Pick'n noter pages --

I can't remember when I first heard an Appalachian dulcimer played. Probably during the 1960s on WUOT-FM, the public radio station at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I know as a UT student I heard a lot of dulcimers at craftsmen's fairs in nearby Gatlinburg. People still played the old-fashioned way in the 60s, at least in East Tennessee. They'd strum with a pick in the right hand, and slide a wooden "noter" with the left up and down the fretboard to sound the notes. I remember a constant melodious buzz in the background as I wandered through the old Gatlinburg civic center. I loved the sound. In time, I started learning how to make it myself. I'm still learning.

The player I claim as my first teacher, the late Dorsey Williams of Jefferson City, Tenn., sharpened a rat-tail comb for his pick and used a Popsicle stick for a noter. Like most traditional players of the day, he noted only a doubled melody string but strummed across all the strings. A traditional dulcimer-maker and a born showman, he'd flail away at a whole world of fiddle tunes and old standards like "Grandfather's Clock" while festival-goers gathered around. He had a world of fun playing the dulcimer, and he taught me making music isn't always about theory and technique -- it can be rowdy and joyous.

That resonant buzz I heard in East Tennessee, which musicians call a drone, is the ancient sound of the dulcimer. Music historian Charles Hamm says from the 1800s on, the dulcimer was a solo instrument "used for playing simple melodies supported by a drone, or accompanying ballads or songs with a drone or fragments of a simple ostinato" (82). An osinato is a musicians' term for a repeated musical phrase. Jean Ritchie, a Kentuckian who introduced the dulcimer on the New York folk revival scene in the 1950s, suggests a dronal style of playing for instrumentals and an ostinato style for accompanying the singing voice - reminiscent of the finger-picking patterns a guitar player uses. In her Dulcimer Book, first published in 1963 and still in print, she explains:

• Instrumental: "In your left hand is the noter, usually a finger-length of bamboo. ... Cradle the noter along the fingers and hold it so that the thumb may press from above, and the side of the finger may glide along the side of the fingerboard to keep the end of the noter from touching the middle string. That's because melody changes are all made on one string; the other two are always drones" (18). Ritchie slides the noter up and down the fretboard while strumming her thumb or a pick across all the strings, getting what she calls "a constant harmonizing chord which gives the delightful and characteristic drone, or 'bagpipes' sound."
• Accompaniment. Ritchie's preferred way of getting an ostinato is by strumming the melody string and "rolling the thumb outward across the two drones, sounding them individually for two accompanying beats at the ends of lines, and such likely places" (24). While the old-timers might sound the open melody string or keytone throughout a song, Ritchie likes to play harmonies that complement her voice.

Ritchie's Dulcimer Book, first published in 1963 and still in print, was the basic beginners' book for decades. People have been playing the dulcimer her way since at least the 19th century. And the available evidence suggests they've been playing its forerunner, a simple German zither called the scheitholt, the same way since the Middle Ages.

Times have changed now, and playing the Appalachian dulcimer for many people has become a matter of chording and flat-picking copyrighted tablature in ensemble performance. But the old-fashioned pick-and-noter style is not yet a lost art.

Appalachian dulcimer

Our earliest recordings of the Appalachian dulcimer date from the 1930s. For the most part, the early tapes available through Archive of Folk Culture in the Library of Congress are of solo performers playing fiddle tunes, children's songs and an occasional ballad or hymn.

"During its traditional period, the dulcimer was principally a solo instrument," says Ralph Lee Smith. "Its place was generally in the home. It often stood in a corner or was placed over a firelplace mantel, where it was correctly regarded as a fine decoration. ... Reflecting the dulcimer's role as a 'home instrument,' many old time players were women. Whether they were men or women, few traditional players could read music; they played by ear rather than from musical score. Some players accompanied thmeslves with singing, while others were content just to play tunes" (Traditions 1-6). As with other forms of folk music, we have very little information about playing styles before the advent of sound recording technology, and our sources are not always completely accurate. But they do allow us to make educated guesses about what the dulcimer sounded like in what Smith eloquently calls the "mists of the Appalachian mountain past."

