Bleah. Tired. Long hours in a test cell, going rounds with a 16-cylinder gas genset. I'm pretty sure I'm winning now, but the emissions calibration was a pain in the dorsal orifice
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Dumb Question: What does a dulcimer sound like? Is it the high pitched pretty strumming thing that you hear in songs like Rod Stewart's Maggie? Because I've always wanted to learn to play whatever it is that makes those sounds, but I don't actually know what instrument it is....
Actually, the dulcimer whereof I speak is often referred to as the hammered dulcimer, which is akin to taking the frame and soundboard out of a (miniature) piano, and playing the strings by striking them with two small wooden hammers. The strings are not sequentially arranged as in a piano; there are two bridges and three courses of strings that are spaced a fifth apart, ascending from right to left, and within each course ascending a whole- or half-step from bottom to top. OK, those are correct statements but probably unparseable.
You can see pictures of my dulcimer here. Note that, while people often associate the word "dulcimer" with the mountain or lap dulcimer, your "high pitched pretty strumming thing"; but in fact the hammered dulcimer is the original dulcimer, predating the strummed dulcimer by probably a couple of centuries at least (read more if you're interested). So sometimes when I get tired of prefacing "dulcimer" with "hammered," I don't
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Ahh! I just listened to Sometimes by Step and I know what you're talking about now! I always thought that was some kind of a weird high-pitched piano, and now I find well... it sort of it.
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i dont know how i got to your journal but would you mind if i added you as a friend.
Thx.
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Actually, the dulcimer whereof I speak is often referred to as the hammered dulcimer, which is akin to taking the frame and soundboard out of a (miniature) piano, and playing the strings by striking them with two small wooden hammers. The strings are not sequentially arranged as in a piano; there are two bridges and three courses of strings that are spaced a fifth apart, ascending from right to left, and within each course ascending a whole- or half-step from bottom to top. OK, those are correct statements but probably unparseable.
You can see pictures of my dulcimer here. Note that, while people often associate the word "dulcimer" with the mountain or lap dulcimer, your "high pitched pretty strumming thing"; but in fact the hammered dulcimer is the original dulcimer, predating the strummed dulcimer by probably a couple of centuries at least (read more if you're interested). So sometimes when I get tired of prefacing "dulcimer" with "hammered," I don't ( ... )
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