@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

It is interesting to note in Cecil Sharp's 1917 English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians... that of all the 274 ballads he and his assistant collected from rural singers, Barbara Allen was the ballad with the largest number of distinct regional variations included in his book.

--
Site Owner

Those irritated by grain of sand best avoid beach.
-Strumelia proverb c.1990

You might consider looking at Jean's The Dulcimer Book. She has a TAB for Barb'ry Ellen on page 27, along with about 12 verses of lyrics. The record you are using has the same cover photo as this book.

The TAB is in the old C-G-Bb tuning (Aeolian Mode), but plays just the same in modern D-A-C tuning. There are no chords, it is Noter-Drone in that version.

In my opinion, Jean's The Dulcimer Book. is the best single lap dulcimer book ever written. It is still in print and used copies are typically under $15 including shipping.

Basically everyone writes tab in their own way.  So, if guitar-like notation works for you, that's great.  Realize of course that Jean did not play chords in the guitar sense.  She played Noter & Drone style, where the middle and bass strings drone open notes and the melody note is fingered only on the melody string...  Mostly, noter & drone tablature is just written as a single string of numbers representing the melody string, one note for each note sung.   

I did find this for you, from the Ultimate Guitar site -- the chords for Jean's unique version of Barbry Allen:
BARBRY ELLEN CHORDS by Jean Ritchie @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com  

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