Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions

by Ralph Lee Smith

  FEATURES OF THE DULCIMER

  The Appalachian dulcimer can be described as an elongated soundbox with a raised and centered fretboard running down its top. In most but not all instances, traditional dulcimers have a peg box and scroll at one end. Many dulcimers made prior to the post–World War II folk revival have three strings, held by horizontal wooden pegs. Two pegs that are usually on the left hold the melody and middle strings, while the peg on the right holds the bass string. However, four strings are standard on many old Virginia dulcimers, and the author’s collection includes an old dulcimer from southwestern Virginia or northeastern Tennessee that had five.

  There are a number of traditional dulcimer body styles, including straight sides and lozenge shape. However, most dulcimers fall into two groups: those with a rounded single-bout shape and those with an hourglass shape. The single-bout shape is the earlier style, with one specimen known that is dated 1832 (see chapter 3). This style may have originated in southwestern Virginia, about or not long after 1800. Except for perhaps one or two specimens, hourglass-shaped instruments made their appearance after the Civil War, in Kentucky, West Virginia, and, after the 1880s, North Carolina.

  Most dulcimers of both types are in the general range of 32 to 36 inches long. Single-bout dulcimers usually vary in width at their widest point from about 7 to 10 inches. The body of the hourglass dulcimer is usually narrower, with the wider (lower) bout usually measuring 5½ to 7 inches.

  For single-bout dulcimers, the vibrating string length (VSL)—the span of the strings from nut to bridge—is usually in the range of 24 to 26 inches. For the hourglass type, the VSL is usually at or close to 28 inches. This is a meaningful difference that tracks with substantial consistency and reflects separate development.

  Heart-shaped sound holes are often found on hourglass dulcimers but not on single-bout dulcimers. Single-bout dulcimers often have f-shaped or S-shaped sound holes, or patterns of small drilled holes, but hourglass-shaped dulcimers typically do not.

  Many types of wood were used by the makers of both types of instruments, with poplar, walnut, and cherry being well represented, and maple not far behind. Construction with two different types of wood, popular with the coming of the folk revival, was rare among earlier makers. The skill of the makers and quality of construction varied widely, with some surviving specimens being “backwoods primitives,” and others exhibiting excellent craftsmanship.

  Traditional dulcimers typically had 15 to 17 frets, usually made of shop wire or broom wire, bent into the shape of staples and inserted into the fretboard. Between the last fret and the tailpiece is an open space, intended to accommodate strumming. In hourglass dulcimers, this space is usually hollowed out to facilitate the action of a playing pick, but this “strum hollow” is not found in old single-bout dulcimers.

  The frets were often of uneven width. Since only the melody string was intended to be fretted, the maker took care to place the left-hand edge of each fret close to the edge of the fretboard that faces the player. But many makers scarcely cared how far the frets reached across the fretboard, and the right-hand line of the frets is often uneven.

  By modern standards of dulcimer construction that utilize computer-generated fret patterns, many traditional dulcimers are inaccurately fretted. Placement of the frets was done either by ear or by copying somebody else’s inaccurate fret pattern. In addition, there is a noticeable tendency for the fretting above the 10th fret—high do in do-sol-sol Ionian tuning—to become pretty much arbitrary, with the frets being close together and approximately equally spaced. “Close enough!” one can almost hear the traditional maker saying.

  Audible inaccuracy in fret patterns did not seem to distress old-time makers or players. I have seen and played old dulcimers that were so inaccurately fretted that they hurt my ear, but that had heavy damage at the strumming area of the fretboard resulting from years of use!

  DIATONICALLY FRETTED ZITHERS

  The Appalachian dulcimer is different in so many ways from other fretted instruments with which we are familiar that we can be forgiven for believing that it is unique. But musicologists have seen it before. They inform us that the dulcimer is a “diatonically fretted zither.” Each word of this expression is important and helpful.

  We usually associate the word zither with the many-stringed instrument that is native to the Austrian Tyrol. But musicologists have a more generic view. To the musicologist, a zither is any instrument in which the strings pass over the body without a neck. It is this feature, not the number of strings, that makes an instrument a zither.

