playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 May 06 - 06:01 PM

"the threaded dulcimer"

Blimey, who was complaining about thread drift?

You sure your spellchecker didn't substitute for 'threatened dulcimer'?

{:P

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 27 May 06 - 12:09 PM

How did we get started talking about sheet music? I know how to read music. From time to time I post a traditional piece with a harmony part which I have written myself. Hard to do that without being able to read music.

The thing about the threaded dulcimer is that it helps to look at it while you play it, especially when you play it more than one way. I find it much simpler to play it without sheet music.
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I appreciate all the input I've been given. I'm off to Texas now for the Texas Toot, realm of the six-foot-high recorder. (see toot.org) Adios

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 27 May 06 - 02:37 AM

I confess, I was in such a hurry to show off my wit, I forgot to run ieSpell over the message, and thus only got half way there...

{:P

(wearing squashed Fools Hat...)

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 27 May 06 - 12:09 AM

Robin -

If "anbuiguity" is a new word that somehow suggests anal-retentive-semantic-pedantry that confuses people (like her), LiK probably will like it. Do you know where the etiology can be found?

John

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 May 06 - 07:50 PM

"just because Humpty Dumpty said it doesn't mean it's true. Even if it appeared in print. Even if it appeared in print in a famous book! Ya gotta take care about this stuff."

You've been spending too much time reading certain BS threads now, haven't you?... :-)

Out of respect for JiK, I won't do my impression of him, :-) ,
but the reason that printed sheet music (and basic writing too, for that matter) works reasonably well for most people who use it, is that MOST people agree what the various parts of the system represents - without anbuiguity...

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Scoville
Date: 26 May 06 - 10:55 AM

Still looking for my sheet music. I think it was probably in either DADD or capo'd 1 to Em, though.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 May 06 - 08:33 AM

Lin, I agree with you that he's pretty darn smart. The scope of John's knowledge amazes me.


Foolstroupe: just because Humpty Dumpty said it doesn't mean it's true. Even if it appeared in print. Even if it appeared in print in a famous book! Ya gotta take care about this stuff.

The other day I was in the airport and heard the recording about watching your luggagenthat starts with "Due to increased security..."

I said to the DH, "They mean due to increased INsecurity..." He agreed.

Colorado Trail works pretty well. Too bad it's such a short song.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 May 06 - 08:16 AM

... of course, that probably also means that no one else knows just what the hell it really means...

:P

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 May 06 - 08:05 AM

Humpty Dumpty said to Alice
"A word means just what I want it to mean."

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 25 May 06 - 05:30 PM

Leeneia--

Don't worry about civil war in Kansas. After 12 years of marriage to the man, I've got the "ignore him" technique down pretty well. And sometimes I really do listen, 'cause he's pretty darned smart. I do, however, think he's being overly picky with that last post... semantics, it's all semantics!

Lin

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: KateG
Date: 25 May 06 - 05:05 PM

Cluck Old Hen is a great fiddle tune to practice bending, especially in the B part = da da da duUUm, da da da Dumm -- or some other way of representing a sort of wah-wah effect on the fourth beat. But you can't do it with a noter, you have to fret with your fingers.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 25 May 06 - 02:29 PM

Try Colorado Trail.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 May 06 - 08:28 AM

Thanks. I'll try these techniques. Hope I don't start a civil war in Kansas!

I've thought of another possible tune: My gal Sal.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Ernest
Date: 25 May 06 - 05:00 AM

Leenia,
Stephen K Smith had a website on which he explained how to play Blues on the mountain dulcimer!

Couldn`t open the site anymore, but google still brought it up - clicked on "cache" and I could read the texts , but not the images...

Maybe it helps a little

Best
Ernest

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 May 06 - 03:04 AM

The "bend" that LiK referred to is the "false fret" technique I described previously. I've been trying to explain to her that "bending" a note is something else (for about 10 years or so) but she thinks it sounds like she knows what she's doing so she keeps calling it "bending."

