Forum Activity for @ken-hulme

Nate's right -- 6 strings give a richer, fuller sound... but it can be difficult to learn to play, pressing down pairs of strings.  If you're trying to learn chords you might find it easiest to just remove one string in each course.for 6 months or so until you're comfortable playing.  Then you can add back strings one at a time and see if you like the effect.  Many of us who play Finger dance or Noter & Drone -- fretting justthe melody string -- like the tradition and simplicity of just three strings.  But the real thing to know is -- whatever works is right for you -- regardless of what anyone tries to tell you

Most of my playing is on a small 6-string dulcimer which I adapted from a Korean instrument probably made in the 1960s.

I play noter-drone in Daa, but I use octave pairs on the middle and bass - Dd-Aa-aa. I use an 0.030W on the middle A. It probably is 0.012, 0.012, 0.014, 0.030, 0.012 and 0.028W.

I like it, and it is soft enough that no one in our group notices my mistakes, or at least is polite enough not to mention them.

Come explore new frontiers on the mountain dulcimer in the northern end of the Appalachian mountain range with Expedition Dulcimer: Roundhouse Lodge, July 25th - 28th, 2024

This is the second retreat in a series announced earlier this year, and the goal is to do five of these per year in different regions of the United States.  Each Expedition will be hosted in a different location in the northeast, southeast, central plains, northwest, and southwest. During four days of immersive learning, each group of intermediate and advanced students (limited to 15 per retreat) will enjoy workshops, meals, and accommodations at breathtaking private estates, former inns, residences, and lodges across the United States. Beautiful, serene settings for focused learning and ample meditative downtime to reflect, practice, or simply relax.

The curriculum is rooted in my 17 years of teaching experience and encompasses skill-defining exercises, repertoire-building, and improvisational study. I take a dynamic approach to each session, tailoring it based on student feedback to address areas that need attention, reinforcing strengths, and presenting challenges in effective chapters.

While the core structure of study remains consistent for each retreat, the selected songs and styles draw inspiration from the lore and traditions of the surrounding region. Likewise, the meals we prepare and present are influenced by the rich culinary cultures of the locals. The schedule allows plenty of time to immerse ourselves in the dulcimer, take time for self-reflection, explore the sights, and even catch a rejuvenating nap.  

Our second announced retreat for next year is Expedition Dulcimer: Roundhouse Lodge, July 25th - 28th, 2024 , which will find us n estled in the scenic region of Forest City, in northeastern Pennsylvania, at the corner of Susquehanna, Lackawanna, and Wayne counties, in the northern Appalachian mountains. Roundhouse Lodge, our home for four days, sits on 41 acres of private property, providing panoramic views of the picturesque countryside. The lodge offers oversized living areas, a double-sided stone fireplace, a rejuvenating hot tub, a foosball table, and a spacious kitchen where I'll prepare meals inspired by the culinary traditions of the region.  

For details on this newly-added retreat, and also about the previously announced Expedition Dulcimer: Stone Mountain Manor - March 28th - 31st, 2024 , visit ExpeditionDulcimer.com

Let me know if you have any questions that aren't covered by the FAQ, and I'll be sure to add them.  Jae and I are very excited about this new venture, and we're looking forward to bringing the experience westward soon!

Thank you for your time - blessings of music,

Bing

 ED-Roundhouse Lodge.jpg - 1MB

Nate - Thanks for your detailed reply. It gives me a lot to think about and experiment with. Maybe I'll try muting different strings just to get an idea of the sound.

Brad

6 strings provide a fuller "choral" sound. In my opinion, if you are doing a lot of chording, it is much more comfortable with three strings. If you are playing noter drone, more strings often make for a fuller sound. If you are mostly fretting on the melody string, you might consider leaving "courses" (aka 2 strings right next to eachother) for the middle and bass string, or just a "course" for the bass string. I usually play with three strings, and a lot of other folks do as well, but I personally prefer the sound of the extra strings, though it is more difficult. I hope you have a lot of fun exploring this instrument, and there is no harm in removing strings if you prefer to play that way.
Nate

I have a 6 string church dulcimer I built from a kit about 45 years ago and have decided it's time to learn how to play it. I find it very difficult to play as is and am thinking about making it a 3 or 4 string. Is there any compelling reason to keep it at 6? Thanks for your help.

Paula, I moved your post to the For Sale: Instruments/Music Items/Wanted to Buy Forum.  

I have a Probst Dulcimer strung as a baritone, but I'd be lonely without it.

Good luck hunting.  You don't see either Probst or Gallier dulcimers on the used market very much.

I am looking for a Gallier or probst dulcimer.  Used or new.  Anyone have one please private message me please?  Thank you! Paula

What a cool resolution 

And now the "circle" has rejoined!  What a fine development from Randal's inquiry 6 months ago!  Hope things work out with the repairs.

This is great news. Glad to see that progress has been made on this issue.

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."

A lovely dulcimer and a lovely development!  Enjoy that beautiful instrument, Randal! 

Such a wonderful development in this 6 months-long drama! Thanks for joining, @rtemplin!

