Keep the string loose, and gauge how much slack you will need to wind the string at least three times around the shaft of the tuning peg. Try to keep as much of a straight-line pull on the string as possible. Be careful not to crease it.

The best way to avoid this is to maintain an upward pull with your free hand, letting the string pass over the back of your hand and across the thumb and forefinger. As you wind the string down nearer to the fretboard, change your hand position so that without losing tension you are now holding it with the pads of your fingers.

If you have friction pegs, make sure you wind the string over the top of the tuner, not from underneath. No matter what kind of tuners you have, it is important that you bind a little of the free end underneath the initial windings. Doing this will prevent the string from slipping through the peg-hole as you tighten it and bring it up to pitch.

When using friction pegs, twist and turn them Into the headstock. As you twist the peg into the hole, try to maintain an even pressure so that the peg "holds."

If a friction peg binds unnecessarily hard or "creaks" loudly, remove it and rub it on a dry bar of soap. Then, with regular soft school chalk, mark a ring around the parts that contact the wood of the headstock. This should make the peg turn very smoothly. If not, do it again. And remember, because friction pegs are individually tapered, they usually fit best into their original holes. So try not to get your pegs mixed up.

When you've wound the string to a moderate tightness and are sure it won't slip when you bring it up to pitch, snip off the excess length that dangles about, and you're finished. So now you should be strung up...or out...or something. But don't worry whether you've done it right. For now, if it works, it's right. Now take a close look at your fret scale. The one we'll be using is the eight-note diatonic scale which looks like this.

The short arrows indicate where additional frets would be if the dulcimer were a twelve-tone, or chromatic, instrument like the guitar or banjo. If your dulcimer has a variation of the diatonic scale, it will probably be a one-fret inclusion found at point A in the illustration - though any additional fret may be included at the whim of the instrument maker. Some builders place additional frets on the scale as half-frets extending under the unison strings and halfway across the fretboard. If your dulcimer has any or all of these "extra" or half-frets, you'll have to work a little harder by sometimes pretending that they're not there.

Okay. So we know which string is which, and how to attach them to a dulcimer.

Now we're going to learn a song called "Tuning" - ominous, isn't it? There is probably no greater task in store for you than to develop an "ear" for this. It takes a little time - unless you were born with a phenomenon called "perfect pitch" - so don't worry about it. Just buy a few extra sets of strings and you are ready for anything.

We are going to tune the dulcimer into the Mixolydian mode, which means we will have an open chord when all the strings are strummed without depressing any of them to the frets. The original starting tonality of the Mixolydian mode was the note G, but our five-string-banjo first strings (.010's) don't easily tune up to a treble, or mid-range, G. So we tune our unison strings to a tone somewhere around D, which is very pleasant and has some definite advantages for quick tuning into other modes. Therefore, our Mixolydian is going to be transposed to D.

There remains nothing more for you to do except duplicate these notes on your strings. You can use the D of a reed pitch-pipe, but the sound "color" of a reed is different from that of a string, so it may throw you off a bit. A D tuning fork, a precise little device piano tuners use, can also help in finding the D tone.

Then again, if you know something about the piano or can work with a friend who will give you a D from his guitar, banjo, or fiddle, you're in business. But if there's no piano, guitar, or banjo around, or if a pitch pipe or tuning fork is unavailable, simply tune your unison strings to any note you think sounds good and is not too high for the strings. You might try a note from the mid-range of your singing voice, but whatever you do, your note should not be weak and watery - just a nice, fairly taut, clear note. Don't worry ...the strings will let you know if you are tuning too high, so tune slowly.

The actual notes with which you are dealing are not half as important as the relationship between these notes. The "strongest" tonal relationship is the difference between octaves (D to DD) - when a note is eight tones above or below the note from which you start. For example, do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do.

The second strongest relationship is that of a fifth (D to A) - when a note is five tones away from the starting tone (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do). The third strongest is when a note is four tones away from the starting tone, sol (A to DD), and is a fourth. In this case, our scale reads do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do.

When in tune, we have two tones an octave apart (the unisons and the bass) combined with two tones a fifth apart (the unisons and the middle string), as well as two tones a fourth apart (the middle string and the bass). And, nicely enough, it makes a chord - not a very sophisticated chord - but at least when struck open, it's easy to do.

You can tune and play your dulcimer all day long without ever having to know what key you're in or to what note your unisons are actually tuned. All "being in a key" does is allow you to relate where you are tuned and what you are doing to other musicians.

It is important to keep in mind that like a great many other things, notes and keys are really arbitrary values that have been standardized over the years for reference use. To put it another way: There's not much difference between a D above middle C that vibrates at 300 cycles per second and one that vibrates at the established standard of 294. When you consider that middle C itself is rated at 262 cycles per second, and that E, the note above D, is set at 330, a tone vibrating at 300 cycles isn't that far off.

To you, this tone of 300 cycles per second is just some tone, and a perfectly good one to tune to, at that. To someone with perfect pitch, it's a slightly sharp D . . . so why not?

We're going to describe our notation system for tuning. All you have to do is recognize tones an octave or a fifth apart-- the two stongest and easiest to identify musical relationships. This system has only a few rules, and by following them you will be able to tune successfully and play your dulcimer in every mode. Don't be afraid of breaking strings...You have to start somewhere.

Sing your lowest note. Now sing up the scale to your highest note. Don't be shy, only you are listening. Now, count the number of notes it is comfortable for you to sing and tune your dulcimer to the middle one of those. That's where you'll be singing and playiny anyway. For most people that's around the D above middle C. Tune your open bass string (unfretted) to that note or to any note you like, until the string is fairly taut and you can play it without it sounding watery.

O.K. Push the bass string down at the 7th diatonic fret -- the octave. Now tune the unisons (open) to this note. Try to get it very close if not exactly the same. The "timbre" (sound quality ) of the note will be different, but the "pitch" (actual mathematical vibration) will be the same. Good. Now your octaves (outside strings) are in tune.

Next, fret the bass string on the fourth fret. This produces what is called the "fifth" tone of the scale to which you are tuning. Tune the middle string to this tone (note.)

Now you are tuned to an open chord somewhere around the "key" of D. The dulcimer played "open" (no frets depressed) will give you the full-sounding chord of the mixolydian mode.