Basics

One intriguing thing about learning to play the Appalachian mountain dulcimer is that it is relatively easy to get started.  Once you have an instrument, learning can begin.  That's not to say, however, that there are not some basic things that can really help get started.  These include a couple of very practical items that you will very likely find very helpful in the beginning.  Club co-founder Jerry Kramer shares his advice on these two items below:                                        :

• How to tune your mountain dulcimer. 
• How to change strings on your mountain dulcimer.

Once you know how to tune your dulcimer and, if it becomes necessary, to change strings on your dulcimer, you can get down to actually learning to play your dulcimer.  A next good thing to do is to become familiar with your dulcimer's fret board.  It's scale is diatonic rather than chromatic like a guitar or mandolin.  That makes is sort of like playing a piano with only white keys.  Your dulcimer may have so-called extra frets (i.e, a 6+ and a 13+).  Assuming you are tuned in a D-Mixolydian tuning, it's good to figure what notes of the D-scale are where on the fret board.  Club co-founder Clay Butler has provided this chart to help.  It's pretty self-explanatory: it shows the wound base and melody string(s), tuned open to D but an octave apart and the middle string tuned open to A.  At each fret location, the actual note that is heard when the string is fretted at that location and plucked is shown.

In most cases, new players start with learning just the melody of a tune.  The Appalachian mountain dulcimer is particularly well-suited to this because it's really a melodic stringed instrument.  Most so-called "old-timers" in the Appalachia play in what's called a drone-style.  What this means is that the middle and wound base strings are strummed as a drone back-up to a melody being fretted on the melody string(s).   That being the case, let's explore some other "basics" that might very well prove helpful as you begin to learn to play your dulcimer.  Here are just a few:

• Club co-founder Clay Butler, who has been playing since 1985, has been teaching folks in the Bellingham area to play the mountain dulcimer since 2006.  His approach for new players to for them to find their "groove" for each new tune.  This entails learning the melody of each new tune while concentrating on using as little movement of the fretting hand up and down the fret board as possible.  He encourages a "sing sister",  "bum-ti-ty" or "1/4th-note, 1/8th note, 1/8th-note" approach to strumming by the strumming hand in the beginning, to the point where it's literally "automatic".  This allows getting to the "groove" of each tune in a very efficient manner.  Once the new player has reached this point on a tune, chords (See below) and embellishments like "hammer-ons" and "pull-offs" can be added.  It's really the player's option as to how "complicated" a playing style he or she might be after.
• As mentioned above, having mastered the "groove" approach to learning new tunes, you might want to consider adding chords.  Clay Butler likens adding chords to putting some tasty filling into a tune's established "groove".  So as not to make this too complicated, let's consider using chords just in the key of D.  Again, assuming you are tuned in a D-Mixolydian tuning, here's a quick introduction to chord structure and such.  Once again, Clay Butler has provided a chart to help.  Here's how to use it:  Start with the D-scale (D E F# G A B C#).  When playing  in the key of D, you may want to utilize the I, IV and V chords.  Their names are the same as the 1st, 4th and 5th notes of the D-scale.  Hence, in the key of D, these chords are I=D, IV=G and V=A.  Each of these chords are made up of 3-notes of the D-scale.  The I or D chord is made of of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the D-scale, starting with D; thus, a I or D chord consists of the notes D, F# and A.  Similarly, a IV or G chord consists of the notes G, B and D.  And, the V or A chord consists of the notes A, C# and E.  The chart shows several configurations of these chords.
• There are many strategies of learning to play a new tune on the mountain dulcimer.  Jerry Kramer has provided the strategy he employes in his Tips and Tricks.
• Unless you are lucky enough to be able to play by ear, learning to read Tablature is also of basic importance.  Paul Furnace, who has played - and composed for - the mountain dulcimer for many years, provides some valuable input in this regard in his How to Read Mountain Dulcimer Music.