Tune the unison strings to the bass string's 7th fret. This gives you the octave note. Remember that frets and notes have different "numbers" because the open note is actually a "zero" fret.

Always "read" the dulcimer from bottom to top as if you were holding the dulcimer with the headstock to your left. Each fret has a numerical value, as shown in this illustration.



Check the middle string at the third fret. It should sound the same as the first strings played unfretted (open.)

You should now be tuned in the open chord of the mixolydian mode. The first note of your scale will be on the "zero" fret (all strings played unfretted.)

To further check if you have correctly tuned the middle string, fret it on the third fret (the small spaced one.) Pressing down firmly, pluck it and then the unison strings. You should get almost the same tone from both the middle and unison strings. If not, you haven't gotten the middle string tuned to the octave-fifth value, so keep on trying to get it.

Remember-- even when the middle note is in tune at the octave-fifth value, its note when fretted on the third fret is not going to be exactly the same as the open unisons. This is because the middle string is thicker than the unisons and produces a different "sound color".

To doublecheck your bass string, fret it on the fourth fret and pluck it. It should produce a note the same as the middle string, taking into consideration the differences in sound color.

Review this information. When you feel you have a good grasp of the tuning steps, go on to the next section and use the mouse to click on the buttons to actually hear the notes to which you are tuning. (They'll be in D.)

Your dulcimer should now sound like this-- tuned to D Mixolydian!       First String(s) Middle String Bass String Open Chord

In brief, our tuning procedure for all modes is:
1. Tune the bass string first.
2. Always tune to octave values.

If everything's gone well, you should now be tuned into the Mixolydian mode, transposed somewhere, we hope, around the note D. But in any case, the first note of your scale, the "do" note, is the unison note, and the chord you hear when you strike all of the strings should be a pleasant-sounding chord.

When tuning any instrument, you are dealing with tight measurements of sound, tuning tolerances as fine as hundreds of cycles per second and maybe less. And to tune correctly you have to pick these sounds out of the air as they go by. In the beginning, you obviously are not going to get them right all the time. You will get close, but even then what you are hearing and what you think you are hearing are going to be different, especially when you are dealing with the unison strings.

You can possibly alleviate some of the frustration caused by notes being "not quite right" by considering what goes on when you listen. Assume we want to tune the unisons to the D above the middle C on the piano. We already know that D above middle C is rated at 294 cycles per second. Let's say you get one of the unisons to what could be measured at 300 cycles per second, and the other one sounds just about right when you get it to, say, 291. What your ear then registers on your brain is a frequency of 300 cycles per second, one of 291, the difference between the two or nine cycles per second, and the total of the two-591.

So four things are actually happening. When you crawl down into it, you also realize that there is a wavering frequency which blends the notes together -although it's hard to isolate.

One final thing...When you pluck a string too forcefully, you stretch the frequency of its sound by another five or ten cycles per second. So after you think you have your strings tuned, you may have to go back and temper them so that they blend properly, although each may have been all right by itself. And if you are dealing with new strings, you'll have to adjust their tuning regularly for the first day or so until they "break in" Don't be upset if your strings seem to go out of tune almost immediately. They will stabilize.

If you are not yet tuned...relax. You have been bombarding your ears, chasing down sounds you're not used to finding, and you may have rendered yourself temporarily tone deaf.

Tuning is something for which you have to get in shape. Many of the world's best musicians some-times find it hard to tune, so give yourself a break.

Go for a walk.
Listen to some music.
Do something entirely different.
And then come back to tuning.

We can both remember hours of trying to tune which finally, mercifully, ended when we broke the strings for which we had no replacements. Then the dulcimer would stand in a corner for days while we sulked and bemoaned a lack of musical talent and a tin ear-all part of a nice, handy, neat and clean prepackaged set of ready-made defeatist attitudes.

No doubt you'll get tuning down in no time at all.