How to Build a Bluegrass-Style Five-String Banjo: Whether it's jazz, rock, blues, or folk, we Americans love our music. Not the lofty kind, heard and played in quiet concert halls or recital rooms, but our music, the music played by and for the people. While the music is uniquely ours, th…
When I first wanted to learn the mountain dulcimer, I only had a few goals: Play along with my guitarist husband. Play and sing popular songs. It’s a string instrument. It looks a bit like a guitar. There are YouTube videos. How hard could it be? As it turns out, from my perspective (I have 8+ years of musical training on the clarinet and oboe), incredibly difficult. I just wanted to play chords. I don’t care about modes. I don’t want to play Bile Them Cabbage Down. I want to play Angel From Montgomery, a little Stevie Nicks and some James Taylor. Every book I ordered had multiple tunings, confusing fingerings. Even the online schools couldn’t meet my basic needs. Modes, midloyxian this and that. Some so called beginner books had songs that required retuning the dulcimer to play them! The images were too small to be useful on the fly and the books wouldn’t even stay open. So, I finally put this together for myself and I think you’ll find it helpful too. This pdf will give you just basic chords so you can play along or strum guitar chords on your own. You can play songs on Ulitimateguitar.com (not everything, of course, but enough to get a feel for the instrument and have some fun). Once you’ve mastered these chords, there are many variations on them. If you are lucky enough to have access to a local teacher, I envy you. If you decide to use an online site like Duclimerschool.com (my favorite), you’ll have a little practice under your belt and the learning will go faster. You can move on to strumming patterns, playing melody, finger picking and the like. For now, print out the map and enjoy your instrument. The images show you how to place your fingers for a simple chord. Strum across the strings. This file will not teach you how to play the dulcimer, only fingerings to play guitar type chords. I recommend print the next page out on cardstock. I hope you enjoy this chart as much as I have! Keywords: dulcimer, music, chords, beginner, play, mountain, strum
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How to Make a Dulcimer Without Power Tools: This handmade dulcimer is a tribute to mountain-dwelling bluegrass musicians everywhere. It also doesn’t require any power tools to build, which makes it a perfect project for anyone who is both bored and experiencing a power outage of indefinite du…
Melodies on the mountain dulcimer are wonderful. In this book, we’ll explore how to decorate melodies with chords to add variety and creativity to your playing in DAD and DAA tunings. Lessons begin with simple chords and show you when and how to progress. In addition, we’ll study how to play backup chords on our dulcimers for accompaniment in gatherings and jam sessions. Includes access to online audio.
The Mountain Dulcimer. A Ron Cook Studios Folk Instrument Series book that covers the history of the Mountain dulcimer, how to tune, and how to play. Several traditional folk songs are included that are in both standard music notation and dulcimer tablature. References cover additional readings and a basic guide to string gauges. Spiral bound. NEW EXPANDED EDITION!
