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Hammer Dulcimer

🔗Chris Vaisvil <chrisvaisvil@...>

10/18/2010 10:55:33 AM

I came home yesterday to a nice surprise - my daughter found and wife
bought a hammer dulcimer from the antique store for $30!!

Awesome - I've ordered a tuning wrench and piano wire to re-string the
instrument.
I was wondering if someone has previous microtonal experience with a
hammer dulcimer and perhaps some tuning suggestions.

One of the characteristics is that the left bridge gives a 5th above
to the left of the notes on the right. (Every other notes)
I'm thinking the right bridge is a major 3rd but I haven't confirmed
that with a tuner yet.

I posted this on facebook as well have have the following suggestions so far:

Ethan Schwartz
it's built for diatonic scales, right? i like the sound of
1 9/8 7/6 4/3 3/2 27/16 7/4
for modal stuff rather than the plain pythagorean. or if you wanted to get crazy
1 9/8 5/4 11/8 3/2 13/8 7/4

Pictures are here:

http://notonlymusic.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=642&start=0