Nice collection! I sold reso ukes for a while a couple of years ago, which is how I found out about D tuning. I had a small batch made butcouldn't get the down pressure I wanted on the cone from GCEA so I had a chat with a friend of mine who has an original National from the early 30s and who is an expert on National guitars (I had copied the tail block off of his original National uke for the small run I had made). It was him who told me "Oh they used to play these in D not C", and that extra tone up to ADF#Bgave me the down pressure to really get the cones singing as I wanted.

Robin

Yes, I have a couple I have concerts, tenors and baritones in high and low tuning, depending if If Im strumming or finger picking.....I do prefer low G though. My 8 string uke is really only a strummer with notes picked out, it's quite hard picking rolls with 3 fingers.

The ukulele is typically played in a variety of keys, without changing tuning. The string to string relationship of both tunings is the same as standard guitar tuning, except for the high 4th string. I keep a low G on my tenor uke for more low notes, but if I want the high G, I can always borrow Mrs.Wanda's uke. It's nice having multiples in the house!

Paul

Robin, I'm glad you jumped in here- you have lots of solid practical knowledge in this particular subject!

Hi Nigel,

Yep - that's know as C tuning for ukes (C6 actually). Smaller ukes, particularly during the early part of the 20th century, were tuned a tone higher A,D,F#,B (D6) and played in the key of D.

It would be great if they were in C...but they are GCEA tuned, not open....

By the way, the capo is great! Ta very muchly!

No - they can just tune up from C to the old 1930s D tuning

Nigel Caddick said:

Ha ha, thank you Robin LOL

I will have to get the other 22 ukuleleists to buy capo's then.....

Oh I just love these multi-confusing questions

Nigel - You can actually get away with murder on a dulcimer working out of D,A,d with or without a capo to assist, unless the folks you play with go somewhere really weird like A# minor

You don't have to play full chords on the dulcimer - in fact many dulcimer 'chords' just contain two notes (0,0,0 for D or 3,3,3 for G are examples) so you can play in other keys with a bit of thought and simply miss out the notes you don't have and substitue a harmony note. For example:there's a C chord at 3,4,6 and an F chord (without an F) at 6,8,6 and a G chord at 3,3,5 and the relative minor (Am without the 3rd) at4,4,4. So you can strum along in the key of C adding the odd fill or partial melody from D,A,d.

You can also work melody over drones at a session(playing modal tunings) and the other instruments will fill in the chord changes while you hold the root and/or 5th of the primary key within your drones. This is my prefered method for sessions although it involves re-tuning. I also like to play on a short scale instrument tuned to highG,d,g - same chord shapes as D,A,d but with G as the home tuning as I feel this tuning tends to lift the instrumemt up over the top of the guitar (just personal preference).

With a standard set of string gauges and a bit of thought you can get pretty much into any key and scale (mode). And I would look at the dulcimer as an instrument of possibilities rather than restrictions

Of course, if most of the tunes you play with friends are in the key of C then you can always get the guitarist to put a capo on a fret 2 so you can all play in the key of D

Robin

Oops....yes you're right.....

I think I meant to say to capo it up the the 3rd when it's in D....which would give me G....I think.......gettingconfused.com...LOL

I think I'll get a D stick with a capo for D & G and another stick in C......that should cover it....

We don't play any in Em I don't think....oh...Hotel California...just the one then.

Actually, Nigel, capoing at the 3rd fret in CGcc tuning will give you F, not G. G would be the 4th fret since it's the 5th tone of the C major scale. Oh, and capoing on 2 will give you a nice E minor, too.

Rob

Again, many thanks for all the advice you've taken the time to give me. As most of our songs are in the key of C, I've decided to tune my MD down a note to CGcc and then capo at the 3rd to give me G. This should embrace 85% of all the songs we do, so I shall use my uke for the others

I am in the process of deciding on a stick dulcimer and in which of the 3 scales to buy it in, this question has now been answered and it'll be a D scale too....many thanks for the advice, a lovely website this is too!

Nigel, I just want to assure you that things will work out!

Sometimes it's even harder for a dulcimer beginner who already has some music experience and is used to playing in groups with various other instruments, in multi keys. It means you want/need to jump right in and play in various tunings and keys, rather than build slowly on simple skills first. People like yourself get frustrated because the diatonic dulcimer does not behave like the trusty guitar or uke- those darned missing frets! But don't worry (don't fret? lol) ... once you accept that the dulcimer is not a guitar or mandolin, and once you begin to catch onto uniquely dulcimerish solutions and the reasoning behind them, you be full speed ahead again! Believe me, it's not rocket science, and you are a smart man- take one step at a time and very soon the clouds will clear and smooth sailing for you.

HD28 -- you may want to look at a couple of articles here that I've written:

I Just Got A Dulcimer Now What? has an illustrated glossary, plus answers to many beginner questions about tuning, playing care and feeding of your dulcimer: http://mountaindulcimer.ning.com/profiles/blogs/i-just-got-a-dulcimer-now-what

Uncontrite Modal Folker is a discussion of Modes and modal music and how they apply to the dulcimer (differently than they do guitar): http://mountaindulcimer.ning.com/profiles/blogs/uncontrite-modal-folker

FWIW -- most dulcimer players of my acquaintance do not play "accompaniment chords" in a jam or elsewhere. They are playing chord-melody style -- one chord per note of the complete melody, not just one chord per measure of music.

