How To Tune the Hammer Dulcimer
 

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 What to Listen For in Tuning       
Sooner or later a musician has to bring an instrument into pitch with an agreed upon standard.  The contemporary standard is A=440Hz.  The formal way to tune an instrument is to have a standard tone played and let everyone tune to that tone.  You’ve heard the concert master at the beginning of a symphony concert tune the orchestra before the conductor comes out.  The musicians are tuning to A=440Hz.  But how do they do that?

When two tones that are close in frequency are played simultaneously, our ears hear three tones:  the two original tones AND the frequency difference between them.  This difference is heard as a definite “beat” or “pulse”.  When the tones are far apart, but not a half tone apart, the beat will move quickly and give the tones a kind of shimmering sound.  The effect is caused because the two different frequencies reach their highest and lowest amplitudes at different times.  The waves are “out of phase”. So alternatively they add or subtract to the total sound.  The process of tuning eliminates the beats by putting the two frequencies at the same pitch and in phase.  When the two A’s sound without producing any “beat” or “pulse” or “shimmer”, they are in tune.

Here’s an example.  Let’s say I want to put my instrument into concert pitch – A=440 Hz.  But my instrument is producing the A at 448 Hz.  When I play against the standard, we will hear these frequencies:  440 Hz, 448 Hz AND 8Hz.  The task of tuning is to reduce that 8Hz beat down to zero.

  Tools for Tunining the Hammer Dulcimer 
Tuning Wrenches.  You cannot – or should not try – to tune a dulcimer without a proper tuning wrench.  Leave the Vise-grips in your toolbox.  There are two kinds of wrenches to consider and one to avoid.  These pictures show the two common types of wrenches: T-handle and gooseneck.  

Here are the arguments, pro and con, for the T-handle and the gooseneck.  Some builders believe that a T-handle wrench applies the force direction in line with the axis of the tuning pin.  That’s good because it doesn’t move the pin sideways and thereby stretch the size of the hole in which the pin sits.  The argument is that, over time, the leverage provided by a gooseneck tuning wrench will cause the hole to get just a tiny bit larger and then the pin will not hold tune.  The con argument is that the T-handle wrench requires a lot more strength to use and that means it may not be as easy to reach an exact pitch as it is with a gooseneck.  The gooseneck wrench takes much less force to use because of its lever effect.  Tuning is smoother with a gooseneck because of this.  The downside is that, unless you are very careful, the pressure on the pin is not only sideways to move the pin, but downward as well.  It’s the downward pressure that may, over time, do some damage to the pin hole. 

If you select the gooseneck wrench, there is one important caution.  Don’t leave the wrench on a tuning pin when you have finished tuning.  That’s the natural thing to do.  But, if someone walks by with the gooseneck wrench on a tuning pin and extending beyond the pin block, they might hit the wrench.  If that happens, the wrench may tighten or loosen the string – depends on the direction that person was walking.  If they lower the pitch of the string, that’s not a problem.  But they can just as easily raise the pitch in one dramatic movement.  And that just might break a string.  So, when you are finished tuning, remove the tuning wrench.

I’m not going to take sides on this. I own and use both tuning wrenches.  Give each type a try and see what suits you best.

Tuning Meters. Unless you are a rare individual - gifted with a sense of pitch and aural endurance - you must have a tuning meter.  I don’t own stock in a tuning meter company so I don’t give advice on a particular brand (I own three different makes anyway).  And besides, manufactures are always releasing new models with new features).  But here are some essential features to look for:

1. Readable!!!  For some of us that means a meter with a needle.  For others it means a flashing light of some sort.  Get whatever works for you.  Think about tuning in the dark, too.  You may have to sometimes.  A lighted dial could be a lifesaver.  A tuning meter will cost between $15 and $100.  Sounds expensive, but it is essential.   If you play electric guitar in a band, rack mounted tuners or in-line floor tuners are really great.  Rack mounted tuners cost between $150 and $300.   Picture of tuning meter

2. Portable and Rugged.  Your tuner will live in your instrument case and get bashed around.  You will drop it.  It will dangle from the pick up wire.  It will sit in the hot sun.  Puppies may seek to teeth on it.  You are buying an important tool, not a trinket.  Make sure it’s up to the work ahead.

