This popular text blends the haunting, sweet voice of the mountain dulcimer with treasured gospel and sacred melodies. Contains 37 outstanding arrangements in standard notation and tab with lyrics and suggested guitar chords. Dulcimer chord diagrams are also shown.

Madeline MacNeil's performances are characterized by her effortless vocals and impeccable mountain and hammered dulcimer playing. In this book she reveals some of the secrets of her success with the mountain dulcimer. Early on, she reminds the reader that the dulcimer is not a toy or a stringed kazoo but a serious, expressive musical instrument capable of stretching as far as the imagination. She endorses both playing by ear and learning to read standard notation. In easily-understood language she manages to explore some very complex, even esoteric concepts, making this a particularly valuable book for the beginning instrumentalists. You Can Teach Yourself Dulcimer is simply a great fundamental book. Twelve intensive lessons in 95 pages with arrangements in both DAA and DAD tuning. Standard notation and tablature. Illustrated with photographs and drawings. Includes access to online audio and video.

Bing Futch's "Method For Beginning Mountain Dulcimer" is the most comprehensive how-to-learn-the-dulcimer book available. You'll learn the basics, sure, and start playing songs right away. Even better, though, is the depth of content that Bing provides for you in this one incomparable volume - technique, repertoire, theory, history, and FUN! Once you've worked your way through this book, you'll be a competent dulcimer player that can enjoy playing with any group. You'll have a great time honing your skills with Bing, and you'll end up with a wealth of technical skills, music fundamentals, and dulcimer repertoire!

Dulcimer experiences, news, memories, snapshots, playing styles, tuning and tablature methods, favourite songs, opinions, advice and information on the Appalachian dulcimer.

Perhaps no instrument better represents the music of Appalachia than the fretted dulcimer. The instrument was no longer confined to back porches and local music halls when Jean Ritchie so melodically thrust herself and her dulcimer into the national limelight during the folk revival of the 1950s. But where did the dulcimer, known to exist in no other folk culture in the world, come from? In The Story of the Dulcimer, Ralph Lee Smith traces the dulcimer's beginnings back to European immigration to America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania and Appalachia, they brought with them scheitholts, a type of northern European fretted zither. As German immigrants intermingled with English and Scotch-Irish immigrants, the scheitholt, which was customarily played to a slower tempo in German cultural music, began to be musically integrated into the faster tempos of English and Scotch-Irish ballads and folk songs. As Appalachia absorbed an increasing flow of English and Scotch-Irish immigrants and the musical traditions they brought with them, the scheitholt steadily evolved into an instrument that reflected this folk music amalgamation, and the modern dulcimer was born. In this second edition, Smith brings the dulcimer's history into the twenty-first century with a new preface and updates to the original edition. Copiously illustrated with images of both antique scheitholts and contemporary dulcimers, The Story of the Dulcimer is a testament to the enduring musical heritage of Appalachia and solves one of the region's musical mysteries.