Thank you all for your reply's

I can now see that simply using a capo won't work, so it looks like buying at least one spare MD....and playing guitar or uke to the songs I can't use the dulcimer...

Many thanks, I now have food for thought...

Nige

Nigel, others have provided some good information here, and I hesitate to add to the mix. You know what they say about too many cooks . . .

The most common keys in old timey and bluegrass jams are C, D, G, and A.

With your dulcimer tuned DAd or DAA, you are obviously in the key of D. You can put your capo at the third fret and you will be in G. You can put the capo at the fourth fret and play in A. In both those cases, the fingering youhave already learned will work fine, but you will simply be in a different key.

For C, tune your dulcimer one note down to CGc of CGG. Once again, everything you already learned for DAd or DAA will work except that you will now be playing in C.

Paul is correct that you can tune DGD to play in the key of G, and many people do that for certain songs. But the fingering will be different from what you are used to.

As Carey and Strumelia have explained, since the dulcimer is diatonic, the capo is more compicated than it is on chromatic instruments such as the guitar. You cannot simply put it on the first or second frets to change keys as you will also be changing modes. There are uses for the capo at those keys, but the fingering you already know will not work.

However, if you want to play your diatonic dulcimer in multi-instrument jams, you should get used to tuning to CGc or CGG and using the capo at the third and fourth frets. Here is a Bing Futch video where he teaches the fiddle tune Hangman's Reel in D and then demonstrates how to play it in G and A using the capo. (And if you listen during the closing credits you will hear a "minor" version of the song which is the same fingering but the capo at the first fret.)

I find myself dropping the second string to G for songs in the key of G, That gives me a DGD tuning. The root is then on the middle string, rather than it's more common bass string location. Some call this a reverse tuning, for this reason. For songs in C, I usually tune to CGC, as Ken said above. If I lower my melody strings to G, they are a bit too loose for my liking. Very often I take a second instrument to jams to cover keys that are tricky with the string gauges I use. Most often, the second instrument is a guitar or banjo.

Paul

To add to the explanations already given- using a capo only to go into different keys:

I'm just a guitar player, very new to theMD, so I'm used to using a capo, to quickly change keys, without retuning.

question...if Nigel is tuned to CGCC for ease of playing simple 3 chord songs in C, couldn't he just place the capo on the 2nd fret to play in E,capo at 3rd fret to play in F, or capo4th fret to play in G ?

A guitar is chromatic- it has all the half steps and all the frets to play in any key by moving a capo around.

If Nigel tuned CGCC and then put his capo on the 4th fret to play in G as you say- he'd indeed be playing in G, but in the dorian mode- anything he played would sound plaintive and sort of minor/sad, because the 'missing' dulcimer frets would mean some notes would be minor of flat sounding and create a whole different sound than what you'd want.

So you can't just do like a guitar player does with a capo.

Here's a fun little exercise I did a while back that shows how the mood of a song changes completely when you go from playing it in its normal mode to playing the exact same song in the Dorian mode- and you'd be getting the same results if you put a capo on the 4th fret:

http://dulcimer-noter-drone.blogspot.com/2012/03/ghost-of-gray-goosego-tell-aunt-rhody.html

Yes... and no. I'm not one who plays with a capo. But I can see that if you capo at 2, from CGc you do get the strings tuned to EBe. But what you lose is the sequence of wide and narrow fret spacings that define the notes you'll get from that tuning. You no longer get do, re, mi, fa, sol, la... so you lose the scale.

Yep - to get up to F and G you need a different set of strings (especially the bass) than is used for C and D.

Thanks Ken, that's what I meant, tune the strings down to C. It looks like that if I want to play the majority of songs we do at the club I will need to buy that other MD and maybe even another one for the songs in G......

Don't de-tune to "the C chord" We call it tuning to Mixolydian Mode Key of C -- that would be CGc tuning. Basically tune every string down one note. DAd and CGc are what we call 1-5-8 tunings, and they all use the same tab. CGc, DAd, EBe, FCf and GDg are all 1-5-8 tunings. So if you have tab for one tuning/key you have the tab for all keys.

Oh......

Our main key is C.......should I de-tune to the C chord? Then at least most of our songs will be covered....

No dumb questions, Nige; just ones we haven't answered yet.

Yes - if' you're tuned in DAd, you are playing in the key of D.

A capo is only of limited help in changing key, as others will jump in here and explain.

One simple answer to your second question is "you can't" - play through tunes in different key without re-tuning that is....

Unlike the guitar or mandolin, the dulcimer does not have all the notes available all the time. One Key at a time.

Can I ask a dumb question?

My MD is tuned DAdd so all of the tunes I will be playing on it will be in D, yes? I also want to buy a stick dulcimer which will have similar tuning....I have bought a capo for the MD but haven't used it yet. My question is this:

Our club has a songbook with 50 standard songs in, I would say 60% of the songs start off in C, 30% in G and the remaining 10% in all sorts of keys, F or E maybe.

How would I play through all these songs without having to re tune the MD?

Thanks for your time...

Nige