In the language of "normal persons" (not exactly my beloved LiK's) a "bend" results when you press the string against a fret and then push it sideways along the fret, so that the string tension is increased enough to raise the pitch. Especially in blues, it's often not necessary to "bend to" a specific note, but just to obtain an "inflection" of the pitch to convey the "bluesness" of your song, although with some practice you may be able to obtain notes "between the frets" with fair accuracy. The bend is handy in some kinds of music because it's a way, on a fretted instrument, to get a slurred grace note effect, so it's used even on instruments that have "all the frets."

John

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Kaleea
Date: 24 May 06 - 09:23 PM

Leenia, Try it first on the lower string cause that's the easiest:

place a finger of your left hand on any fret on a lower string, then pluck with your right hand. As soon as you pluck the note, then with the left hand finger, keep the string held down but move the string over a little (towards yourself or away from yourself) which will cause the pitch to be altered higher. You can bend the note until it is one half step up, which enables you to play those desired "blues" notes.
Experiment with this until you get more comfortable consistently getting the right pitch. It takes a good ear to get the correct pitch, though.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 24 May 06 - 07:39 PM

If you sit on the dulcimer, I'm sure it'll bend...

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 24 May 06 - 05:21 PM

Thanks for the info, KateG, but that sounds too complicated for me. I'm already playing stuff in D, A and A minor. Adding a new system might make me wind up in the ditch like the centipede.
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How, exactly, does one bend a note on a dulcimer? I see references to it on the net, but no detailed explanation.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: KateG
Date: 24 May 06 - 12:10 PM

Juanita Baker has a whole book called Blues & Ragtime for the Mt. Dulcimer - or some such (I'm at work and the book is at home). It's all fingerpicked, and she does a lot with a 4-string equidistant set-up with the two melody strings tuned a 1/2 step apart to provide the accidentals. Some good stuff in there.

John & Heidi Cerrigione (Doofus) also have tabbed out some blues for Mt. Dulcimer. Heidi uses a 1 1/2 fret a fair amount. I had Dwain Wilder put one of his magic "Flexi-Frets" on my dulcimer in the 1 1/2 and 8 1/2 position so that I can add those frets when I want to play crazy stuff, and go back to a traditional fretboard when I don't.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Kaleea
Date: 23 May 06 - 04:04 PM

I play Blues on my Mtn dulc all the time by bending the notes, as mentioned above. The melody strings are not as easy to bend, so I try to make as much use of the 2 lower strings, & sometimes I use I bend them both in harmony.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Scoville
Date: 23 May 06 - 11:02 AM

I think I had one or two blues tabs somewhere. I'll see if I can find them.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 May 06 - 09:20 AM

Thanks for the input, everybody. "Guest" was right about the 5th fret. It's not a regular chord, but it does sound bluesy.

The other techniques don't seem to apply to my dulcimer. I checked against my Korg tuner, and pressing the string away from the fret doesn't produce the half-step. The note is merely a tiny bit lower than it should be. (This is with a noter.)

Wesley, I have experimented with slide dulcimer, using a small piece of clear plastic tubing. It works, but for me it's merely a novelty. I don't much care for notes that slide at anytime.

My method of play is to use a thumbpick for the melody string and pluck the others with my bare fingers. Sometimes I brush them or use "the dreaded bum-diddy strum."

Lin, I will look for Dead Willie Blues.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 23 May 06 - 07:04 AM

Leenia--

Try the old Mike Cross song, Dead Willie Blues. It's only got a couple of places where you need to "bend" the notes, and it's a really fun song to sing, too.

Lin

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 May 06 - 01:41 AM

Wesley S -

Simple "slide dulcimer" produces virtually no sound. There is no "bridge" on the usual fretted dulcimer to feed the vibrations from the string into the soundboard so that something is heard. The sound has to go through the fret to get to the soundboard. If you're between frets, and the string isn't pressed down against at least one fret, you have to supply another mechanical path from string to fingerboard.

