Jean Ritchie and her ballad repertoire
General mountain dulcimer or music discussions
In the spring term of 1968 I took a poetry class and while studying ballads we spent a week using a dulcimer set up in traditional, non-chromatic tunings (only one for a class of ten so we passed it around) . Our adjunct professor, a fan of Jean Ritchie, used a quill and noter but encouraged us to try that as well as “guitar style “. It was helpful to hear subtle variations of cadence , timbre etc that might be missed when the music was absent. Then came the summer of love and a Jimi Hendrix concert … Memories from a steel trap mind - many are rusty …