The Dulcimer Book | Beginner Instruction and Folk Songbook for Appalachian Dulcimer | Learn Tuning, Playing Techniques, and Traditional Songs | Sheet Music and Lyrics for Study

by Jean Ritchie

This book teaches beginners how to tune and play the dulcimer, and features illustrations, drawings, and recollections of the dulcimer's local history. It also includes music and lyrics for 16 songs from The Ritchie Family of Kentucky. Bachelor's Hall ~ Barb'ry Ellen ~ Dear Companion ~ Go Tell Aunt Rhodie ~ Goin' Down Town ~ Goin' to Boston ~ Ground Hog ~ O Johnny's on the Water ~ Old Betty Larkin ~ Old Joe Clark ~ Over the River, Charlie ~ Pretty Betty Martin ~ Pretty Polly ~ Pretty Saro ~ Shady Grove ~ What'll I Do with the Baby-O?

Genres: Music

45 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Christmas before last I had $200 to burn and no idea what to spend it on. I had toyed with the idea of getting a guitar for awhile. I’d played instruments before – trombone, piano, and voice if you count that as an instrument – but I’d never really learned a stringed one. So a guitar seemed like a reasonable idea.

Into Guitar Center I went, having no idea what I was really looking for. Employees were pretty stand-offish, still shell-shocked from the holiday rush. I wandered into their acoustic section, knowing I wasn’t interested in an electric guitar. And there, in the middle of the room, was this pretty hour-glass shaped dulcimer. Curious, I ran my fingers over its strings. It was out of tune for sitting there for who knows how long, but even so I fell in love with its voice immediately. I didn’t buy it right away, but instead went home and looked for some tutorials on how to play the dulcimer. Finding it extremely easy to learn alone, I went back the very next day and bought it.

I probably wouldn’t have ever heard about Jean Ritchie if this hadn’t happened, but when you start looking for dulcimer music to play and listen to, her name inevitably pops up. Responsible for bringing the instrument into popular view for awhile, she grew up playing it and singing with it.

She wrote The Dulcimer Book in response to many people asking her how to play. This was an odd concept to her at first. Her father handed her a dulcimer and pretty much left it up to her to teach herself. There wasn’t really any music reading to go along with it. Nevertheless, she very helpfully bridges the gap between folk traditions and the more “properly” school musicians, while keeping the instrument intriguing yet unintimidating.

The book includes information on Jean Ritchie and her family, research on where the dulcimer came from (or rather what other instruments it evolved from), how to tune it and play it traditionally, and includes some folk songs to introduce various modes.

May I just say that I love how beautiful and morbid (and often highly amusing) folk songs are? Really, if you haven’t really listened to some before, look up some lyrics. Here are a few titles Jean Ritchie sang, though they don’t all appear in the book:
•Hangman
•Barbary Allen
•Lord Randall
•Sweet William and Lady Margaret

I’m giving this one four stars. While most dulcimer teachers use different methods these days, significantly dating the book, nothing can really replace the traditions explained in this book. Even if you don’t read it for practical knowledge of the dulcimer, the history in it is still very interesting.

Review originally posted here.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reviewing the 1974 reprint, but I'm not sure anything's updated from the 1963 original. It's also packaged as a Folkways CD release, about 37 minutes, with side one equalling the book's first 24 pp., which cover the historical background, her family's sustaining of the traditional Kentucky tunes, and explain the standard way to play...only the first (or melody pair if four) is held down by the noter or the index finger, leaving the middle treble and bass strings as open to carry a modal drone simply.

However, she allows for other tuning, and offers advice on strumming, finger picking, and fretting for those wishing to innovate, as her folk-scene guitar and banjo-driven colleagues in her adopted city of New York may have preferred, after she discovered the provenance of the lap dulcimer after she and her husband moved there in 1949. The rest of this basic guide, set out in the style of the era as if typed in Courier font and laid out with photos, drawings, and scores, may benefit a reader today in print, as on my Kindle, the PDF cannot reproduce the entire page and settling for half a sheet defeats her goal.

So, an extremely barebones presentation. It's ideal, still, for absolute beginners like me who never had formal training in music, and you can haltingly start with "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" which is a ditty I vaguely remember from nearly six decades ago in a grade school singing textbook, although unlike later generations, we kids never got to try our luck in plucking any stringed instrument unfortunately.

[Jonathan Forisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

My tiny reservoir of knowledge about my new mountain dulcimer is steadily growing, and the things that Jean Ritchie had to say in this book helped a great deal. Her method of playing does not sync with mine - something I've since learned is due to the folk revival of the '70s and the new methods of playing old instruments developed at that time - but her stories and thoughts on the history of the instrument are very interesting.