  This sheds light into some dark corners. The dulcimer is not a relative of the guitar, nor of such old instruments as the rebec, which has a neck. It is a member of a different musical family and, as we will see in the next chapter, is the direct descendant of something else.

  The dulcimer is a fretted zither. Not all zithers are fretted. For example, the psaltery is an unfretted zither. Typically, in fretted zithers, one or more strings will pass over the frets, while the rest of the strings, however few or many there may be, will pass to the right of the frets and will sound as drones while the melody is lined out on the string or strings that pass over the frets. Even fretted Tyrolean zithers are set up this way, with the numerous drones tuned in groups to produce chords.

  The dulcimer is not only fretted; it is diatonically fretted. Unlike instruments such as the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, the dulcimer is not fretted in a regular progression of halftones. It is fretted in a pattern of whole tones and halftones that matches the pattern of whole tones and halftones that constitutes the major scale: five whole tones and two halftones. This is easily seen on the piano where, in the key of C, the two halftones lie between E and F and between B and C, where there are no black keys.

  In the most usual dulcimer fret pattern, the first note of the major scale, do, is at the 3rd fret. Proceeding fret by fret down the fret board on the melody string produces the major scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, with whole or partial repetition of the scale above high do. The scale’s two halftones are provided by the “short spaces” between the 6th and 7th and between the 9th and 10th frets. Three tones lie below do, at the 2nd and 1st frets and the open string, making it possible to play the many tunes that require them.

  Some old dulcimers and some old scheitholts are fretted to play the major scale from the open string. This type of fretting is easy to spot. After the 3rd fret, there are three whole tones instead of two.

  AN EARLY DESCRIPTION

  Among the first persons from outside the mountains to encounter the dulcimer and describe it in print was a musician named Josephine McGill of Louisville, Kentucky. McGill was a pianist, music teacher, and successful composer of popular sentimental songs. In 1914, she spent three months in the Cumberland Mountains and collected more than a hundred folk songs. In 1917, she published 20 of them in a pioneering book, Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains.

  McGill described the dulcimer in an article entitled “The Kentucky Mountain Dulcimer,” which appeared, with an accompanying photograph, in the January 1917 issue of a magazine called The Musician. The instrument in her illustration was almost certainly made by the traditional Kentucky maker J. Edward Thomas, whose work is described in chapter 6. The dulcimer, McGill says,

  has three metal strings, two of which are tuned in unison and one to a fifth below. Under the first, the melody, string, extend the seventeen frets, giving a range of two octaves and a half, very feeble in the upper tones. The sounding board has four heart-shaped sound holes. The peg box has three wooden pegs at the side and terminates in a carved scroll. Oak or cherry frequently serves as material, though there is no fixed prejudice among the instrument makers on the choice of wood. . . . The player holds the dulcimer flat on his lap; with his left hand he plays the melody, using a reed to press down the string; with his right hand he strikes across the strings, using a piece of leather or anything else flexible and durable that he can find.

 
; This description is interesting to compare with the description of the German scheitholt and how to play it, published in 1619, that appears in chapter 2.

  THE MUSICAL MODES

  In centuries past, the scale that we call “major” was called the Ionian mode. It was one of six modal scales that were used on old music: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian. All were used in old music, and folk songs have survived that employ each of them. The modal scales have a basic feature in common. Each scale consists of five whole tones and two halftones, with an eighth tone that is an octave above the first. The thing that distinguishes each mode from the others is the place at which the two halftones enter the progression.

  On the piano, the scale of the key of C consists of white keys only. Each of the six modal scales begins on one of the white keys—C, D, E, F, G, and A, respectively—and runs for eight tones down the white keys. It is obvious that, if one starts an eight-note scale on, say, D instead of on C, the two halftones between E and F and B and C will enter the scale one note sooner. This shift creates a different scale with a different sound—or as the ancients called it, a different mode.

  The six modes and the starting note of their scales on the piano’s white keys, are as follows:

  Ionian starts on C and runs to C (that is, C an octave higher).