3. Input Jack OR Stick-On.  Be sure the tuner you buy has a jack for a microphone or pickup input.  This jack must turn off the internal microphone in the tuner.  This is ESSENTIAL.  Don’t buy a tuner without this feature.  OR, buy a tuner that sticks onto the instrument and reads the vibration of the wood.

4. Buy an Isolating Pickup.  If you play electric guitar, you don’t need this feature.  But all acoustic instruments will be easier to tune with an isolating pickup.  These come in two forms:  a contact microphone or a crystal pickup.  The contact microphone has a suction cup and sticks on the instrument.  A wire leads from the microphone to the tuner.  The crystal pickup has an alligator clip that pinches a tuning peg and a wire that goes to the tuner.  Some crystal pickups have sticky tape or clay to hold them on the soundboard.  The benefit of these devices is that they turn off the microphone pickup built into the tuner and ISOLATE the tuner from noise or music in the room.  If you’ve ever been to a jam session with fifteen instruments tuning, you know the problem.  Neither you nor your tuner can hear your instrument.  Tuning teeters on the edge of impossible and even a fancy electronic tuner is no help.  The isolation pickup is essential.  They cost between $10 and  $20.  Consider it an investment in your sanity.  My preference is for the crystal pickup because they completely isolate the instrument.  If you buy a stick-on tuner, you don’t need an isolating pickup.  Many new tuners are built to clip on  or stick on an instrument.  These generally have the isolating pickup built inside of the units.  You don't  need an isolating clip for this  type of tuner.

5. Try Before You Buy.  Ask the store clerk to demonstrate the tuning meter.  Different brands respond and display uniquely.  Some hold the reading a good while.  Others are like jackrabbits and hop around very quickly.  Make certain you can read and understand what the tuner is telling you.  Ask the clerk to demonstrate the tuner on a hammer dulcimer or at least on a guitar.  Look for how quickly the reading shows up on high tones and on low tones.  Look for how long the reading stays visible.  It’s terrible to pay $100 for a tuner that frustrates you because you can’t read it!  Try before you buy.

6. How to Read A Tuning Meter.  The face of the tuning meter may have LED’s, lights, or a needle.  Some merely show sharp and flat symbols.  Others show the frequency of the tone.  Many have a scale marked in “cents”.  The scale usually ranges between –50 cents and + 50 cents.  That translates to a half tone below and a half tone above the proper pitch.  If your tuning meter shows that a string is 25 cents below where it should be, the string is a quartertone flat.  Some tuning meters are marked in Hertz.  But mostly we look for the needle or LED to line up on the center marker of the tuning meter.

7.  Concert Pitch.  Your tuning meter will likely have an adjustment that allows you to change the reference tone of the scale.  KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THIS ADJUSTMENT.  Concert pitch sets the tone A (that’s A above middle C) equal to 440-Hertz (that’s cycles per second or vibrations per second, not rental cars).  In days gone by, other values of concert pitch were used.  If you run into an old concertina, you will find the reeds tuned to A at 428 Hertz.  Contemporary acoustic music uses A at 440Hz as the standard.  When you turn on the tuner, check to be certain that it is adjusted to A at 440Hz and leave it alone.
 

The Sequence of Tuning a Hammer Dulcimer     
It's important that you tune with a plan.  If you don't, you may overlook some courses and your memory won't get any reinforcement from your efforts.   I STRONGLY SUGGEST you do not tune sequentially up or down the bridges.  This approach doesn't do you or the instrument any good.  Some instruments shift a bit while tuning.  If you tune sequentially, you may never get the entire instrument in tune.  AND, you won't learn anything.

Try this pattern for tuning:  Begin with the A on the right side of the treble bridge - middle A on the instrument.  Get this course of strings tuned.  Now tune the A' an octave above.  Then the A- an octave below.  Tune all the remaining A's throughout the instrument.  Now tune the Bb's.  Then the B's.  Then the C's and so forth. 

