Hammered Dulcimer Articles
Click on an article in the list below to select an interesting article about or related to the hammered dulcimer.
- Historical Hammered Dulcimers
Photographs of antique hammered dulcimers.
- How to Replace a String on a Hammered Dulcimer
This helpful article provides step-by-step instructions for replacing a string on a hammered dulcimer. Full Article
- How to Tune a Hammered Dulcimer
- This helpful article provides step-by-step instructions for tuning a hammered dulcimer. Full Article
- Hammered Dulcimer Sustain: What's Best?
Prospective hammered dulcimer players have many things to consider when purchasing a hammered dulcimer, not the
least of which is how much sustain they need from it. In fact, I think it is fair to say that, along with tone and volume, sustain can determine whether players will get ultimate satisfaction from the music they play. Too much
sustain, and the music gets muddy as tone rolls over tone and mingles into a musical mush. It can produce, as one player put it, "a wall of sound." Too little sustain, and the music sounds tinkly - not a good thing when
you're playing "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound." Full Article
- Making Lemonade Out of Lemons: A Cautionary Tale of the Hammered Dulcimer
"More than a few hammer dulcimers have come out of my shop over the years and I have never had a serious problem
with one. I did have a massive glue failure once with a harp, which imploded most dramatically during the night once, but never a hammer dulcimer." Full Article.
- Hammered Dulcimer Trivia
Did you know that founding father Alexander Hamilton has a connection with the hammered dulcimer? Read More.
- The Hammered Dulcimer Illustrated
- How to String a Hammered Dulcimer
Someone once said (perhaps it was me) that stringing a hammered dulcimer is a #@$% bloody sport that ought to be left to those who
feel no pain and are not easily frustrated. In fact, before stringing a hammered dulcimer yourself, you ought to seriously consider finding someone you dislike intensely and hiring him or her to do it. That way you would get two
things you want: a bit of sadistic revenge on your enemy and a strung instrument. Full Article
- The Entre 15/14 Hammered Dulcimer String Gauges (.PDF)
- A Brief History of the Hammered Dulcimer
- Playing Without Looking
- The Hammered Dulcimer at Johns Hopkins University
"For students in the Clipper Room, escape this winter break is not as raucous as the wine tasting or swing dancing classes. Few
blurt out embarrassing comments or make ribald jokes. Most are post-college working adults--Hopkins alumni and staff, and people from the community. And though they might be quiet, their escape is sound. They are studying the
hammered dulcimer, a subject that could hardly be more removed from the discord of modern life." Full Article
- The Woodworker's Shed
...But I think my shed on a supported foundation and floor is more pleasing as I compare it with the slab-based shop my father
built 20 years ago. The reasons I think so are philosophical. When I enter my father's shop and step onto the concrete floor, there is little transition between the sidewalk outside and the floor inside. They are both hard and, when
wearing soft-soled shoes, silent. When I step into the shop I don't get the feeling that I have walked out of one world into another, but merely that I've walked into a covered place. A small sense of disappointment results. There
is also the illusion of permanence, as if the solidity of the floor extends down to the bowels of the earth, and that when the earth in its dotage creaks to an end, this floor, this concrete floor, will remain. Concrete is also
sterile and antiseptic to me. It has no organic quality. It does not live nor has it ever lived. Above all, it does not speak. It records no age or history or evidence of decline and thus pretends to hold superiority over
civilization itself. It is this false pride of concrete that I abhor. Full Article
Click on a graphic below to choose a .PDF document.
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