A past national champion Dulcimist who wandered through our Winfield campsite a couple of years ago explained that he usually tuned to Eb-Myxolidian. The Eb part of it was quite obviously to keep "lesser" people from being tempted to play along, and the emphasis on "Myxolidian" gave him the entry to one of the longest and most detailed expositions I've ever heard on Modes and the use thereof.

I was able to follow enough of his rather "posturing" harangue to assure one and all that he was truly expert in modal music, but unfortunately he lost me somewhere along the way so I ended up not knowing much more than when he started. He played some impressive music to illustrate his points though.

There are a couple of campsites at Winfield that are a little "in-bred," who by custom tune somewhere "off norm" specifically to discourage wandering pickers from joining in. They apparently agree on a pitch somewhere away from the picking area, so that "the invited" can arrive in tune; but at least one of them changes their base pitch often, and apparently at random - and usually not by a semitone, but something like 1/3 tone or 7/9 of a tone.... Unfortunately for them, quite a few of the wanderers are sufficiently tone deaf that they try anyway, and don't notice how it sounds.

John