Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Examples-B

Now here is one, water bound from one of Lois Hornbostel's books. I think this was from her book for school children. And what she's showing us is just, musical notation, and the numbers below are giving us the fret numbers to use. She's telling us the tuning in a major tuning DAA. So in the melody string, we're strumming or we're plucking 543, and then her arrows are also indicating which way the strum goes.

And in her notation, the down strum means that's the down your dominant strum. If you're an outie, this is gonna be an out strum. If you're an innie, this is gonna be an in strum. Now you'll notice that water bound all have large numbers and then and I has below it short numbers or smaller numbers and it has a down and up strum. So you strum down down down down up.

Can't get home and then you're just holding for the cha under the rest sign at the end of that second measure. She calls this the check it strum. Check it strum. Now let's look at this one is one by Mary Mason who loves to play notar style in, I think she's from Virginia. Had this book for a long time.

In this one you can see that there's there's a melody notes in the top, there's key signature, time signature, treble clef, and there is also the tab notation on the left. In this case the numbers are present and there are stem looking things that will tell us quarter, half half quarter, half half half half quarter quarter. And then there's no notes in the second, the end of the second measure, but you still see a half half strum. So she's indicating even though there's no notes written up there, she's gonna strum over the same the same note that she had before the 8 or the high e. She's gonna strum and do that.

Now this says we're in the high capo a or capo in the key of a. Most likely, even though it doesn't indicate it here, this means she's capoing at the 4th fret because that lets number 11, the fret 11 be an A and get your drones lined up. You'll also notice that there's a box around that letter A at the very beginning. As we've talked about in fiddle tunes, many fiddle tunes are formed in A and B parts. And this tells us this is the A part.

Now here is also an old one. This one comes from the Spadden book that was one of my first books. In here it says ionian is the tuning which at the time the book was written was the way people were talking about tunings. It means a 155 tuning or do so soul. And in this case you're saying Ionian of C, so you tune it CGG.

And you have the musical notation and lyrics as I was walking down the street down the street. So here's Buffalo Gals. Above it, it's just got the numbers 73357, 875, 764, 8757. And the numbers are referring to just playing on the melody string, assuming a drone style way of playing. Now here, let's take a look at one of David Schnaufer's tablatures.

He is indicating with June Apple this particular tune. He's giving us a DAD at the beginning, which is the 158 tuning, saying capo at 4 using it's an A Mixolydian tune. At the tablature location down below, he's showing us DAD as the open tuning. The real thick bars telling us the capo is at the 4 which produces AEA as the pitches. Now just a note, I am on a campaign to try to help us use a little more accuracy and clarity with our tablature.

So I would use a capital D and a capital A for being in the same octave and I'd use a lowercase d for the high d. The same case for the A. A and E are in the same octave but that next A is in the next octave. So I'd use a small a. You can see once again here that the numbers are sitting in the middle of each lines which represent the strings and even though there's drone notes happening they're all written in here as zeros every place you see them.

Now above that first full measure you'll see an A which is the name of the chord we're playing and a button and then next to it you'll see three numbers that are stacked. This is another way of showing a chord shape that could be played while someone else plays the melody. This is saying 6 and a half on the bass and 0 on the middle and the melody. So just like the tablature lines represent the strings on the dulcimer, the little chord symbol above is telling us the same thing. You'll notice also that as with standard musical notation the thick line with the thin and the double dots is telling us this is a backward repeat.

And if you go down to the 3rd line, the 3rd system, there is a one with a bar over it which is telling us this is the first ending and at the end of that first ending is a thick line on the right hand side of the third line. The 3rd stab with a thin line and two dots, which is telling us we're gonna repeat this section and the next time through we'll use the second ending. Now let's go to the 3rd system again and, the first measure has a little 7 under the front of it. That's just telling us that that's the 7th measure as this particular, musical notation system is indicating. Now, what I want to call attention to is the use of the 6a half.

This is one of those ways of telling us we want to use the 6a half fret. This has 6 and one slash 2 like the half symbol, like if you were doing a recipe. And that's indicating it there too. Now let's take a look at another one. This one is Maureen Sellars, one of her tablatures.

This one has, it's a hymn book and it has room for the words that go with hymns, which is common in hymn books. You will see 98 is the time signature which means there's 9 beats in a full measure. This first measure doesn't have 9 beats, does it? It only has 3. The bottom number in the time signature tells us we're counting the 8th notes.

So there are 3 of them here. So this will be 7, 8, 9 as we count, and you get to the next measure, which is a full one. There's a dotted quarter, which is worth 3. Another dotted quarter, which is worth 3. That gets us the 6.

And then you have all of my, which are 3 8th notes, there's your 9. Down below, you can see there are the numbers that are sitting on top of the, the lines or between the lines, which is the other way that this kind of tablet gets gets drawn. You'll notice that in her case, while it's not droning all the way across, the first two measures have zeros on everything with the melody string. But the 3rd measure has a 1 on the bass string and you'll notice above the name of the chord has changed to an A. So that's another example.

There's one more we want to look at and that's one from my Another Jake Will Do book. And in here, I'm adopting the convention that Joe Collins started using in his music, which is indicating the melody notes are in larger print are larger numbers and bold numbers. And the accompanying notes are in, a little bit smaller size and they are not bolded. So if you'd ever want to go through the whole arrangement, you can play just the melody first, which is what I suggest you do. Learn the tune before you learn all the fancy stuff that goes with it.

Now, this is just a crash course on how tablature, the kinds of tablature you might see when looking at mountain dulcimer music. But I hope this gives you a handle. If you have any questions, feel free to write us here at Dulcimer Crossing, and we'll do our best to keep you playing and moving forward in your musicianship. We'll see you next time.

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Mountain Dulcimer Tablature Examples-B

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