Here's what this does for you.  First, it distributes the shifting stresses on the instrument in a uniform way.  Those instruments that are finicky about tuning will be grateful.  A really solid instrument won't care.  Most importantly, this approach teaches you geography of the instrument every time you tune.  It is a very useful technique to renew your mind-map of the dulcimer each time you tune.  You've got to tune anyway.  Why not use this time to get both a sweet sounding instrument and renewed familiarity with the geography of the instrument.

Some players tune in this manner, but, rather than proceeding chromatically, they tune in a circle of 5ths (we’ll cover the circle of 5ths later).  For example they might start by tuning all the C's.  Next they would tune all the G's.  Then the D's.  Then the A's and so forth around the circle of fifths until the entire instrument is in tune.

  The Actual Motion of Tuning    
Most broken strings on the dulcimer come as a result of tuning incorrectly.  Usually, the tuning meter is connected and the player is fervently gazing on the needle or light and WHAC!!! There goes the string.  What happened was the tuning wrench was cranking up one string and the player was plucking another.  Finally, the over-tensioned string snapped.

Here's how to avoid this trouble.  Always, always, always, the first motion of the tuning wrench is to loosen the string.  Take the string down in pitch about a quartertone.  No more than a half tone is necessary.  Drop the pitch for two reasons.  First, loosening the string ensures you are adjusting the correct string without the potential of over-tightening it and breaking it. If you are plucking away and loosening the string and nothing is happening to the sound, it means that your tuning wrench is on the wrong pin.   If you were tightening the string, you could have broken it before you realized the mistake.  Second, loosening the string first is a way of equalizing the tension throughout the string.  That means, the 5th across the bridge will be more likely to come into tune.  It also means that the tension in the string between the side bridges and the tuning peg, or hitch pin, will be released and equalized now - not later.  This little gremlin will sometimes show up and knock a tuned instrument out of tune.  No string on ANY instrument should be tuned by changing its pitch from sharp to on-pitch.  All strings should be tuned going from flat to on-pitch.  This allows you to maintain control of how much tension is in the string.  If you loosen the string to get it into tune, you cannot know if the entire string is at the same tension. If the string is not uniformly tensioned, ultimately the tension will equalize and draw the string out of tune.   So always tune from flat to on-pitch and never from sharp to on-pitch.

 What To Do About Strings That Don't Respond to Tuning   
First, make sure you understand the problem.  Strings sound best when they are tensioned close to their breaking point.  With so much tension on them, adding tension will not cause a proportionate increase in pitch.  If this is occurring while tuning, pause and evaluate what is going on.  You may have over-pitched the string and need to back off the tension.

Sometimes the strings and the bridge cap conspire to not allow the tension to equalize in a string.  If that is a problem, use your fingers to physically move the string at the bridge cap.  Slide it up or down just a hair - an eighth-inch will do.  That will help to equalize the tension.  If you have a dulcimer with tuning pegs positioned perpendicular to the side of the instrument, you may find that this sticking problem also occurs on the side rails.  For these instruments and the high range of any instrument where the tension is great, you may need to release the tension and gradually retune the string. 

Sometimes you may need to drop the tone down as much as a major third. If the problem continues, you can loosen the string and put graphite at the point the string crosses over the rail.  Use a pencil point.  Just rub it on like you were shading a drawing.  A commercial product called “Big Bends Nut Sauce” may help.  Instrument technicians use this on nuts of guitars, banjos and mandolins to ensure that the strings slide easily over the nut.   NEVER squirt a tube of graphite dust or a can of Teflon or silicone lubricants anywhere near your dulcimer.  This stuff will lubricate all right.  It will lube your tuning pins and you'll have a serious problem holding the tuning of your instrument.  This warning also applies to aerosol or liquid cleaners, waxes and oils.  Don't get any liquid or mist near your tuning pegs. 

