900 Miles - I.D Stamper Version - G#,D#,F# tuning

I bought an oldvinyl copy ofthealbum 'Red Wing' by I.D Stamper and I've been copying it across to digital to put on my .mp3 player. It has been great to have a chance to really listen to him play noter drone and to try and work out what's actually going on in his music. I have heard it said that I.D Stamper was the Jimi Hendrix of trad dulcimer players and I think that's quite a good analogy but I would have said he was more of a Robert Johnson !

Tonight I thought I'd have a go at working out andplaying his version of 900 Miles. Stamper plays it very unusually. For a start he usesG#,D# F#tuning - a true slack tuning. He doubles the strumming speed and rings the bass note with a lot of pick slap providing a driving rhythm behind the piece. He uses an out-strum lead focussing on the bass drone string. He is very 'lazy' with his noter alowing his phrasing to cut across the rhythm. He adds bars and half bars - he takes away bars and half bars - making the tune crooked like an blues player.

And, most unusually, he frets both the melody and middle stringsto produce the tunes 'train whistle' riff, which he copied offthe fiddler who played with his mothers string band in the 20s.

I used my standard cherry McSpadden strung with a 0.022w nickel bass, 0.012 middle, 0.012 melody. I used a quill noter and a flexible flat pick and out-strum lead. The file was recording on my Zoom H2.