Dulcimers and Other Instruments

I love playing the dulcimer along with other musicians and (before Lockdown) it was uncommon if a week went by without my going out to an informal music session or to play in one of the various musical line-ups that I turn out with. The dulcimer sounds great played along with the melodeon, concertina, fiddle, banjo, guitar or just about anything! However, there are times when other musicians are not around and the sound of the dulcimer, by itself, may need 'filling out' a bit. Adding foot percussion is one way of doing this. There are also times when I feel that the dulcimer benefits from another melody instrument and I have found, with a bit of practice, that it is possible to play the mouth organ along with the dulcimer, and they sound quite good together (listen to some of the recordings of English folk songs using this combination if you don't believe me!).

The Foot Drum

I always tap my foot in time when I am playing music. In the days when I played melodeon regularly, I used to tap my foot on the melodeon case to add percussion and then moved over to playing a bass drum using a foot pedal. It certainly gave the music a beat! With the dulcimer, however, there is not room for a large drum and I took to tapping my foot on a tambourine placed below the stand. Keeping the tambourine in place and slightly off the ground involved slotting the top into a grove in a wooden block and using another wooden block to bring my heel up to the same level. To prevent the tambourine sliding about, a supporting block fitted into the 'V' shape made at the back of the scissors dulcimer stand. This may be clearer from the photos.

The Practice Snare Drum

After using a tambourine as a foot drum for some years, I realised that the bulk of a tambourine is not entirely necessary as the sound that was am looking for could be obtained from a relatively flat drum head know as the Rhythm Tech Laptop practice snare drum (try Googling for suppliers). This is actually a snare drum which, for foot percussion, needs to be set in a wooden frame to stop it moving around. Usefully it is also possible to trap a small piece of cleaning cloth behind the snare and to move it around to adjust the level of snare volume. The whole thing works remarkably well and allows me to keep a beat with my playing and, in a session, gives other musicians something rhythmically decisive to follow. See the pictures below.

This shows the Laptop snare drum head set in a frame to allowed it to be played as a foot drum.

This shows the rear view of the Laptop snare drum. Note the small blue piece of cleaning cloth that can be moved sideways to deaden the sound of the snare when less noise is needed.

The Mouth Organ

The second thing that I do to fill out the dulcimer sound is to add a mouth organ. I have played mouth organ longer than I can remember and had no difficulty playing it along with the guitar or banjo using a 'stand' or mouth organ holder. Similarly, with the dulcimer, I did not find it too difficult to play the dulcimer and mouth organ together - it just takes a bit of practice!

Although I have played various types of mouth organ over the years, the one that I have taken to playing recently is the Seydel Sampler in D and G. This is very versatile because it allows a shift between D and G at the press of a button (without needing to change mouth organs). Beyond that, it is one of the few mouth organs around that is 'Solo' tuned (rather than 'Richter' - for blues) so that it gives the relative minor note of the scale at the lower octave, which is needed in quite a lot of modal folk songs. With 12 holes (three octaves) the Seydel Sampler is a bit bigger than the usual 10-hole mouth organ, but it still seems to fit in a stand (though I have added slightly larger wing-nuts to give a better grip). I realise that many people have strong views about mouth organs (like dulcimers) but I am simply recounting what works for me!

This is a shot of the Seydel Sampler G/D mouth organ in stand.

Particularly when playing the double-sided dulcimer I have tend to play in the keys of C and F, which suit my voice better for certain songs. To accompany these I have bought a Seydel De Luxe Steel Mouth Organ in C and F, which needs to be specially ordered from the Seydel website. The Sampler is only available in D and G, but the De Luxe Steel is essentially the same thing, but one tone lower in this case (it can be specially ordered in different tunings). This is exactly what I need for many folk song accompaniments.

Link to The Seydel Website - Be warned, these mouth organs are quite pricey, but worth it in my experience of playing traditional music (if you want to play blues or other kinds of music, they may not be suitable)

Link to 11/I. Amplification

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Please feel free to email me at bill.howarth54@gmail.com with any comments on the website.