HI Randal,

That dulcimer was built by my father.  If the tag inside indicates "Calera, AL", I probably built the fretboard and sanded it :).  Although we no longer own it, I can point to the shop where it was constructed.  I am very familiar with his building techniques and I still build dulcimers today.  I still support the instruments that he built and I would be happy to talk with you about putting it back into playing condition.

I now live in Jemison, Al.  Please contact me via email at roger.templin@gmail.com if you wish to discuss it.

Thanks,

Roger Templin

Well stated Wally and KenH. The mountain dulcimer is what it is. And in my humble opinion, one should enjoy its sweet song as it is without trying to make a bull horn out of it.

The dulcimer was devised for playing for one's own enjoyment, or for a few family members, not an "audience." This would probably have been in a room in a small home after the player's work was done in winter, or on a porch in the summer. Other family members often would have been reading, sewing, washing dishes, etc. 

"Is it really normal for a dulcimer to have a very weak, drowned out sound?"

More or less.  The dulcimer was never designed/built/intended to be an ensemble instrument. 

Until the late 20th century the dulcimer has always been a solo instrument for playing to an audience of say a dozen quiet, appreciative listeners, no farther than say 15 feet away.  If accompanied at all it would have been by a sympathetic fiddle, guitar and/or banjo player who understood how to blend their own instruments with others, not play as loud as they could because they could.

You may wish to try this english concertina However,I suggest you think really hard before getting one, for what I heard they are one of the more challenging instrument to learn.

@lily-pad, I just responded to this question in the other forum you posted in.  I would suggest you start a new discussion in the Specific Features, Luthiers, Instruments Forum .

Hi @lilley-pad, and welcome to FOTMD.  My main, go-to dulcimer is a McCafferty.  (It's an older one with a standard piezo pickup but without the humbucker and MIDI interface he uses on the new Seifert model.)  I love it.  Great sustain. Great volume.  Big round tone. The fingerboard is very responsive to your left hand.  When I first got it a few years ago, I found the strings to be too far apart for comfortable flatpicking and had to make some custom adjustments, but Terry now uses a special bridge that allows you to adjust the distance between the strings.

However, if you want to continue this conversation, perhaps you could start a new discussion on McCafferty dulcimers in the Discuss Specific Features, Luthiers and Instruments Forum .

Just Jon here.  Don't know if this is the right forum site.  But here goes first Howdy all.  Any one have experience with a McCafferty dulcimer I know that they're beautiful and I like his adjustable nut design very innovative. But what about tone play ability sound?

Don't know if this is the right forum site.  But here goes first Howdy all.  Any one have experience with a McCafferty dulcimer I know that they're beautiful and I like his adjustable nut design very innovative. But what about tone play ability sound?

What wewas it Jean Ritchie said?  Her Dad tuned the dulcimer to Bim, Bim, Bom.  What the actual notes were didn't, and still doesn't matter.  There weren't any absolute notes.  Some of us these days say that we're tuned "in the vicinity of"...  in the vicinity of D or A or C

Well that's gonna be fun!  🎼

It's ok you'll get there.

Roger, you wrote clearly and kindly and all of us I'm sure understand better the terms, Native American and Native American Style.   Thank you, aloha, Irene

I have always found the appropriation of dream catchers pretty amusing. Many tribes believe that spider web charms need to be periodically purged through ritual, as they attract and accumulate negative spirits. In Hupa culture, 'dreamcatchers' are associated with a protective spider spirit who is also a moon spirit, and therefore, spiderweb charms are purged through a ritual once every full moon.
I suspect most people who buy them at tchotchke shops are not aware of these sorts of details and are effectively just attracting negative energy to themselves, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Of course, most "dreamcatchers" are just woven mandalas with some feathers and beads glued to the edges and couldn't even be used as a spider web charm. For example, most tribes believe that a spider web charm needs to have a specific number of terminating points along its hoop, typically 12.

I suspect most people who buy them don't actually subscribe to any sort of native american spiritualism, and don't really care one way or the other.

As a person who makes Native American Style flutes, I thought it might be helpful to know why they have to be called Native "style" flutes. This is due to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990, which was passed to protect Indigenous crafts people. They were being crushed by people offering cheap knockoffs, mostly being made in China and Eastern Europe. Now in the USA you must clearly identify that it is a Native American "style" flute (or even other crafts like dreamcatchers) - unless the maker of the item is a registered member of a federally recognized Tribe or Nation. 

It would shock you to find out just how bad the problem still is - the Chinese are still dumping cheaply made dreamcatchers, arrowheads and many other items. You can even go to a reservation and find these items being sold in the gift shops there. And just how bad is it? The international patent for a dreamcatcher is owned by...China. It never occurred to our indigenous craftspeople that something like that could happen!

I have a lot of Cherokee blood in me, but I don't qualify for membership in any of the three recognized tribes of the Cherokee. Thus, I cannot sell my flutes as "Native Made". But I long ago decided to not be part of the problem, so I do sell them as Native American Style.