• Josiah Combs (Kentucky, ca. 1900-1910). An early graduate of the Hindman Settlement School near Hazard, Ky., Combs described the dulcimer like this: "This strange instrument ... has a slight resemblance to the violin, with a narrow and elongated body and a very short neck. It is usually made of walnut or maple wood, and is strung with three stings plucked by a crow-quill held in the right hand. One of the three strings, the one nearest the body as the instument lies in the lap, is tuned an octave higher than the third one, and in unison with the second. The melody is produced on the first string by moving a bit of smooth reed back and forth over it, pressing it down between the fret and strumming all three stings with the quill; the second and third strings are used as tonic-drones. ... The 'dulcimore' is adapted to simple, one-part tunes rather than fast ones. Because of its simplicity many folk-airs even cannot be played on it" (quoted in Hamm 81).
• Emma Bell Miles (Tennessee, 1909). In a fulsomely romantic short story titled "The Dulcimore" set on the Cumberland Plateau, a handsome young mountain blacksmith gives his own true love a three-string "dulcimore ... whittled with innumerable patient touches out of dark brown oak, unvarnished, the head resembling a fiddle's, but curiously carved in an attempt at ornamentation -- a thing fitted only for the wild minors of native airs." Miles' fair lady plays "faint monotonous chords" on it with a "triangular plectrum of smoothed bone," after tuning the instrument "to draw the strings into the weird and plantive harmony of which they were capable" (950-52). Miles, of Chattanooga, lived in the nearby Cumberlands for several years and also wrote a book titled The Spirit of the Mountains (1905). Her short story, published in Harper's in 1909, is the earliest contimporary reference to the dulcimer I have been able to locate.
• William Aspinwall Bradley (Kentucky, 1915). Bradley was a literary agent (one of whose clients was the avant garde writer Gertrude Stein) and essayist who wrote for Harper's magazine. When he went hunting for English ballads in the southern Appalachians, he visited the Hindman school and acquired a dulcimer there. He reported: "The [ballad] singer frequently accompanies himself on banjo, fiddle, or dulcimer. This last is the traditional instrument of mountain music. Like Coleridge's Abyssinian maid, the Kentucky girl is also a 'damsel with a dulcimer,' or rather she was before this odd and yet elegant instrument, which descends directly from Elizabethan England, and which looks not unlike a very slender and short-necked violin, began to disappear. It is strung with three strings, which are sometimes of gut, though generally of wire. Two of them are always tuned in unison, while the third is an octave lower. Occasionally the dulcimer -- or 'dulcimore,' as it is called in the vernacular -- is bowed, but more often it is plucked, the performer holding it lengthwise in his lap, producing the notes by pressing the string nearest him with a bit of reed held in his left hand, while his right hand sweeps all three with a quill or a piece of not too flexible leather. The two strings that are not pressed form a sort of bourdonnement, or drone-bass accompaniment, like a bagpipe. The tonal quality is very light -- a ghostly, disembodied sort of music such as we may imagine to have been made by the harp in the ballad of 'The Twa Sisters,' although this instrument is formed, not from the bones of a drowned girl's body, but from thinly planed and delicately curved boards of native black-walnut. Those which, like mine, are made by an old man who lives in a cabin at the mouth of the Doubles of Little Carr are pierced with four little heart-shaped openings" (912). His instrument was almost certainly made by "Uncle Ed" Thomas.

Scheitholt

If the dulcimer's early history is shrouded in Appalachian mists, the scheitholt is practically invisible -- at least in this country. But it goes back to the Middle Ages. German composer Michael Praetorius included it in a catalog of musical instruments in 1618, but he dismissed it as a ragged peasant's instrument (Lumpeninstrumenta). In time, however, it evolved into the concert zither. It is related to similar instruments in France, the Low Countries, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, and it probably has Middle Eastern antecedents. Heidi Mueller, a singer-songwriter and dulcimer artist of German heritage, says she's heard that Johann Sebastian Bach's grandfather may have played a scheitholt.

During the 1700s, the scheitholt was brought to Pennsylvania by German immigrants and down the Shennandoah Valley by their descendants. Their musical tradition died out during the 19th century, but a collector who interviewed their descendants in 1926 said they often played the instrument with a bow. One recalled his father playing "generally German hymns, such as were sung in the Mennonite Meeting-house," as well as "Home Sweet Home" in English (Smith, Story 20). But when the Scots-Irish in Virginia got ahold of the scheitholt, they used it for dance music -- and that meant fiddle tunes.