  Dorian starts on D and runs to D'.

  Phrygian starts on E and runs to E'.

  Lydian starts on F and runs to F'.

  Mixolydian starts on G and runs to G.

  Aeolian starts on A and runs to A'.

  A seventh mode, Locrian, starts on B and ends on B', but I have never heard of a traditional song that uses it.

  The tunes of some 80 percent of all known Anglo-American folk songs lie entirely along one or another of the above scales, with no other intruding notes. Overwhelmingly, our folk music is modal.

  A few Anglo-American folk tunes in the Lydian and Phrygian modes are known, but they are rare. The remaining four modal scales—Ionian, Dorian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian—account for most of the tunes and can be called the “Big Four” modes. Of these, Ionian and Mixolydian have a “major sound” to us, and Dorian and Aeolian have a “minor sound.” The reason is that the third tone of the Dorian and Aeolian scales is a halftone, which, to our ears, says “minor.”

  Two of the Big Four modes are standard scales of modern music. Ionian is our major scale and Aeolian is our melodic minor scale. The other two, Mixolydian and Dorian, have no equivalents in modern music. Early collectors were sometimes awed when they heard songs sung, with perfect accuracy, in these scales, without musical instrument accompaniment to guide the singer. The two scales are often the source of the “strange” and “thrilling” sound of many old mountain tunes.

  THE DULCIMER AND THE MODES

  The musical intervals of old-time dulcimer fretting correspond to the intervals of the white keys of the piano. Therefore, whichever fret you choose as the first note of your eight-note scale, the fret pattern underneath will provide five full tones and two halftones for the scale. The only remaining thing for the dulcimer player to do is to retune to provide drones that harmonize with the first tone of the chosen scale.

  Below are starting notes and tunings for the four primary modes on the traditional dulcimer. Here we follow modern usage in assuming that the bass string is tuned to D, although old-timers sometimes tuned it to C or simply to “a good-sounding note.” Tunings are for the bass, middle, and melody strings, respectively.

  Ionian starts at the third fret. Tune D, A, A (do, sol, sol).

  Mixolydian starts at the open string. Tune either D, A, high D (do, sol, do') or D, high D, high D (do, do', do').

  Dorian starts at the fourth fret. Tune D, A, G (do, sol, fa).

  Aeolian starts at the first fret. Tune D, A, C (do, sol, ti).

  Among today’s players, do-sol-high do (D-A-D') tuning, combined with the addition of a fret in the fretboard between the 6th and 7th frets (the “6½ fret”), has become a standard approach to expanding the instrument’s musical capabilities. Today’s instruction usually assumes that the 6½ fret is present. Anyone preferring the traditional modal scale, that is, without the 6½ fret, must order their dulcimers that way when the instruments are being made.

  The changeover to 6½ fret dulcimers did not make some traditional makers happy, but others embraced it. Edd Presnell, a traditional dulcimer maker of Banner Elk, North Carolina (see chapter 7), began putting 6½ frets in his fretboards as early as the 1950s. When I ordered a dulcimer from him without it, he replied, “Are you sure you don’t want it? If you have it, you can play those pretty Christmas carols!” Other tradition-based makers would put in a 6½ fret if you ordered it, but were happier if you didn’t want it. “No 6½ fret,” I said to Warren May, a traditional dulcimer maker in Berea, Kentucky, when I ordered an instrument from him. “Hooray!” he replied. Another traditional maker, Clifford Glenn of Sugar Grove, North Carolina, believes that a lot of modern dulcimer playing, including the 6½ fret, has gone too far. “That’s not dulcimer music!” he said to me.

  Things, however, have continued to move on. In addition to the 6½ fret, an increasing number of modern dulcimers now also have a 1½ fret. Some have various other frets, some have full chromatic fretting, and some are now electric.

  Most traditional players with three-string dulcimers probably played only in the Ionian mode with do-sol-sol tuning. In southwestern Virginia, though, many players used an adaptation of the D-D-high D Mixolydian tuning, with all strings of their four-string dulcimers tuned in unison to a pitch that was in the range of C and D. They then played in either Ionian or Mixolydian without retuning.

