Hello Michael,

thank you for your nice feedback.

As this is an older entry, I just updated the links in the first post of this thread and I have just uploaded the last revisions of the two books (I still find little mistakes from time to time). You can use these links on your website or pass them on to your customers. Thank you for your interest,

Michael, I guess you have seen that I have mentioned your website in the method book from the very first edition (now on page 18). Your kantele instruction videos have been very important for me when I just started to play the kantele. Thank you again! Since then I have tried to find out more about techniques and good songs for five string kanteles. I'd like to add more information on melody playing and on harmonics - but I didn't find time for that yet. In case you have customers from Germany, I'd be happy if you give them the link of my kantele blog: finnischekantele.blogspot.de
It's in German, but there are many pictures, so it may even be interesting for others (with Google or Bing Translator you'll get most of what I have written there).

I also offer one-day workshops for five string kanteles at my home. More about that on www.kantele.info

By the way - for chord playing I prefer the 10 string kantele rather than the 11 resp. 15 string model. Because for the chords, the high C# of the 11 string kantele has to be muted with most chords. That's a lot easier on the 10 string.

For melody playing of course, an 11 or 15 string kantele is perfect.

Your instruments are beautiful - great that you also build 5 string kanteles again! :)

Hello Peter, 

Great work,   Thanks for sharing,    I get asked a lot for books and playing resources for starting Kantele,  most of which are in Finnish.  Let me know if its ok to add links to your website on my kantele pages.   These days I mostly make 11 string and Custom 15 Drone Kanteles but I have just started producing small batches of standard 5 string Kanteles again to keep in stock,  Using American Tulipwood for the soundboard/frame and Beech under the headstock for the Zither pins,                

Best wishes  Michael J King 

Thank you, Lisa.

Life has been very kind to me during 50 years lifetime up to now. I am grateful for that.

So I just try to give something back and share things (or ideas) from time to time.
I am happy if the book is useful for someone.

Peter it's so generous of you to offer all this for free.

Vielen Dank! Ich glaube dass ist Wahr! I really appreciate your input here. Love your site - especially the yellow one, fantastisch! Wenn I got into dulcimers I didn't know if I would like it or not ( was ein Dumkopff nicht, what's not to like?), so I got the cheapest thing I could find, a cardboard kit. Had I known then what I know now, I would have simply mortgaged the house! I had a lot of fun living in Germany teaching guitar and doing lots of concerts. It was the best musical time of my life, well wait, these dulcimers are pretty fun too...Glad you're on here. Oh, I was in Oppenum am Rhoi.

Hi Cynthia,

thank you for your feedback. Glad you like it.

Yes! You're right! I should avoid exclamation points! Definitely!

Sorry, only joking... I was not aware of that, Cynthia, but you are perfectly right with your observation. I'll change that when I go over it again. It was not my intention to shout at the reader - I guess, exclamation points are more common in German punctuation than in English.

In the meantime, several different kanteles have found the way to our home. For chord playing, I'd rather recommend a 10-string kantele (which misses the c# in the higher octave). If your intention is melody playing, an 11- or even 15-string kantele will be perfect.

If you're interested in some more pictures of my kanteles, you may like to look at my little kantele blog (in German):

http://finnischekantele.blogspot.de

In the US, you can contact www.kantele.com . There's lots of information on Gerry Henkel's site - and he builds 5- and 10-string kanteles.

If you like to order decent instruments at a reasonable price from Finland, I can recommend Melodia Soitin and Lovikka. The most famous maker in Finland is Koistinen, but I don't own one of theirs (yet...).

In the UK, there's also Michael J. King who builds custom kanteles.

Peter, the book looks very precise, German-like, and well done. The only change I would make is getting rid of all the exclamation points. I'm hoping to acquire one of these someday. The old Finnish music really intrigues me. I'm thinking an 11 string is what I want. I don't want to jump like I did with the dulcimer, but wait until I know a little more about it. Thanks for doing the book, especially the chord charts are helpful, very thorough, very nice.