The two nuts that hold the string at the two ends of the dulcimer are fairly inefficient at getting the string vibrations into the sound board. Both of them together, in a reasonably well built dulci, conduct the open string vibrations about as well as one nut and one fret does for notes on partial strings. Take away either the fret or the nut, on the active part of a partial string, and it's as though someone stuffed a rag on it.

As described above, if you're using a noter, you can just touch the noter to both string and fingerboard. Using some other kind of slide/bottle you would also need to tip the slide to contact the fingerboard. If you're "fingering" as I believe leeneia does, any position between frets will be virtually silent, or at least much less loud than the normal fretted notes adjacent to your "slide" notes.

I've seen some dulcimers built with bridges, and if the bridges actually worked as intended (the ones I've seen didn't really seem to), you could play "bottle dulcimer" or "slide dulcimer" perhaps with some success; but on the ordinary kind it's not very musical.

John

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 22 May 06 - 11:18 PM

As Wesley said, "don't fret it man"!

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Wesley S
Date: 22 May 06 - 03:27 PM

I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to play "slide" dulcimer and all of those notes between the frets too. Try it.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: Scoville
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:06 PM

I don't know how well this works in DAA since I normally play in DAD, but there are several songs for which I have to fudge an accidental (for lack of the proper fret) by "bending" the string. It's not exact but it suggests to the ear that there was an accidental in there somewhere.

I don't play blues but I imagine it could be used for blues songs, anyway.


I don't see why dulcimer wouldn't work well enough for blues, though, given a little practice.

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:31 PM

leeneia -

A fretted dulcimer has the same notes as a harmonica, and lots of people play blues on harmonicas. The trick is to get into the right mode, and "fake" the few "accidentals" that aren't there by playing a substitute note that's "in the chord." If you can find a good harmonica site, look for "cross-harp" techniques.

Although it's a bit clumsy for practical use, you can also play notes that are in between the frets if you're using a noter. If you place the noter on the string between frets without pressing the string down agains the nearby frets, and also press the end of the noter against the fingerboard, you can make it sound notes that aren't fretted. This is more of a parlor trick than real music, but it might impress someone sufficiently gullible. To do it if you're fingering without a noter, you could theoretically, perhaps, get the effect with v.e.r.r.r.y. l.o.o.o.o.n.g fingernails.

(Most of the sound on a fretted dulcimer gets to the dulcimer top (soundboard) by going through the fret, so you need the noter (or long fingernail) to conduct the sound into the fingerboard if the string isn't against a fret.)

With practice, you can "sort of" play chromatic scales on a dulcie.

John

Subject: RE: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST
Date: 22 May 06 - 09:33 AM

That's not quite a Bm on the F# fret.
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Brother, can you spare a dime?

Subject: playing the blues on my fretted dulcimer
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 20 May 06 - 11:47 AM

I went to a house concert by a fretted dulcimer player once, and he commented that supposedly you can't play blues on a dulcimer. Then he got out a special capo, played a blues song, and impressed us all.

(Actually, he impressed us all a lot of ways. His name was Steven K. Smith.)

Anyhow, I have no time for funny capos, and I've thought for a long time that you can't play blues on the dulcimer. I usually tune my ax DAA, and one day I looked at the C# fret (2nd fret) and asked myself what would happen if I fretted it and put a finger on the D string, same fret. C# - A - F#, an F#m chord!

The same simple pattern produces an A on the E fret (4th) and a Bm on the F# fret (5th). Thus armed, I sounded out "Since I met You Baby," and the blues was born.

Later, I decided that when I had a long E note in a tune, I would plop a finger on the D string - 2nd fret, to produce a bluesy sound that involves E and F#. No doubt this chord has a name, but I can't be bothered.

Now I have two songs in my dulcimer blues collection, "Since I met you baby" and "Just walking in the rain." Now I need more songs with that kind of tonality.

Ideas, anyone?