Forum Activity for @talia

Barbry Ellen Tab Experiment

Dulcimer Resources:TABS/Books/websites/DVDs

@ken-hulme Thanks Ken!

@wally-venable I will have to get my hands on one of those books, thanks for the recommendation :)

@strumelia Interesting! From the wikipedia page on Barbara Allen: American folklorist  Harry Smith  was known to, as a party trick, ask people to sing a verse of the song, after which he would tell what county they were born in.

I love singing these songs that are hundreds of years old and thinking about how many people have sung them and enjoyed them over the years. I'd love to check out that book as well.

updated by @talia: 10/12/24 04:48:23PM

Barbry Ellen Tab Experiment

Dulcimer Resources:TABS/Books/websites/DVDs

I purchased a dulcimer last week after wanting one for a very long time. I have been listening to Jean Ritchie's instructional record, and learning her major version of Barbry Ellen. It seemed to me like the easiest way to write out the melody she is playing on the dulcimer was to do it similar to the way guitar chords are written out, the chord written on top of the lyric that is sung. The number refers to the fret on the melody string that is pressed, the other two strings are always a drone. The slides are written the same way that they would be in guitar tab, for example 3/5 being a slide up from the 3rd to 5th fret, and 6\5 being a slide down from the 6th to 5th.

Here are the recordings I got the music from. She has a bit more variation in her melody in different verses but I decided to keep it simple for now and do the same thing for each verse. She explains her strumming variations as well which I may try and find a better way to write out another time.

I will try to get a video of me playing/singing soon :) Let me know what you think. I'm sure I'm not the first person to write out dulcimer music this way so I would be curious if there are similar methods out there as well.

updated by @talia: 10/09/24 11:01:41PM