That is a cool tip Dusty, thanks for sharing.
 I'd like to develop a better ear for tuning. If I  use my keyboard to tune my dulcimer then check it with a tuner, I can get the bass string pretty close, but the higher pitches are up to 35 cents off. And thats after spending a few minutes plucking back and forth. I can usually hear the 'beating' of the frequencies being slightly different, but can't really tell whether I need to tune up or down to fix it

How exciting, @Lorillee! 

I hear you Wally . I had an aunt who had perfect pitch (and a Steinway piano worth about as much as my house!).  When my uncle was learning a right-hand picking pattern for the banjo, she didn't mind the repetition of the picking, but she couldn't stand that he was always practicing in the same key.  So he used a capo and would just change keys every few minutes.

@wally-venable, you are right that learning perfect pitch is not a reasonable goal, but to learn relative pitch should be. 

Students in most formal music education programs develop tricks to learn intervals.  The first two notes of "Happy Birthday" represent a 2nd.  The first two notes of "When the Saints Go Marching In" represent a 3rd. The first two notes of "Here Comes the Bride" represent a 4th.  The first two notes of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" represent a fifth.  The first two notes of "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" represent a 6th. I can't think of one for either the minor or major 7th, but I'm sure you can look one up since there must be lists like this all over the Internet.  And the octave is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

I've stuck with the major scale (Ionian mode) here, but you could do this for the chromatic scale.  The minor 2nd is the dangerous shark music from Jaws.  The minor third is the first two notes of "Greensleeves."  And the list goes on.

I should have written

"Perfect pitch" is often considered a curse. I had a friend with perfect pitch who, 60 years ago, found that almost all the pianos in a good showroom were off key, and she couldn't play most of them beause they hurt her ears.

You should be able to distinguish between a whole step and a half step in American/European music. To "learn" absolute pitch shouldn't be a goal. (Some Asian and African music doesn't use European intervals based on a logarithmic scales.) Good musicians play intervals, unless of course they are "bending" a note artistically.

Digital tuners with absolute reference to frequency haven't been around very long. We didn't have precise standards in the not-so-different past. We had tuning forks and reed pitch pipes, both of which produce tones which will vary minutely with temperature. To mention only two countries, the USA and Austria (home of Mozart, Beethoven, etc.) used different pitches for the A to which they tuned.

A band from the 1920-1950 period would have tuned to the piano, if they used one, which would have been relatively tuned if it was "in tune."

A symphony orchestra tuned to whatever A the oboe played at the beginning of the concert. The oboeist might or might not have used a fork or pipe as a reference.

As the saying goes, "this ain't rocket science, it's art." "Perfect pitch" is often considered a curse. I had a friend who, 60 years ago, found that all the pianos in a good showroom were out of tune, and she couldn't play any of them.

Put on some music and grab an instrument.  Try to play along.  Your first task will be to determine the key.  Then you will pay attention to the structure of the music. Then you either start figuring out the chord progression or you start working on key melodic phrases. Eventually, you get the whole song.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I played guitar (not very well) for years.  I started at family sing-a-longs, and I learned pretty quickly how to hear chord changes in a song. I also used to watch a lot of sports, and I would do so with a guitar on my lap. When the commercials came on, I would try to play along with the jingles.  That forced me to work through those steps above (determine the key, identify the melodic hook, etc.) super fast because each commercial might only last 30 seconds.  But by the third or so time a given commercial aired, I could usually play along.

If you want to train your ear, I strongly suggest not looking at tab while you play.  Look at your dulcimer and think.  Think about the relationships between the frets and the notes they represent.  Think about the relationships between the strings in the same way.  And I would advise not thinking about absolute tones, but about intervals.  For example, the distance from an open string and the second fret is a third.  From the open string to the fourth fret is a fifth.  To the seventh is an octave.  And so forth.

Eventually, you'll be able to hum a song in your head and imagine how to play it on the dulcimer. And that's a pretty cool skill to have.

My Ron Gibson Dulcimer should get here by the end of the week!!!!

I've wondered a lot if the music that I listens to "untrains" my ears. I listen to quite a bit of blues from 1920-1950 and a LOT of it is only "relative tuned" from the top string down. I've never been good at all at knowing whether a note is flat or sharp, and if a note is flat or sharp it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the music. Starting to think I might have permanently screwed up my pitch perception

I'm with Ken, to a large extent. Few of us "train" our ears, but "our ears learn."

We learn, I think, by having music in two forms at the same time. Playing or singing while hearing others in a group. Plying or singing while reading music as sheet music or TABs. Singing along with a record.

A set of instructions in any form may help because it is structured so that your experience is expanded, not because it is just repeated.

Sorry... I just trained my ear through decades of singing in choirs and playing with other musicians.  And listening over and over and over again to cassette tapes/vinyl in the Dark Ages before on-line music...

I'm curious about what training you do to enhance your ear (relative pitch, recognizing chord progressions, and identifying sharps/flats). If you have any exercises or resources, please feel free to share!

Currently, I've been using an ear training app called ToneScholar ( https://tonescholar.com ) if you're interested). It's been effective, it has improved my relative pitch, but it focuses on voice based exercises. I am NOT a singer!

I’m NOT looking for an alternative ear training app. I'm interested in any advice or exercises you may have that are similar to the app. Thank you!