Peter dass interessiert mich sehr, ich werde dich gern feedback geben als ich dass tue. Vielen dank, ich brauche zuerst ein Instrument. Du bist etwas, menschens Kind.

Thank you all for your replies! )

And thank you for for the tab of "Suomi", Steve. I'll try that - seems to be a cheerful song! :)

Thanks for casting the net a bit wider Peter.

One of my all time favourite Finnish songs is :

Great singer, great tune , plays really well in N/D.

One of our club members has at least one kantele, but it doesn't look like she's commented here in four years. I'll send her a link to your post.

I've been listening to lots of Finnish and other Scandinavian music the past few years, and included a kantele piece as one of our dulcimer club tunes last year. The tune, Suomi , is from Finland. In fact, the name is Finnish for Finland! I heard it played on the 5-string kantele on Poul Lendals album nskebarn . (Although in one section of the recording there's a harmony note that makes me think he's playing it on a 10-string kantele.)

Suomi mountain dulcimer tab

Suomi on mountain dulcimer

After a holiday in Finnland during the first two weeks of August, I have now added some Finnish songs. I've already modified the links in the first entry of this threat - so if you download the files from there, you'll have the latest version.

Enjoy!

Yes they do sound good together. Your starting to make me want one of these. Love the look of the Dulcimer in the Video, Haven't seen one shaped like that pretty cool.

Peter W. said:

Yes, it is fun, Phil! :)

And as both instruments are diatonic and usually tuned to "D", they go together well, as you can see here:

HI Peter, Inserting interment ya have there. After hearing your videos' I may have to get one. looks like it fun to play.

I don't know how to thank you for the time and effort you put into the revision of my kantele book, Dusty!

Thank you, Dusty!

Your corrections have been very, very useful and made it easy for me to understand all proposed modifications. Especially the prepositions are always a challenge for me when writing in English! :)

At the moment, the only thing I can do to compensate your work is mention your website in the epilogue of the book.
If you ever need help with German, I'd be happy to give back something to you!

@All kantele players: I already replaced the pdf-file on my webspace, so if you download from the link given in the first post of this topic, you'll get the revised version.

I also added some songs to the spirituals song book: now there are 25 songs in D-major and 5 in D-minor.

Enjoy!

I've started to record 11 of the 29 songs (if you have downloaded the songbook when I started the discussion, make sure you already have the version with 29 songs).

I put the videos on a new Youtube channel and made a playlist of the Spirituals / Gospels. I'll add some more recordings as soon as I find the time to do so.

All recordings are straightforward, just my voice and five string kantele accompaniment. It is not high art, there are some small mistakes and so on... I just wanted to show that it's easy to play chords with the small kantele - and it's fun!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwtxl27mBeeCX9jz_nJIUfsyeKtQ...

NB: I still also play my MD, for example last Saturday at my brother's 50th birthday party...

Thank you very much, Dusty!

Peter, the book looks very informative and well organized. I just sent you a personal message, too.

I had some days off and spent them on completing a project I have had in mind for several months. Sorry to say that again it is not related to MD, but to the five string kantele. Anyway - I know you all are open-minded. :)

Today I finished a free course / method for the five string kantele as an accompaniment instrument (that is: playing chords). This is the little kantele I designed. It appears from time to time in the book next to the exercises...

In addition, I have made a free songbook of Spirituals and Gospels . I have arranged all songs in D major (and four of them in D minor). Like the MD, the kantele is a diatonic instrument often tuned to D major nowadays. Maybe it is also useful for some Dulcimerplayers... :)

Now I know there are some kantele players around here. I'd be very happy and grateful to receive some feedback! As English is a foreign language to me, please let me know when you find typos or peculiar expressions or grammatical errors!

Here is the download source (directly from my own webspace):

http://www.finnischekantele.de/Be_different_Play_Kantele.pdf (ca. 3 MB)

http://www.finnischekantele.de/Spirituals_Kantele_Revised_2015.pdf (ca. 10 MB!)

Thanks for taking the time to look it over!