Smith argues, "the only instrumental music that makers and owners of scheitholts during the early days of settlement were likely to hear, was fiddle music. The fiddle, of course, was the preeminent instrument for the playing of dance music; dance tunes constituted the major proportion of everything that fiddlers knew and played. Owners of scheitholts would of course be interested in playing tunes that were played on the only other musical instrument in the enviroment." Smith's interviews with descendants of English-speaking players bear that out -- as they recalled fiddle tunes like "Old Joe Clark," and popular standards like "Wildwood Flower" (Story 20-21, 57-58). Ken Bloom, a musician and luthier who teaches classes in the scheitholt at Western Carolina University's annual dulcimer conference, plays it with thumb and fingers like he does a concert zither. But German sources also suggest early scheitholts were played with a pick, or plectrum, and noter (literally a round piece of wood or Rundholz), a style similar to that which evolved in America. A few notes on playing styles:

• Ralph Lee Smith (Pa.-Va., 19th century). Smith believes the Pennsylvania Germans would play slowly, most often with a bow, while the Scots-Irish who adapted the instrument to their music would rip through fiddle tunes with a turkey quill. He says, "It is interesting to note that the damage to the top of the instrument caused by the action of a swiftly moving plectrum or switch, is rarely seen on scheitholts from the areas of old German settlement ... They were obviously played with a bow, with the fingers, or carefully with a plectrum. One does see some scheitholts with this kind of damage to their tops, in Appalachia" (Story 20-21). The same kind of pick damage is seen commonly on old Appalachian dulcimers and is probably one reason for the dulcimer's raised fretboard.
• Zitherorchester Edelweiss Maulburg (Germany). Says Gabriella Weher, who plays in the zither orchestra at Maulburg, "In the Middle Ages one made music on a Scheitholt (2- or 3-stringed, rectangular music instrument). Undoubtedly the predecessors of the Scheitholts are to be found in the Turkish and Persian area. ... The 14 frets used on the Scheitholt permitted diatonic playing on two melody strings tuned together, in addition rang out a free string (Freisaite), which could change pitch as with the Monochord by adjusting a bridge (durch Unterlegen eines Steges Tonhöhe verändert werden konnte). The left hand played with a round piece of wood over the strings. The thumb of the right hand strummed the strings." (Wehrer)
• Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig (Germany, 17th-19th century). "For playing, the Scheitholt lies horizontally before the musician, either on the knees of the player or on a table. Sounding the first string on the frets takes place either with a bar (Praetorius 1619) or with the individual fingers of the left hand. The second to fourth strings are not seized, they function thus as a drone (Bordun). With the right hand the strings are strummed across (durchstrichen), either with the thumb, or more frequently still with the shaft of a feather as with a plectrum."
• Michael Praetorius (Germany, 1618). "The first account of this instrument [scheitholt] comes from Praetorius ("Syntagma musicum," 1618) who described it as a small monochord made of three or four boards, provided at one end with a peg box in which are inserted three or four pegs for tuning the brass strings of the instrument. Of these strings three are tuned to the same note, while the fourth (which was added ad libitum) was tuned an octave higher. One of the unison strings was pressed on to the finger-board by a little metal hook halfway (?) down, so that its pitch was raised a fifth. Near the nut the thmb of the right hand made the instrument sound by crossing all the strings, while the left hand made the melody by drawing a little smooth rod backwards and forwards over the foremost string. Brass frets indicated the places where the various notes were to be found." (qtd. in Panum 263)

Translations from the German are mine (with a lot of help from Google).

A Civil War dulcimer (or scheitholt)

In the Museum of Appalachia, there is a dulcimer that has been traced back to Civil War days. It is a small, obviously homemade instrument in the shape of a long, narrow trapezoid. John Rice Irwin, proprietor of the museum, describes it like this:

"As bitter and relentless as the fighting was, there were long periods of encampment and waiting during the Civil War, and various games and musical instruments provided relief from the boredom. This early dulcimer is made of black walnut, and the entire body, neck and tail piece are carved from a single piece. The top or front portion comprises the second piece of wood in the instrument.

"I bought the dulcimer from my longtime friend, Professor Roddy Moore of Virginia's Ferrum College on May 31, 1994. Roddy had traced its history to the Allen family in Commerce, in Northeast Georgia. Oral tradition passed from one generation to another was that a member of the Allen family had carried this primitively made dulcimer with him while serving in the civil war."

