by Liane Laskoske

Created on: January 21, 2008

I love playing the piano and guitar, but being one who bucks convention, I also gravitated toward musical instruments not normally played today. My collection includes a teardrop Mountain Dulcimer and a Bowed Psaltery.

The Mountain Dulcimer bears no resemblance to the hammered dulcimer, whose strings are struck with hammers rather than being strummed. The Mountain Dulcimer is so named because it was first built by the people living in the mountains of Appalachia. It began as a crude sort of guitar, and became a beautiful instrument on its own. Jeanne Ritchie is the most famous Mountain Dulcimer player, and Cyndi Lauper played one in one of her videos.

Traditionally, the Mountain Dulcimer is played using a goose feather as a plectrum, but I also use a regular ultra thin guitar pick because the feather quills shred so easily. This instrument has more of a kinship with the zither and is played in much the same way. There are four strings, the two highest of which are tuned to the same note. The three standard tunings are D-A-A, D-A-D, and D-A-C. I use the first tuning most often.

Since the frets are spaced slightly differently from a guitar, the tunings limit the keys that can be played. After gaining some skill, however, a player can learn to bend strings for the missing notes.

The strings themselves can be fretted with a noter, a short wooden dowel, or with the fingers. It takes some getting used to the positioning for different chords, but after a while, a player will begin to get the feel of it.

The Bowed Psaltery is another odd instrument. A long, triangular stringed instrument, the Bowed Psaltery is played with a bow, is tuned chromatically (just like a piano), and actually has the tuning pegs on each long side of the triangle set up like the black and white keys on a piano.

Its cousin is the pig-nosed psaltery, which is plucked with the fingers, but has only the name in common. Some people try to compare it to the violin, but other than being bowed, the Bowed Psaltery is nothing like a violin.

Origins of the Bowed Psaltery are sketchy. Some books state it was first devised by a schoolmaster in the 1800s, but some paintings and carvings from the 1400's show a similar instrument. Whatever the origins, the Bowed Psaltery is a fine, delicate instrument that is easy to play and enjoy without much effort.

New instruments are being invented even today. Blue Man Group, the most inovative of entertainment groups, routinely invents or reinvents instruments to fit their act.

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