John, Wally is giving you good advice.  Your question is basically how to join in multi-instrument jams with your dulcimer. Whether you are joining ukuleles, banjos, fiddles, or French horns is not really important.

The ukulele gatherings that I know of are basically sing-a-longs where people strum their instruments and someone (sometimes everyone) sings the lyrics.  So the trick to joining would just be to learning all your chords.   Of particular use will be the barre chords, since those can serve as both major and minor.  000 is a D or Dm, 111 is an E or Em, 222 is an F# or F#m, 333 is a G or Gm, and so forth.

You might also learn how to fake chords.  It is true, as Wally says, that you don't have an F natural on the dulcimer, but the F chord is made up of F, A, and C, so you could just play As and Cs, such as 6-7-6 if you're tuned DAD or 6-7-7 in DAA.

And learning how to use a capo could be very helpful.  If there is a tune in F, for example, you could tune to CGC and put the capo at 4.  Your D chord positions will give you an F chord.  Your G chord positions will give you a Bb.  Your A chord positions will give you a C.

With a little knowledge, even a diatonic dulcimer can play in any key.

Most of those uke gatherings work with a stable set of songs, often centering on a songbook.  That would enable you to go through and figure out how to play each chord ahead of time.

My final comment is just good advice for joining any jam.  Your job is to fit in, not stand out.  Play softly.  You don't have to carry the whole piece.  You might choose just to play a single note instead of a whole chord.  As long as it is one of the chord tones, you'll be OK.  And it is also OK to sit a tune out. I'm not sure I would join in if someone is doing Rhapsody in Blue in Bb, for example!

--
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

Yes, an A chord is just an A chord, no mater what the instrument, but ......

Unless you have a chromatic dulcimer, there will be lots of times when you can't play the required chord. You can't do a C or F chord in DAD, can you? They will mostly play C-F-G (1-4-5) chords.

Years ago, ukuleles were typically tuned to the key of D. There are still a number of books available on that and most of the old sheet music with uke chords used that. If you were playing a uke with a dulcimer group, the answer would be just use D tuning on you uke.

I did that for a while before I switched from uke to DAA noter-drone dulcimer.

You are trying to do the reverse.

Consider tuning a DAD dulcimer to CGc, or a DAA dulcimer to CGG (a traditional tuning). That should match up well.

If you are playing from their TABs, you'll still have to transpose chord labels if you are working from those, but D becomes C, F becomes E, G becomes A, etc.

Hi kids I think I may be diving into Deep-water here but anyhow here goes.  I'll try my best not to just ramble on. I just noticed there is a big ukulele group that meets every week in my area. My question is,

Is it possible to play along with ukuleles with a dulcimer?  I have noticed that it appears that the ukulele group mainly play with just their chords, so is it possible to play along with the Mountain Dulcimer just using our cords? They're tuning is G-C-E-A So if my instrument is tuned to D-A-D And the Ukulele group is playing a song with their  A chord and then if I play using our A chord On the dulcimer Would that work? Would it sound okay? Is an A chord just an A chord. I just picked A chord for an example  hopefully this makes sense 

Thanks from Jon Lilley