I heard awhile ago about an amazing new instrument that is essentially a relatively new class of instrument called a “strummable dulcimer”. I’d always been intrigued by dulcimers, but also confused by the various types. Did you play them with a feather quill? Or hit them with little hammers…or is it a bow? Are there electric dulcimers? It turns out all of the above is true, but that the types of dulcimers are as varied as the cultures and music they have evolved from. Further compounding a true definition of what a dulcimer is are the various instruments that seem to fit into the same category such as the octave mandolin, the zither, the bouzouki, the Irish bouzouki, the balalaika and more. It started to seem that anything that was a stringed instrument and wasn’t a guitar, sitar, mandolin, ukulele, banjo or anything in the violin family might just be a dulcimer!
Further research seemed to narrow things down somewhat, but has yet to really provide me with a good answer as to why so many seemingly disparate instruments have the name dulcimer. If I had to categorise them it would seem there is the traditional “hammered” dulcimer that originated in many parts of the world particularly Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. It is a trapezoidal shaped instrument that is very much like a harp that you lie flat on a table and has numerous strings that are quite literally hammered in a percussive manner. They can really sound incredible in the right hands.
Then comes the Appalachian or Mountain Dulcimer. This is what I had traditionally thought of as a dulcimer; however, other than knowing that Joni Mitchell made its sound famous on A Case of You I can’t think of many examples of one being used in popular recordings. I had thought one of my guitar heroes, the late Rory Gallagher, may have employed an electric dulcimer on a couple of tracks too in the 70s or 80s, but I don’t see one in his online instrument archive and I wonder now if it may have been this awesome looking electric sitar instead. I know he used that really effectively on a track called Philby in the mid 80s. It seems the mountain dulcimer and its bowed variant, as demonstrated here by a man with large glasses and an even larger mustache have mostly languished in obscurity or at least coffee shops. Despite that, it is certainly a unique instrument with its diatonic scale and only three courses of strings. These features make the mountain dulcimer both easily accessible for beginners and nearly impossible to coax a bad note or chord out of. However, its unconventional look and unique playing position of sitting it in your lap, or like a cello in the case of the bowed dulcimer, likely make it a niche instrument.
My Merlin
Which brings me back to my original point about the new instrument class being referred to as “strummable” dulcimers. It seems the concept of a strummable dulcimer or “dulcitar” was developed in the early 1970s by a luthier named Homer Ledford. He later went on to trademark the name and other makers developed their own variations such as the Strumstick or the Pickin’ Stick. Although, other than seeing the occasional barefoot hippie wandering about with one of these over their shoulder with a rope for a strap I’d not really given the instrument any real attention and wrote them off as patchouli scented toys and certainly not dulcimers. That was until I heard about a Canadian Luthier named Robert Godin, who already made very nice and affordable acoustic and electric guitars under the Seagull, Norman, Simon & Patrick and Godin brand names, launching his own line of strummable dulcimer called the Merlin. These caught my attention because even though they only had 7 frets (i.e., one scale of 8 whole notes) they looked like a quality instrument with a more substantial soundboard and were very much modelled after the mountain dulcimer with 3 courses of strings but the top D strings were doubled and the whole thing oriented to a guitar player. I had to have one and at a $129 why not! Perfect to take camping or to a backyard campfire sing-a-long…
After being aware of the Merlin since late last year I decided to treat myself to one for my birthday earlier this month. I whipped down to my local guitar shop and picked up a mahogany Merlin preferring the tone and look to the spruce version. Not a day has gone by since I got it that I’ve not picked it up. Given its size and weight it is easy to just leave out at arms length and grab whenever the mood strikes to bang out a couple little ditties for a few minutes before getting on with your day. It has also recharged me creatively and got me composing some interesting music for the first time in quite some time. The wonderful simplicity and pure wood folksy tone of the Merlin is charming and everyone I have played it for just loves it. Here are a couple samples of tracks I recorded on my phone. A bit of double tracking and messed around a bit with some overdrive effects, but 100% Merlin. Certainly nothing fancy, lots of background noise, no editing and single takes, but lots of fun!
BONUS: the word dulcimer is derived from the Latin dulcis (sweet) and Greek melos (song). I couldn’t agree more!
trewwatson 