Forum Activity for @shanonmilan

Please share your performance.

@DaveBerry, beautiful music, talented artists, and awesome video. Thanks for sharing!

I bet the lack of videos of dulcimer and mandolin playing together is now pushing you to make a video of it.

Many thanks for sharing the interview, Steve! 

Does anyone have information on these dulcimers?  It is 3-string, tuned DAD, and elliptical shape. Amazingly sweet sound.  My sister had 9 that she used when teaching. All now sold but one and I have a potential buyer but would like any information available to provide to the buyer. 

The combination of instruments in use guarantees some excellent tunes for dancing.

Hi, Matthew!  It's good to have you here on this site.  Lots of info and music to be learned.  If at some future date you'd like to try your hand at playing a historic reproduction of early noter-drone dulcimers (some of us call them "dulcimores"), there are a few builders of them on the site.  Have fun!

I agree with Ken. That's a great interview. You did a good job. Thanks for sharing it.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

Hi @matthewlyon and welcome to FOTMD.  Glad to hear you've come back to the mountain dulcimer again.  And certainly, playing a dulcimer with really high action would be more comfortable in a noter style.

Looking for  6 string Blue Lion. Force-d’Ossche.  
please let me know if you have, or know of one?  

thanks a bunch

And I do hope this post is in the proper place? 

Hello all, thought I'd post an introduction here... I realized that my earlier attempt was on my own personal profile page! 

I'm recently returning to playing dulcimer; I played back in the late 1970's as a teenager and play several other instruments (guitar, banjo, uke, fiddle, Celtic harp, tin whistle, etc) and currently lead a community ukulele group with my wife.

I'm playing noter/drone style pretty exclusively with an interest in traditional diatonic music from a variety of sources from Appalachian old-time to bagpipe music and European folk of various types. My wife surprised me with a dulcimer earlier this month and it's very well suited to noter style... 29.25" VSL, pretty high action and no "extra" frets, it's purely diatonic. It's kind of a mystery as to how old it is and who built it. Very folksy craftsmanship, but the frets are accurate and it sounds good, so noter style it is!

We live in western Montana where dulcimer players are few and far between but I'm a childhood transplant here from Southern Illinois with many generations of folks from Kentucky... perhaps there's a dulcimer player not too far back in my family tree. Really enjoying browsing the forum, it's a great resource and so much knowledge here! Cheers, ML

Great Interview!   

The weather in Italy will be lovely next March. Wouldn't it be nice to have a mountain dulcimer festival there? Read on, in my "Conversations with Mountain Dulcimer Players" blog:

Conversation with Gianna Williams

I've made and played a number of all maple dulcimers over the years.   Durable certainly; it's maple after all, not Aspen or Balsa wood.   A bit harder than walnut or cherry.

 "Good sound", like "Beauty" is in the eye/ear of the beholder.  What you consider "good" might not be so 'good' to me or someone else.  I prefer a "highly silvery" sound, where others prefer a more "mellow" tone like a baritone uke or guitar.  This is why we highly recommend you hear the dulcimer you're going to buy.  

Thank you so much for the words of wisdom!  As usual, they are much appreciated!

You do indeed see lots of dulcimers made entirely of a single hard tonewood, most commonly walnut, but cherry and maple as well.  They are not as common as dulcimers with  one of those woods for the back and sides and soft tonewood such as spruce, cedar or redwood for the top.  The top plays a bigger part in the sound than do the back and sides, so an all-maple dulcimer would, as Strumelia says, have a bright, crisp tone. Additionally, it would likely have exceptional sustain. I believe Linda Brockinton mainly plays an all-maple McSpadden specifically for the extra sustain to enhance her soft, fingerstyle play.

Speaking further about sound box sizes-  I also have an all-curly-maple hummel (mtn dulcimer like in many ways) which has a very large and deep sound box/body... and even though it's all maple it has a big resonant mellow tone. My maple mtn dulcimer has a very shallow depth body, and thus its voice is crisp and clear, less 'mellow'. They are both all maple but very different body dimensions and so have different tones.

"Good" sound can mean something different depending on personal taste.  Both my all-maple instruments sound wonderful, but they sound very different from each other!

My Keith Young curly maple dulcimer is all maple, even the fingerboard, and it sounds great and is in perfect condition after 26 years. I used it for this site's logo . Maple has a nice crisp sound, as opposed to slightly 'mellower' tone of walnut or spruce for example. It's also pretty hard, so (I'm guessing) would be a little less likely to get dinged. That said, I feel the volume and dimensions of the sound box tends to be a bigger factor in the tone of the sound than the type of wood does.

Is a dulcimer with maple top, sides and back considered to be a good sounding, durable dulcimer?

Reminder:  Members are allowed to have no more than two threads at any given time in our For Sale forum. Please contact me or another moderator for help in removing threads you no longer want active. Thanks!

New Stew Mac fret saw never used , I have a table saw fretting system now.  60.00 free shipping lower 48

 saw1.jpg - 27KB

AS Strumelia (the boss) said 3 years ago. Let's keep the discussion to the original topic Question:  String Break Angles, VSL, Radii, Excessive String Length

All it needs to maintain is its tune.

I want to hear what pleasant concertina sound is.

I just love this thread and the people who make it as it is.

Appreciate everyone's input. I decided to drop and couple of strings and am now down to four (I kept the octave string at the bottom. I like it a lot more, but may end up going to 3 strings. I'm learning to play finger dance and fewer strings makes everything easier.

