Bowing box dulcimers
About the logistics of bowing box dulcimers and the arched vs. non-arched bridge....
Rik said:
"Regarding my comment below about bowing: It's clear that folks mean tobow across all the strings flat at once and not via a curved bridge.
Please excuse my ignorant gaf there (over influenced by violin / cello)."
Rik, I would think there would be times when one would want to bow just two strings at a time, for a single drone. I feel that the constant bowing of all strings all the time might become annoying after a while, especially on boxes that have more than 3 strings. I still think a very slightly arched bridge would enable both flat all-string bowing and the bowing of only two strings at a time.
Here is one of my favorite vids of Michael King (a member here) bowing one of his Icelandic Langspils:
(he starts bowing after picking for a minute)
You can see on Michael's video that it's easier to angle the bow to play only the melody string on an instrument with no bout on the player's side, or with the fretboard running right along the player's edge. On a wide box dulcimer with the fretboard in the middle, an arched bridge might in fact be more necessary to be able to alternate between bowed strings, since the second bout would get in the way of angling the bow onto the melody string only.
I'd love to hear others' thoughts on these things.
Rik said:
"Regarding my comment below about bowing: It's clear that folks mean tobow across all the strings flat at once and not via a curved bridge.
Please excuse my ignorant gaf there (over influenced by violin / cello)."
Rik, I would think there would be times when one would want to bow just two strings at a time, for a single drone. I feel that the constant bowing of all strings all the time might become annoying after a while, especially on boxes that have more than 3 strings. I still think a very slightly arched bridge would enable both flat all-string bowing and the bowing of only two strings at a time.
Here is one of my favorite vids of Michael King (a member here) bowing one of his Icelandic Langspils:
(he starts bowing after picking for a minute)
You can see on Michael's video that it's easier to angle the bow to play only the melody string on an instrument with no bout on the player's side, or with the fretboard running right along the player's edge. On a wide box dulcimer with the fretboard in the middle, an arched bridge might in fact be more necessary to be able to alternate between bowed strings, since the second bout would get in the way of angling the bow onto the melody string only.
I'd love to hear others' thoughts on these things.