While it can be called a dulcimer, the instrument has features that make it look a lot like a scheitholt or a transitional instrument. Its frets appear to be stapled right onto the soundbox instead of a raised fretboard, and its trapezoidal shape is similar to that of a scheitholt. (To see a picture of a 20th-century dulcimer, a reproduction of a 19th-century Virginia dulcimer and a reproduced 18th-century Pennsylvania scheitholt side by side, go to http://www.sci.edu/classes/ellertsen/freeport.html on my website. The scheitholt is the narrow instrument on the right.) The Museum of Appalachia is just off Interstate 75 near Norris, Tenn.

Appalachia

Since the Appalachian dulcimer is played by people from New England to California these days, the following note is offered as a public service. People who live in Appalachia don't say the word like flatlanders do. There's even a poem for the edification of flatlanders. It goes like this:

"Snake," said Eve,
"If you try to deceive,
 I'll throw this apple atcha." 
                   (Jones and Wheeler 90)

From Wexford to Knoxville

Appalachian music comes from Anglo-Celtic roots, but it has its own sound. In a book with the marvelous title of Roadkill on the Three-chord Highway, Colin Escott, a Canadian journalist who has written about Hank Williams Sr. and Sun Records, traces it back from early rock and country music :

The Everley Brothers borrowed the sound of the Louvin Brothers. The Louvins sang an old murder ballad called 'The Knoxville Girl,' and if you dig around you'lll find that the Blue Sky Boys recorded an even spooker version twenty years earlier, in 1937, and that the first recorded version dated all the way back to the dawn of the country music record business in 1924. Dig around some more and you'll find that the song came over from England as 'The Wexford Girl,' but what's really interesting is that 'The Wexford Girl' isn't really 'The Knoxville Girl.' Something happened in the darkness and isolation of Appalachia, something indefinable. It happened before the recording machine, and it happened in the little hollers [sic] and valleys. The American experience warped and transformed the immigrants, changing their music as it changed them. 'The Knoxville Girl' is eerier and darker than 'The Wexford Girl,' despite the fact that 'The Wexford Girl' is more explicit. (vii)

The song clearly has Anglo-Celtic roots. Wexford is in Ireland, and "Wexford Girl" is variously described as Irish or English. But "Knoxville Girl" is pure Appalachian. Especially if you first heard it, as the writer did, on the jukebox at the former Yardarm tavern on Highland Avenue in Knoxville.

References

1. Bradley, William Aspenwall. "Song-Ballets and Devil's Ditties." Harper's 130 (May 1915): 901-14.
2. Ellertsen, Peter. "Music, Politics Mix at Festival." Knox County News [Knoxville] July 18, 1974: 2.
3. Escott, Colin. Roadkill on the Three-chord Highway: Art and Trash in American Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2002.
4. Hamm, Charles. Music in the New World. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.
5. Irwin, John Rice. Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Norris, Tenn.: Museum of Appalachia, 1979.
6. Jones, Loyal, and Billy Edd Wheeler. Laughter in Appalachia. Little Rock: August House, 1987.
7. Long, Lucy M. "A History of the Mountain Dulcimer." Sweet Music Index. http://www.bearmeadow.com/smi/histof.htm.
8. Miles, Emma Bell. "The Dulcimore." Harper's 119 (Nov. 1909): 949-56.
9. Mueller, Heidi. "Mountain Dulcimer Background." Heidi Mueller: Official Website. 2002. http://scpweb.net/heidi/dulcimer.htm
10. Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig. "Scheitholt und frühe Formen der Kratzzither." Studia Instrumentorum Musicae. 2001. http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/zith_scheitholt.htm
11. Panum, Hortense. The Stringed Instruments of the Middle Ages: Their Evolution and Development. Ed. Jeffrey Pulver. 1939. New York: DaCapo, 1971.
12. Rimmer, Joan. "Appalachian Dulcimer." 20 vols. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. New York: Grove, 1980-86.
13. Ritchie, Jean. The Dulcimer Book. New York: Oak Publications, 1963.
14. Smith, Ralph Lee. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1997.
15. __________. The Story of the Dulcimer. Cosby, Tenn.: Crying Creek, 1986.
16. Wehrer, Gabriella. "Geschichte der Zither." Zitherorchester Edelweiß Maulburg. http://www.wehrer.de/zither.htm.
17. Wilson, Joe. "Jean and Doc at Folk City: A Backward Glance 27 Years Later." Jean Ritchie and Doc Watson at Folk City. Smithsonian/Folkways SF 40005, 1990.

-- Pete Ellertsen <ellertsen@sci.edu>

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