One last problem and cure for tuning a hammer dulcimer.  Most contemporary dulcimer builders use a material called “delrin” on the bridge cap and side rails.  This is a wonderful material.  It is hard, light, easily cut, chemically neutral and slippery.  Over time, delrin develops grooves where the string

passes over it.  These grooves can get deep, especially on the high-pitched strings.  When a groove gets deep, it tends to “grab” the string and prevent it from slipping easily across the bridge or side rail.  This grabbing by the v-groove in the delrin makes the strings get really hard to put into tune. 

The cure is to loosen that course of strings, or all strings on the instrument if there is a continuous bridge cap, and rotate the delrin bridge cap or side rail about a quarter turn.  That will present a brand new surface to the strings and ease your tuning troubles. 

 Things I learned From My Piano tuner     

Hammer dulcimer players have it easy.  First of all, too many players are poor tuners and have given our instrument a bad reputation – many people don’t expect a hammer dulcimer to ever be in tune.  That’s a shame.  Let’s not perpetuate that!

The typical 15/16 hammer dulcimer has thirty-one courses of two strings (occasionally three strings).  That’s sixty or so strings to put in tune.  Think about the eighty-eight keys of a piano, the multiple strings on that instrument, and the many octaves in the range of a piano.  Tuning a piano is a formidable task.  We can learn a lot from these skilled technicians.  Here’s how they do it: 

            1.  Mute all but one string on the course to be tuned.  Tune the free string.  On the hammer dulcimer, damp the strings you are not tuning with a finger.  Ideally you should cover all other strings with a cloth to prevent them from vibrating.  On a piano this happens naturally because the damper is down and only lifted by the foot pedal.  Without damping the other strings on the dulcimer, your tuner might produce false readings.  In fact, it is VERY common for a tuning meter to read not the string you are trying to tune, but the 5^th above that string.  That’s because the meter is picking up the sympathetic vibration from across the bridge!!  It can drive you just a little crazy.  This procedure of damping all strings not being tuned is inconvenient and seldom done.  But it is the right thing to do.  If you want to put an instrument in rock-solid tuning, take the time to do this.  

            2.  Set the pin as you tune each free string.  Turning the tuning wrench to tighten string and raising the pitch does this.  Usually, but not always, that is a clockwise motion on a hammer dulcimer.  Turn the wrench until the string is just a tiny bit sharp.  Then, move the wrench slightly counterclockwise to drop the string onto pitch and set the pin.  This takes some practice and ultimately the movement should be one smooth, continuous motion.  Once the pin is set, give the string several good whacks with your playing hammers.  That will help to equalize the tension across the bridges.

            3.  Stretch the Scale to compensate for the natural in-elasticity of strings and eliminate inharmonicity.  Unlike the air in a flute or trumpet, strings are stiff.  This stiffness causes the string to produce harmonics that are not exact multiples of the fundamental tone. This physical anomaly is called in-harmonicity, and, over a wide range of tones, it is a big problem.  Piano tuners use an empirically derived table to do this.  The table tells the piano tuner how far out of tune (using the number of beats per second) each tone should be to produce a desired result.  Sometimes a piano tuner will put the central octave in tune using this table of out-of-tune measurements and then tune the octaves from there. This procedure produces better sounding intervals and chords over the range of the instrument.

I mention this technique so that you will understand that sometimes you will put your instrument in PERFECT tune according to your tuning meter but it will sound out of tune.  Don’t be afraid to override your meter and go for the pleasing sound.  To do this you have to have the scale and relationship of the intervals deeply embedded in your mind. 

            4.  Un-mute the other string or strings on the course.

            5.  Tune the un-tuned string or strings on the course to the tuned string.

Now move on to the next course of strings to be tuned and repeat the procedure. 

 When Is  It In-Tune?    
As a rule of thumb, you will go over the instrument at least twice before you are satisfied.  The first time, do your best to get everything in tune.  Then check it with some scales and chords to hear how it sounds.  Is anything sour?  Is there a course with two or more strings howling because they are out of tune with each other?  Run through all the courses a second time to be sure and make any necessary adjustment.  Listen again and spot-check the instrument.  Before most performances, you will probably need to tune thoroughly, check the tuning, and finally spot-check the tuning.  That's three times through it.  Sounds like a lot, but you can get both good and fast at this.  My dulcimer is a 20/19/8 instrument with two strings per course.  That's a lot to tune.  Usually, I can do three passes within fifteen minutes.  That's a result of an electronic tuner and practice.  There is no correlation with musical talent.  You can be quick, too.

