Blackbird and Beggarman at Bandcamp
We now have my 1994 album of Celtic instrumentals for mountain dulcimer on bandcamp as a free download. Actually it is set up as “pay what you want” including nothing, but it will require you to submit an email:
Monthly Dulcimer Lessons at Patreon!
I’m so jazzed up about this I can barely contain myself: I’m now in the second month of lessons on my Patreon Page: Jerry Rockwell Teaches Dulcimer at Patreon For as little as $1 per month, you can join in all the fun and the jams and the rounds, PLUS you get access to my newsfeed where I am in the process of distributing exclusive free downloads!!!
Axis of Awesome!
Four Chords for a mess of pop songs! This Aussie comedy act is really amazing. Butch Ross told me about them in 2007 or 2008, when I was obsessed with my little four chord circular progression D – A – Bm – G… that I used for Light Into Darkness, Tapping at the Edge of Paradise, and Tapping Into The Light on electric dulcimer. I just found more and more melodies that went with these…
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These Are A Few Of My Favorite Picks!
Ever since I first got acquainted with the mountain dulcimer in 1970, I have been fascinated by the variety of textures available when strumming across all the strings at once, or picking individual notes. The type of material that is used in a pick has a lot to do with the texture of the sound you get, and the flexibility is also an important factor. In a general sense, I tend to use very flexible…
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A Christmas Medley from 2012
Building Some Dulcimers Again
Due to some extreme family pressures, it has been next to impossible to get any of my handmade dulcimers built. Now that seems so be changing some, in that I have a few instruments on hand, and I’m hoping I can continue in this rhythm for at least the next two or three months. Let me know if there is something you are interested in or if you’d like some pricing info — email is…
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E minor Hexatonic Jam-A-Round
I think this 6-tone or hexatonic Em – D Jam-A-Round is the most fun of all so far!! The Jam-A-Round idea is very simple: over a repeating chord progression, often using a descending scale, we just plug in parts where the 8-bar progressions begin. You never know how parts interact until you try, so if you have a playing partner with another dulcimer, you are in for a fun time! With a room full of…
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The Dulcimer Capo and How It Works
Dulcimer capos are interesting devices, because they work very closely with the modal nature of the mountain dulcimer’s mostly diatonic fretboard. I had an GREAT question from one of my email newsletter subscribers recently: “I am intrigued by the notion of using a capo on my dulcimer as you mention in your recent post. As far as I can make out, this enables you to achieve the melody scale for Dorian mode without retuning?…
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Jerry Rockwell Mountain Dulcimer Newsletter 4/1/15
One Life 4/4 Study Here is a great chord progression I’ve been working with for almost a decade: Bm / / / | / / / / |D / / / | / / / / |G / / / |D / / / |A / / / | / / / / :|| I call it the “One Life” progression, but you can call it Fred or Marjorie if you want!! It is one…
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