Love, LOVE that sharing, Dusty.  Don't know how I missed it, but GOOD STUFF.  We will all get there, won't we?  

A while back I was playing around in a music store and had an acoustic bass guitar on my lap.  I don't play the bass but can fake it after decades of guitar playing.  I was playing the bass line to Taj Majal's version of "She Caught the Katy" and was trying to sing, too.  But I couldn't do it. When I expressed frustration, explaining that I can play guitar and sing with no problem, the owner of the store replied that I had to "own the bass" before I'd be able to sing along to it.  I thought at first that he was trying to sell me the instrument, but what he meant was that before I'd be able to accompany myself singing I had to really know the bass line perfectly without having to think about it at all.

I think that's right. You can only work on one thing at a time. So if you have to think about where to fret the fingerboard or how you want to vary your vocal line, you can't also be thinking about strumming or picking with your right hand. You have to know one part so well that it's automatic, allowing you to think about the other part.

I don't know if there are any shortcuts.  Just repetition.  I developed a steady, back-and-forth strumming pattern on the guitar many years ago.  It enabled me to become a passable mandolin player pretty quickly and also sped up dramatically my improvement on the dulcimer.  I sometimes mess up my right hand in that I don't play the exact rhythm I had intended, but I never get off beat. My right hand just goes back and forth, out, in, out, in.  Sometimes I strum all three strings, sometimes just two, sometimes I pick a single string, and sometimes I skip a beat and don't hit any strings, but my hand feels that back-and-forth movement anyway.  In fact, if you see me play a half note you will often see an extra little jerk in my hand as I move just to keep the beat even though I am not playing a note.  Before you will be really comfortable singing, your strumming hand has to become automatic.  Not robotic, for you can still swing and play with feeling, but it has to be something you don't have to think about at all.

And think of how quickly you could learn new tunes if you only have to think about your left hand!

I would suggest muting the strings of your dulcimer with your left hand so that when you strum them you just hear that vamping scratch. Then put on your favorite CD or turn on the radio.  Strum along.  Find the beat and just strum out once per beat.  Once you're comfortable, add the in strum, counting 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & and strumming out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in. (You can reverse those outs and ins, but you have to reverse them all; be consistent!)  Do that over and over and over.  Once you're comfortable strumming in both directions, then try to replicate the rhythms you hear.  It might involve skipping, accenting, or muting strums, but when you can hear a rhythm and replicate it with your right hand (always maintaining that steady, back-and-forth motion), then I think you'll be ready to sing or play and not worry about that right hand at all.  By then you'll "own" it.

--
Dusty T., Northern California
Site Moderator

As a musician, you have to keep one foot back in the past and one foot forward into the future.
-- Dizzy Gillespie

Ken, I always love the way you think!  I'm not sure I explained well though...  At times my timing is off with my strumming.  Just in the middle of a song, sometimes more than once, out of the blue.  So crazy!

Lois, you are so right about singing and playing together.  Right now I have a song where I want to sing a word down three notes, but I find it impossible to keep strumming the melody while adding that little trill.  LOL!  I just shared in the noter thread that now I'm all about DAA with a noter, rather than where I was last year wanting to learn chords in DAD.  SO fickle!  LOL!  Thank you ever so much for your encouragement and for becoming a following friend.  

Thanks, Ken, for reminding me it's perfectly acceptable to strum to the rhythm of your words.  Those of us singing while playing an instrument often talk about the difficulty of doing both together.  Let's face it, those words have a rhythm and the great musicians who want to show off their strums make us feel inadequate if we don't have a strum pattern. 

I was so taken with a few things Sandi said that I decided to follow her.  (That's why we  follow .)  A discussion she started last year showed up (it now is gone, crowded out by recent comments?).  Fortunately I remembered part of the title and the Search helped me find I Am SO in Over My Head again.   While the discussion was mainly about playing chords, I especially like Strumelia's point about people getting so carried away with their chords and fancy playing that you can't recognize the melody. 

Sandi, I agree with Dusty Turtle (Dusty, I would have sworn you played forever! , but your musicianship pre-dates the MD) on that discussion when he talked about how something he couldn't play at one point, six months later he came back to it and now was up to it.

My reason for bringing up that old discussion is it shows how we need to keep reviewing old topics.  We don't always "get it" right away once the discussion is over.  Keep at it, Sandi.  You're definitely not alone.

IMHO there are two ways to strum -- strum to a fixed rhythm, and strum to the rhythm of the words.   Not being fond of little blue guys living in cities (metrognomes), I have personally always strummed to the rhythm of the words.

Those aren't "crazy chops"... those are embellishments which make the tune yours , rather than blindly following of someone else's tab or SMN.

Part of it depends on the kind of music you play -- I love the Child Ballads of Scotland and England, as well as 19th and early 20th century folk and Americana music.  If you play wordless dance tunes it's different -- you need the fixed rhythm or the dancers will go nuts.  

I have found that as time goes on (or I get older?) my strumming is less rhythmical!  Like I cannot keep time in the same way through an entire song without some crazy chops in there...  WHAT is THAT about?  LOL!  Please tell me I'm not the only one....