide dulcimer, walking dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, bowed dulcimer, may all have the name dulcimer in common and may also have a diatonic scale in common, but that is where the similarities end and then you realize that you have several entirely different instruments each of which have a learning curve that will not transfer to any of the other instruments listed here. It would be like picking an instrument from each of every division in a modern orchastra and thinking that you'd be albe to play and excell at each and every one of thim. As I've posted prior to this, my brother and I have had the oportunity to learn a number of different instruments, but that doesn't mean that we were good at any one of them. No rather it meant that we were lackluster on every one of them and it distracted us from excelling on any specific one of them. Now that I know this, I will keep my collection to one type "The Mountain Dulcimer" and one mode and tuning G of mixilydian mode and stick there for the next forseeable future until I get to where I actually can play a few tunes and play by ear songs that I've never attempted before. Kevin.