The Austrians think they invented it! According to our local expert Paul Gifford, that might actually be the case even though many believe it originated in Persia.

Note that there are two different Hackbretts. The more common one has two side bridges and the strings cross in the middle. Each course up each side is a whole step, which makes alternate strings half steps. The Austrian diatonic Hackbrett is arranged like an American hammered dulcimer, although the one I played when I was in Austria was a sixth from treble bridge to bass bridge instead of a fifth or an octave.

Note the difference between that music and the more "oompah" stuff from Germany. I love Austrian music..... it is very delicate.

As for my "impressive set of online videos", you ain't seen nuthin' yet. They have been sitting un-viewed for upwards of 30 years because it was not practical to make them available to anyone. But with the advent of digital video, the internet and affordable equipment to digitize and clean up old VHS recordings, I am embarking on a long term project to capture all of what I have, catalog it and make at least a part of it available on YouTube. I have 40 VHS tapes, each one of which is an average of 2 hours long. The way I am capturing, each hour is 13GB. That is roughly one terabyte of video! Good thing BIG hard drives are affordable, eh?

In those tapes I have at least 8 hours from the No Exit and those were mostly recordings of things like a couple Christmas parties so there were many different performers in a short time span. I have a lot more than that from Adler House up in Libertyville, recorded through the 80s. I have several from the big dulcimer festival in Evart, stuff from Wheatland and one tape from Winfield (might even be the year that Art was there). Somewhere, I have most of a Red Clay Ramblers set at Somebody Else's Troubles (and I have a signed non-commercial release for that one too).

This is going to be a retirement project spanning a couple years, but I'm getting started even though I have not actually retired yet ;) I'm glad to have been able to preserve some of that marvelous culture back when folk was more prevalent than it currently is in the USA.

Paul