Dulcimer

[mariness]

So as I was typing away on an email, the doorbell rang, in a particularly demanding sort of way. I hadn't been expecting this in particular, but I headed over to see the UPS guy – several days early, with a long box, for me.

I'm almost afraid to tell you what was in it: a mountain dulcimer.

This should go well.

The cats look terrified.

Nope, I've never played one, or even handled one, before. But I did make the terrible mistake of putting all of my instruments – recorders, keyboard, pennywhistle – into storage, under the mistaken assumption that since I was no longer playing them that frequently, I could live without them, without the ability to play music. I forgot that just knowing they were there provided a certain reassurance. So, reassured. At least about the presence of the musical instrument. About my ability to actually play it, not so much.

But it has a lovely sound when strummed.

Comments

[technoshaman]

It's the conventional wisdom on this coast (as promulgated by pondside) that if you don't know how to play a stringed instrument and want to, the mountain dulcimer is the place to start.

You did get a tuner?

No soul should ever have to do without music. Sometimes all you got is hands or voice or what's between your ears... but that latter? They can *never* take from you. Ask Andy DuFresne.

[mariness]

Oh, yes, to the tuner. I do have perfect pitch, so I could probably tune this by ear, but - given that I've already learned two different ways to tune mountain dulcimers, and also given that I'm used to a chromatic scale, I felt the tuner was a necessity.

I've never tried a stringed instrument before. We'll see how it goes.