Category: TAB

Learning Chords in DAD Tuning (Part 2)

In the first installment of our D Major chord exercises, we took a look at some of the most basic ways to play the D-G-D-A-D sequence of chords. This time we’ll try some ascending chord forms to give a little variety and movement to the progression.

Now you might be wondering what else you can do with these chords once you try these specific forms. I think one of the first ideas that comes to mind is the universal “Cabbage Chords” progression. Many beginning students of the dulcimer learn the chorus part to the folk song “Bile Dem Cabbage Down” before they learn any other chords:

Now these chords go by pretty quickly, and one way to make them last longer is to “stretch-out” the progression so there is twice as much time on each of the chords. (I have always called this the “Stretched Cabbage Progression”). You can also try the progression in 3/4 time as a waltz……it makes a great Country Waltz!!

Learning Chords on Your Dulcimer

There are many approaches to learning chords on your dulcimer. I like to group the main chords in the key of D together in the lower frets, then the middle frets, and then finally in the higher frets up towards the 7th fret. By playing the D, G, and A chords in this sequence:

D – G – D – A – D

…we can make a nice, musical exercise that has good voice-leading (there aren’t any awkward leaps from one chord to the next), and allows you to work on getting your left-hand fingering smooth and consistent.

So here are six different ways you can smoothly change chords through this progression:

  1. Close Voicings in the first three frets
  2. Open voicings in the first three frets
  3. Close Voicings in frets 1 –> 4
  4. Open Voicings in frets 1 –> 4
  5. Close Voicings in frets 4 –> 7
  6. Open Voicings in frets 4 –> 7

NOTE: Close voicings are the most-closely-spaced form of the chords. I really like these a lot!! They sound so subtle and graceful. Open voicings are when you have larger intervals between the chord members. When you take a glance at the interval spacing in the standard music notation above the TAB, you’ll see what I mean. The open voicings have a big, almost orchestral sound. They are what most dulcimer players grab by default….especially those who use their left-hand thumb on the melody string. With some careful arranging and efficient fingering — you can move from the close voicings gradually to the open, and then on back. Not so easy, but well worth it if you like challenges!!

QuaranTUNE 3.0 Workshops I’ll Be Teaching In February

Quarantune 3.0 is right around the corner! In this post I want to give you a little sample of some of the tablature I’ll be using for each of my workshops. There will probably be much more tablature when we do the workshop, but this will give you an idea. Here is the QuaranTUNE web site where you can get registered for classes:

QuaranTUNE Dulcimer Festival

Level 2 (Novice) – Slow Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star:

2twinklevariationsDownload

Level 3 – Simple Chord Progressions (that may be new to you):

LoveBTU_chordsDownload
b-G-D-A_block1Download
NovembersWaltzTAB_helperDownload
desc_aeolian_34_1Download

Level 4 – Skip’s Heavenly Round:

SkipsRoundSoloV2Download

Level 5 – Dorian, Aeolian, and Mixolydian Modes (relative to DAD, or parallel for Mixolydian, so no retuning):

ilovemyloveDownload
SingingStoneFilesDownload
OutOnTheOpenSeasDADblockDownload
NovembersWaltzDownload

I’ll be happy to provide you with more info if you need it. Please see the Contact page.

May 2020 Dulcimer!

NEW RELEASE On Bandcamp!!!

Bandcamp is forgoing their share of revenue today, May 1st, so if you decide to download some of my new music, I will get 100%. This is a very helpful and generous gesture from a GREAT company! Many of us musicians and music teachers have been hit pretty hard by this COVID-19 Quarantine: we’ve had many gigs cancelled and festivals postponed or cancelled altogether. So this income helps a LOT!

My brand-new May 2020 Dulcimer EP just went live at around 7AM this morning. There are 6 tracks here representing some of my BEST work-in-progress. It is not available anywhere else (yet, anyhow) and all my recent EPs from earlier this year are “Pay what you want” including ZERO (you just enter “0” in the pay field).

