How a Dulcimer Damper Pedal Works: Part 1

Video Transcript

"Hello! I’m Tim Van Egmond here for expertvillage.com. I am speaking about the hammered dulcimer and if you would like to know more about me, you can go to my website at www.timvanegmond.com. I want to talk a bit about damping strings. One of the intransigent things about the dulcimer sound is what is called the sustain. When you hit a note, it keeps on ringing because the note isn’t damp like you would have on a piano, so just keeps on going. Now in an earlier segment where I played the song Grandfather’s Clock, there were places where I used the sides of my hands to damp a note. Now this is something that is a new innovation on dulcimer’s developed I believe by Sam Rosetta and this is dampers that are over the strings that will damp the strings and they are connected. Different makers have different ways of doing it. This one has a connection to the strings that are tied to the dampers. The basic idea is that you have a damper pedal so that you have the ability when you step on the pedal; I’ll strike the note and then step on the pedal. Pressing on the pedal pulls the dampers down so you are damping the note without having to do some sort of quick action with the sides of your hands to damp the note. There would be a tune like. So between the first part and the second we might do it and so on. "