  Use of Dorian and Aeolian tunings, on the other hand, is shadowy. Jean Ritchie says that she worked out the Dorian tuning by herself to accommodate old tunes she knew. Others may well have done the same. In an article about her 1914 collecting journey that appeared in the Musical Quarterly in 1917, Josephine McGill tells of hearing a version of “Barbara Allen,” in a “minor key,” played on the dulcimer. The tune, she says, “lends itself to the plaintive effects achievable upon the dulcimore.” One would love to know more!

  When the dulcimer entered the folk revival after World War II, the instrument’s ability to play the scales of the musical modes was instantly perceived and enthusiastically put to work. But, of course, the capability had always been there, and was old when the Appalachian settlements were young.

  THE DULCIMER’S HISTORY: MY FIRST GLIMPSES

  My first encounters with the dulcimer’s history came as a result of my presence in Greenwich Village during the heyday of the folk revival in the late 1950s and 1960s. A description of those wonderful days, plus musical score, guitar chords, and dulcimer tablature by Madeline MacNeil for 21 of the songs we sang, appear my book Greenwich Village: The Happy Folk Singing Days, 1950s and 1960s, published by Mel Bay Publishers.

  I moved into a tiny apartment at 21 Jones Street in 1957 and lived first there and then at 4 Jones Street until I left New York in 1971. In the same year that I first moved in, a small establishment called the Folklore Center opened on MacDougal Street, a few short blocks away, run by a young bookseller named Israel “Izzy” Young. Almost immediately, it became the national and even the international headquarters of the folk revival.

  Soon after the Folklore Center opened, a number of dulcimers and one or two homemade banjos appeared along its right-hand wall, for sale. The instruments were relatively primitive, although my untrained eye did not really distinguish them as such. All the dulcimers were hourglass-shaped except one, which had a single-curve body pattern. The pegs were long and graceful. The price: $30 each. I bought the single-curve instrument. It appears in figure 1.1, with a strum hollow and modern fretting in place of its original wire-staple frets. I was responsible for both modifications. I wish now that I had left it alone!

  This instrument was my working dulcimer in the Village for most of the 1960s. I played it with the old-timey s
tring band enthusiasts that gathered in Allan Block’s Sandal Shop on West 4th Street on Saturday afternoons. A rare photograph showing me sitting on the high work counter of the Sandal Shop in the mid-1960s, playing this instrument, appears in Greenwich Village.

  Figure 1.1. Dulcimer made by Frank Glenn, Beech Mountain, North Carolina, c. 1957, and played by the author in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and 1960s.

  In 1968, I bought a Jean Ritchie dulcimer at the Folklore Center for the princely sum of $75, and the old, more primitive instrument went into relative retirement. But my curiosity was beginning to stir. Where had it come from, and who had made it? No label or writing was visible through the sound holes. I asked Izzy about the origins of this one and the others that he had offered for sale at the same time. He replied that Roger Abrahams, a young folklorist, had obtained them during a field trip to western North Carolina.

  By this time, Abrahams had acquired a Ph.D. and become associate director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Oral History at the University of Texas at Austin. In October 1968, I wrote to him, asking him from whom he had acquired the dulcimers. He replied:

  You really hit me a low one asking about those dulcimers. I have now lost a week’s sleep trying to think of that guy’s name who made them. He lived in the Beech Creek area right under Beech Mountain, North Carolina, and was therefore a neighbor of all the Presnells, Frank Profitt, Doc Watson, etc. He was a farmer about age 35 who made those things during his spare time during the winter. He made about twenty dulcimers and a like number of squirrel-skin banjos for me, many of which I sold through Izzy. He died in the summer of 1957 of a heart attack, sad to say. I am sorry I can’t give you his name. Dave Van Ronk has the oak dulcimer that his grandfather made. It is the kind of dulcimer that is commonly made in the Beech Mountain area; the best-known maker from that area is Edd Presnell.