Calling all Mountain Dulcimer experts!

[skygazer]

I was 10 when they made me study clarinet and read music. I was 14 when I go my first dulcimer -- the guitar came a year later.

Consider yourself very lucky indeed. Planting musical seeds early allows a lifetime of growth. Like a garden, things grow even when you are not paying attention!

[Marcus CA]

BTW, check out the album "Appalachian Mandolin and Dulcimer" by Butch Baldassari and David Schnaufer if you haven't had a chance.

Absolutely! That is a GREAT album!

Also, check out Bruce Hornsby's dulcimer/mando cover of Jackson Browne's "I'm Alive" from the JB tribute album that came out last year.

[catmandu2]

This thread provoked me to join up over there...

I've been a member there since 2005...on the hammered side ..

*Oh, did you all hear the Jean Ritchie interview on "Thistle & Shamrock" - really sweet. There was something I was going to post about after hearing that show last week...but I've completely forgotten what it was ..

[catmandu2]

...its the unpredictable variety of topics that keep me coming back. ..

It's unlikely that I got stuck on M-Café .. considering that I rarely if ever play mandolin anymore, and only rarely now play any 5ths-tuned instrument other than fiddle ..

I also enjoy M's oud forum, flamenco fora, talkbass, and here and there some others .. but the café seems to me about the best to discuss a variety of stringed instruments (although, this may well not be favored by the powers that be .. I don't know? - but so far they've been forgiving). For example, last week while ghouggling I happened on an acoustic guitar forum (it looked like a popular one) and clicked on the "other stringed instruments" forum: there was little if any discussion of exotica or ephemera that looked interesting to me.. noting like what goes on here. Anyway ..

But on second thought, perhaps it's not unexpected that the café would be such a nexus: the mandolin is a particular instrument that resides somewhere amid so many others ... (and, there just isn't any wire harp forum ...

[catmandu2]

Phrygian (PHRYGIAN?!?)...

Yes - Flamenco!