I first started playing the lap dulcimer (also known as an Appalachian dulcimer) in the 1980's--it's easy to play basic melodies, and you can jazz up your music by throwing in chords. I got started learning by taking lessons from Dorothy Chase at the Folk Music Center in Claremont, California. The Folk Music Center has been around since 1958, it's a store but also a VERY cool museum. Please do go if you ever get a chance, it's amazing! I also got to work the Folk Music Festival they put on and made a giant banner for the stage. Big fun!
Right now I have two dulcimers: a small, tough-as-nails 'backpack' basic Rugg & Jackel Folkroots dulcimer that I got in the early 80's and have strapped to my back and dragged around to every Renaissance Faire and folk music festival around, hence the ribbons and bells on it. Folkroots got sold to Folkcraft after mine was built, so funnily enough this inexpensive instrument has increased in rarity/value. The other is a lovely Blue Lion that is my main instrument (and is MUCH larger than the Folkroots model). The Folkroots dulcimer has a high, bright sound, while the Blue Lion has a deeper, richer, very sweet tone--and it's LOUD, with tons of sustain. Just to confuse the uninitiated, there are also hammered dulcimers--huge trapezoidal instruments that you stand in front of and whale away on with little wooden hammers held in your hands.
Dulcimers have diatonic tuning (like the white keys on a piano), so yeah, weirdo spacing on the fretboard. This makes not looking at your fretting hand because you're looking at your sheet music next to impossible.
And you have to not look at your left hand, because when you do, you lose your place on your tablature--instead, you have to develop muscle memory as to where the frets are, kind of like on a violin...but at least dulcimers have frets. Oh, that's the other thing--dulcimer music isn't scored using the musical scale, because being gluttons for punishment, we use tablature! Did I mention there are also a BUNCH of tuning modes for dulcimers, because why make things easy? Throw in the capo you often have to use and it's enough to make one weep. Jam session folks hate to see us coming.
The tuning mode thing makes for...not so much dulcimer tablature being out there. So, I spend time watching YouTube videos of people playing songs...and then sit and tab it out. First figuring out the tuning, then rewinding the video 9 bazillion times so I can watch their fretting hand and get the notes right.
But it's worse when the instrument they play isn't a dulcimer and I have to pick the tune out by ear. Then I have to replay the video even more often.
This is pretty much the opposite of fun.
But anyway, here they are:
Wait...is that...blue painter's tape on the Folkroots' fretboard...?
Why yes--yes it is.
You see, that instrument didn't come with a 6 1/2 fret, which is something dulcimer players discover pretty quick is something they really, REALLY need (and the Blue Lion has).
So shortly after I got it, I cheated in a 6 1/2 fret using a broken-off paper clip and masking tape.
Yeah, baby, classy.
But hey, it worked for the short term, and I figured at some point I'd live it up and get a real 6 1/2 fret put on the instrument.
Twenty years later, the tape and paper clip were still going strong. So heck, I left it that way. It was only this year that the masking tape gave out. So blue painter's tape it is!
I still plan on getting the poor thing a real 6 1/2 fret...someday.
These days people are creating tablature for dulcimers with a fret at 1 1/2, as well. I won't get one installed on the Blue Lion as it would cut right through the little bird inlay. Luckily it isn't as important as a 6 1/2 fret is.
But my Blue Lion won't be upstaged when it comes to fussy, 'Me, me, ME' neediness.
Recently I got a new set of strings for it. Took the old strings off, cleaned & polished the instrument. Putting on steel springs isn't kind to your fingers, and involves getting stabbed quite a bit. Then I remembered, we have a string winder! Cool, I can save a LOT of frustration and time using it!
But...
*sigh*
Cue me winding strings on by hand.
The kid has joined a ukelele group. So for about the last 8 months, every week when I drive him to practice, I sit out in the hall and get in a couple of hours of dulcimer practice. The classes are held at our town's community center/senior center, so there's always people walking by who stop, stare, and inevitably ask, 'What is that?!' It's neat to introduce folks to an unknown American instrument. Even better when I tell them what dulcimers are related to...of all things, bagpipes.
No, really!
When Scottish and Irish people settled in the Appalachians, they missed the sound of bagpipes (go figure). So they created dulcimers, where the melody is played on the first two strings (the ones side by side, at the bottom edge of the fretboard in the pics above), with the other two strings strummed as drones. It creates a sound very similar to bagpipes! But sweeter and without all that squealing.
Which brings us to tablature. You don't need to read music to play a dulcimer, instead you use a numbering system with the numbers indicating which fret the fingers of your left hand will use.
But...dulcimers not being wildly popular, tablature tends to be hard to find, with the pickings slim and mostly confined to old-timey standards or hymns. Consequently dulcimer players share tablature like mad, and put up videos online.
And some of the tab I've run across is downright evil, in that it appears to be scored for men with hands the size of dinner plates.
Here's the fretboard on my Blue Lion (which by the way, is the normal size for a dulcimer).
Dulcimer players usually use their thumb and first three fingers of their left hand to fret. The example above wants me to place my ring and middle fingers on the first frets (at the bottom of the little bird's tail), and my thumb on the fifth fret (at the base of the rose part of the inlay).
To make matters worse, you fret using the side of your left thumbnail, which shoots your manicure to shit and you end up with this:
BUT!
For Christmas I got a few things to make playing easier. Nifty gray thumb sock (marketed for Smartphone users) protects the side of my thumb while still giving an acceptable 'feel' to find my place on the fretboard. The neato Delrin picks in the thin size I love cut 'pick noise' to nearly non-existent, and the little stick-on rubber things trimmed to fit my picks keep the pick in my hand, rather than flying across the room to take out someone's eye.
But back to bad tablature. I had a bad feeling about this, and as I checked the tab I'd downloaded, quickly found that this type of sadistic tab had snuck its way into a bunch of the songs I had. 'Meet Me In Dreamland', a very pretty song, had the dreaded 1-5 stretch (underlined in blue).
But at least I've got a good use for one of my fingers for this thing...
Becase HAH! I've figured out a workaround!
Some of the other impossible freakin' left hand positions I ran across:
And this evil POS later reversed that hand position.
When they aren't trying to split your hand in two, they want you to fret with your hand curled up like some mad, contorted crab until you develop a fatal hand cramp.
This sort of nonsense led to me feeling free to make sweeping changes in the tab. And then there's the tab that is simply...incorrect. Some of which I suspect was assigned to an AI program to tab out, they're so screwed up. Of course, sometimes I discover later what works, and what, despite tons of practice, never will...which leads to frenzied, scribbled changes.
It just got worse and worse. Because I damaged both hands in a fall years ago, I have to get creative with left hand finger positions, LOL. The red dots are a marker for me: Watch out, weirdo chord coming!
So scribbled up that it looks like something the hard-bitten detective on a TV show would find at the crazed killer's apartment crime scene.
Sometimes I resorted to creating my own tab when I couldn't find one for the song I wanted. I now have a double-sided list of songs I plan on tabbing out.
...because every musician needs to be able to play 'Girl From Impanema'...don't they?
I started tabbing the song out as a joke...but heck, it actually sounds really great in that tuning!