Tune the Entire Instrument     
It doesn't matter if you only play in the key of G.  Tune the entire instrument.  Every course.  Every time.  You may not play every course, but you dulcimer will play every course.  A major part of the dulcimer's character comes from resonance and sympathetic vibration.  The case, the soundboard, the air inside the sound-box all vibrate as soon as you strike any course.  Those vibrations set all the strings singing.  The strings that give the strongest response are the octave strings.  The next strongest response comes from the second harmonic or the 5th.  So if you strike a D, you will find that all the D’s on the instrument vibrate and so do all the A’s.  This sympathetic response carries through all the harmonics of the string.  If the entire instrument is not in tune, the sound will be weak, or flat, or sour, or just plain lousy.  Tune the entire instrument.  Every course.  Every time.

Tune to Concert Pitch  
Strings tend to sound best when they are at high tension.  That means they sound best just before they are about to break.  You may be able to tune a string as much as a whole tone above its designed pitch, but not much more than that.  The meaning of this is that, if you tune your instrument BELOW concert pitch (A=440Hz), it will not sound as good as it could.  So, tune to concert pitch.  And by the way, that’s where everyone else is tuned.  If you are going to jam, tune to concert pitch. 

 What Causes the Instrument to go Out of Tune?  
The villains are changes in temperature and changes in barometric pressure.  Humidity alters tuning too, but usually its affect takes longer to show up.  Temperature changes cause the body of the instrument to change size, that in turn, changes the tension on the strings or the length of an air column.  The strings also change length with temperature and, thus, change their tension.  The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the strings are metal and the body of the instrument is wood.  Or, the body is metal and the vibration is in the air column.  Wind instruments tend to go out of tune mostly because the air inside the instrument gets warm as the instrument is played.  Sound travels faster in warm, humid air, so the length of the instrument gets shorter in terms of acoustics and the instrument goes out of tune.

The same dimensional changes occur during major shifts in barometric pressure.  You may notice the instrument goes out of tune when a storm passes by.  The pressure and temperature drop causing the dimension of the instrument to vary slightly and that will knock the instrument out of tune. 

What can you do to minimize this problem?  First, get to your performance site about an hour before you must tune.  Open the instrument case and let the instrument acclimate to the ambient conditions.  Then tune.  Second, try to avoid playing in direct sun light.  Strong sun on the strings or body of an instrument will cause dimensional changes that can drive the instruments out of tune.  Worse yet, the instrument can go out of tune with itself.  If the strings use different materials through the range of the instrument, you may have trouble.  Or, if the sun is shining only on the lower half of the instrument, it may do some really weird things.  Be aware of how the sun will move during your performance.  You may start in the shade and find that ten minutes into the show, the sun is creeping across your soundboard and knocking your instrument out of tune.

Metal reacts to temperature change faster than wood and in greater measure than wood.  Cold tends to make string instruments go sharp.  The strings shorten faster and more than the body of the instrument shrinks.  These dimensional changes cause string tension to increase and the pitch rises.  Heat tends to make string instruments go flat - the strings lengthen more and faster than the body of the instrument expands. Tension decreases and the pitch falls.  Sometimes you can anticipate what may happen with the temperature and tune the instrument a bit flat or sharp to accommodate the change you know will be coming.  Be careful though.  A quarter tone off concert pitch is about all the adjustment you should try to make.

 Factoid

When concert pitch moves from 420 Hz to 440 Hz the frequency change is only 4.7%.  But the change in string tension to produce this higher pitch is about 9.75%.  On a violin each of the four strings has to increase its tension by that much.  This requires a stronger body for the instrument than it would have had while Bach was alive.  The violins of the great masters – Armati, Guarnari, Stradivarius – have all had to be reinforced to withstand the increase in pitch demanded by modern ears.

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