Another possible direction is to use the extra strings to create a non-standard sound.  I typically tune my five string dulcimers with an unmatched pair of notes in the upper and lower courses.  Use of DA-a-da yields a very contemporary sound that is great for improvising.  When playing with double strings it is important to have the action low at the nut so that it is easy to fret them.  Lots to try- have fun exploring.

Dusty - Great information. Thank you. I've been playing around with DAD and DGD and I've found I prefer DGD. For me the chord shapes seem easier to finger for the most part, through the first five frets anyway, and the melody string integrates easier. But I'm a rank newbie so it may change in time. Thanks for the help.

Brad

I think there are two questions there, Brad. The first is why tuning to D became standard and the second is why DAd (or 1-5-8 or the mixolydian tuning) is so common.

I'm pretty sure that once upon a time, people would tune a dulcimer to whatever tone resonated most saliently in that given dulcimer.  They would "hoo in the hole," literally hum into the soundhole, find a tone that sounded really special, and tune to that.  Later on, I think tuning to C was most common, and to be honest, I wish we still tuned to C because it would make explaining music theory so much easier.  But I think around the time of the dulcimer renaissance in the late 60s or early 70s, people began tuning to D to play with fiddles, since there are so many fiddle tunes in D (and A -- It's those pesky guitar and banjo players who like playing in G).

In traditional drone play, you have to change the tuning of your melody string depending on the mode or scale of the melody you are playing.  In the key of D, the four most common tunings are DAA, DAd, DAC, and DAG.  The first two sound major and the latter two sound kind of minor.

When the 6+ fret became common--and it's pretty standard these days--a player could play in the mixolydian (DAd) or ionian (DAA) modes without re-tuning. How convenient!

You will often hear that chording is easier in DAd than in DAA.  I do not believe that the simple act of playing a chord is easier in one tuning than the other. And I actually prefer the sound of chords in DAA better than in DAd. They are more compact and more coherent.

This is only a theory, but I think playing melody & chords together is easier in DAd because out of one chord position you can reach a greater range of notes, basically three frets' worth.  The whole trick to chord/melody style is to be able to capture the melody out of chord positions with a minimum of hand movement.  And DAd simply gives us a greater tonal range out of any one hand position.  Anyway, that's my theory.

I happen to play in DAd 90 percent of the time because that was the most common tuning when I first started playing and I want to be able to play by instinct as much as possible, so that a musical idea goes from my head (or my heart) to my fingers with no hesitation, something that is much easier if you stick to one tuning. I also have a 1+ fret on my main playing dulcimers and find that with the 1+ and 6+, there is rarely a melody I can't get.

But I would never say that one tuning is superior to another.  DAd happens to be the most common these days, and that's why I started with it.  Now it's comfortable.  When I tune to other tunings, I have to think about what I'm doing, and who wants to do that?!

Dusty, I see what you mean about the chromatic template. Thanks for the help. 

Just out of curiosity, why is DAD tuning so popular?

Seems like I am going to check this software soon.

Brad, I would suggest not using a chromatic template to map chords for the diatonic fretboard.  It might suffice for now as a quick reference to find a specific chord, but it will hinder your long-term understanding of the fretboard.  As I mentioned early on in this discussion, one of the challenges with chord shapes on the dulcimer is that they change from major chords to minor chords as you move up and down the fretboard. In order to begin understanding why that happens, you have to see where those fat and skinny frets are.  Using a chromatic template will make it harder to learn the layout of the fretboard and how those chord shapes work more generally.

Nate, I like your attitude! I'm always putzing around with different projects and I enjoy the process of coming up with a solution (oftentimes not real elegant, but.....). I actually bought a couple of screws to make one, but decided it's easier to just buy one.

You've inspired me to think a little more outside the box so it's off to the workbench to see what I can come up with.

Dusty - I know the frets look chromatic, but pretend they're diatonic and it will work. I didn't name each note, I'm just showing the note placement for each chord at each fret. I made it up for my use so it's probably less confusing for me, but I thought I'd just put it out there. If I'd found the Strumbly chart I probably wouldn't have bothered. But then I wouldn't have posted and wouldn't have gotten your pun!

Brad

Hey Brad, don't forget that dulcimer capos work a bit differently than guitar capos. Plenty of folks make nice dulcimer capos, but you can also use a pencil/chopstick/crochet hook fastened to the fretboard with a piece of string tied around the box of the dulcimer. I personally use a C clamp with a wine bottle cork super glued to the side of it

Nate

Brad, I'm having trouble with your chord chart since you appear to be using a guitar template.  I can get past the 6 strings, but that chart shows chromatic frets.  Are you playing a dulcimer with chromatic frets?  That changes everything.

You might just Google "dulcimer chord chart DGd" and see what you get.  Here is one chart and here is another. I'm sure there are others out there.

And remember that the easiest way to get your I - IV - V chords on a dulcimer in an open tuning is to use the bar chords.  So if you are tuned DGD, then 000 is G,  333 is C and 444 is D.  Of course, those are only partial chords, but they can help when you're in a jam. (Like that pun? )

I completely agree. Wooden flutes , like the native American flute, are about celebrating culture and style, not limiting who can make or play them

Where are the bagpipes then?  

@shanonmilan I had a music friend who was a very good mountain dulcimer player yet her mother didn't like hearing her play it.  There's just no accounting for taste, it seems.  

Hey, i resemble that remark, Dusty!  

Haven't gotten a capo yet, but I made myself some basic chord diagrams in D-G-D tuning. Thought I'd attach it. Please let me know of any mistakes, suggestion, etc.

Brad

Dulcimer Chords DGD.pdf - 28KB