Jerry Rockwell at Bandcamp

I hope everyone is getting through this COVID-19 Quarantine OK. Not much fun for us here in Northeast Ohio, but we’ve got some acres of trees around us, and life isn’t too different in many ways.

Skip’s Round (and Jam-A-Round!!) TAB and Music Download

This original tune is part of my 2017 Patreon lessons, and it is a FUN tune I keep coming back to over and over.

Skip’s Round 2017 5-page e-bookDownload

1.) The first page is basically the main melody (16 bars), with an 8-bar sparse bass part at the bottom. The latter may be used as sort of a ground for the whole tune, even though the next two pages have some specific “ground” parts to be used throughout – especially for group play.

2.) These next two pages are the parts for a round or a “Jam-A-Round” as I like to call it. This basically means that you can plug in any 8-bar part anywhere you want, so you have freedom to mix-and-match.

You’ll see some very “bare-bones” parts on these pages, consisting mostly of half-notes. These represent what you might call guide-tones or structural pitches. These are really cool, as they show us the overall contour of a melodic design: kind of the essence of a melody.

For me personally, they often serve as clues for when I want to change chords or harmony. For example, if I see a continually-descending melodic line, that’s my cue to try an ascending harmony part. This often creates a workable harmony with a minimum of “thinking” !!

The other use for these bare-bones parts is that they make a GREAT group playing experience, especially for players just getting started!

3.) The last two pages were the Intermediate Level when I first published them in 2017. As I’m looking back on them, and playing through them again right now, I’m getting oodles and boatloads of ideas!! I’m even writing some brand new parts!!! These color-chord harmonies add just a touch of jazz harmony with the minor 7th chords, but I have to be careful not to use too many — and not to use any Major 7th chords at all — because the result is often way too sweet and thick. (remember that much of my current music is extremely simple and minimalist, so that I’m really a less-is-more sort of guy. You may want to try more of the “tall chords” like the seventh and ninth chords for your own arrangements).

Descending Harmonized Scales (and Modes)

In the beginning of 2014, I was just starting my relationship with Mailchimp, one of the best email marketing companies on the planet, and I was really excited at that time with building chords off of each degree of a descending scale or mode. Here is an example of one of the pieces I recorded for my Starlight Variations EP:

Slow Descent (from Starlight Variations)

In my newsletters, which were sent twice a month in those days, I would link free downloads of some TAB and music for these studies of harmonized scales. Here is a collection of them for you (tuning is DAD throughout):

descending scales and modes (pdf)Download

Want to hear more of these studies? Please let me know, because I have quite a few of these that haven’t been officially released on the streaming platforms. Thanks for listening and trying out the TAB!

A Country Waltz Project

Here are a few 32-bar arrangements of a little country waltz I wrote in the last week. The first one is in D out of DAD tuning, and the second one is in G, while still in DAD (with no capo). These are both bare-bones arrangements, though the one in D has more fills added on the TAB, but not in the music itself. The one in G is really bare-bones, allowing you to use your imagination with what you might add.

Country Waltz #1 in D

Country Waltz #1 in G

Enjoy these!

Dulcimer TAB: Ideas for Hey, Ho, Nobody Home

There are many possibilities for melodies to go over the Em – D chords that accompany the round Hey, Ho, Nobody Home. Here are some of my ideas on this with your DAD-tuned dulcimer with a capo on the first fret. The basic idea is that you go right up the basic 6-tone (or hexatonic) scale (E – F# – G – A – B – D), and then come right back down. You can go up to the 5th of the Em chord (B) and then come down if you want, and then you can decorate these bare-bones lines a little bit. This is basically how the TAB is set up, but try to use your imagination, remembering that two beats on Em – then two beats on D —- this is the basic reference structure.  (this could be played on any instrument that plays chords, or on another dulcimer, but for our purposes here, it is a silent little structure that runs in the background)

dulcimer tab for getting through Em - D chords