Another specialty effect we call "Stop-pickin'" is a type of sound you can produce with your right hand. A favorite with rock 'n' rollers, it is done by muting the strings with the palm of your right hand immediately after the stroke. Or, you can pick or strum with your upper wrist resting very lightly on the strings by the bridge. You'll find the effect of this use of the stop-picking technique sounds like a Johnny Cash intro.

Rock 'n' Roll	Johnny Cash

Slide, Bottleneck, and Steel-Guitar Styles

The slide, bottleneck and steel-guitar styles are three related ways of coming up with customized dulcimer sound. Since notes can be produced anywhere along the fretboard without depressing the strings to the frets, the sounds are quite unusual. go

A bottleneck is a bottleneck. Cut it off near the top of the bottle, and be careful to leave enough room so that the glass will extend beyond the tip of whatever finger you use. Usually the middle or ring finger of the left hand is inserted into the bottleneck, from the top. For safety, we also suggest smoothing the sharp edge with a file and some emery paper.

Play notes by trailing the bottleneck behind the melody line itself. If the bottleneck is on your ring finger, your "lead fingers" (index and middle) can fret notes as usual, and the bottleneck provides a sliding chord sound when moved across the strings.

The slide method employs basically the same technique. The difference is that a metal bar --the slide-- is held in the crook of the left hand between the ring and little fingers. Your lead fingers continue to fret notes as with the bottleneck method; however, you may find that you achieve more control with this independently held metal bar.

The same metal bar can be used for steel-guitar style playing. The difference is that in this method, the bar does all the fretting, and no lead fingers are used. Hold it any way that is comfortable in your left hand. You may find that your homemade bottleneck will work fine and you will not have to buy the metal slide. If you want to exert more pressure on the strings than the bottleneck allows, try using a small vanilla extract bottle partially filled with water, held lengthwise.

You will be able to make clean sounds anywhere on any string if you raise the strings off the fretboard about a sixteenth of an inch, and you can do this by replacing the nut with a slightly higher one. If you are going to use bottlenecking as an embellishment, you might not need to raise the strings very much, if at all. If you are going to use the steel guitar technique a lot, raising the strings is necessary to produce a clear sound. You may even want to raise the bridge too, but this depends on your instrument. Strumming may sound odd if you're using the slide, so try a flat-picking technique or finger picks.

The slide is great for blues, but the "minor third" tone (found halfway between the first and second frets in the Mixolydian mode) might not harmonize too well with the drones. Then again, it's all in how you listen.

Bottleneck	Raised Nut

Picks and Pickings from Other Cultures

One picking technique that interests us is used to play instruments like the Russian balalaika, the Arabian oud, and the bazooki, a Greek instrument. All these instruments require incredibly rapid playing, and their picking styles can be used to play the dulcimer. Use a triangular pick with slightly rounded corners. We prefer a thin pick which we choke up on with our fingers, but maybe you'll find a thicker more inflexible pick works better.

Hold the pick tightly so that you can make short picking movements against the unisons. The motion you want to use is similar to that of using an eraser on the end of a pencil-- back and forth very rapidly in short arcs at an angle to the strings. The pick's rounded corner helps you cross the strings evenly, so use it to your advantage. The sound you get will be very brisk, with brief notes.

-- a 25 years later note-- An easier way to listen for and study this technique is readily available these days in the recorded work of David Grisman and other mandolin players. I find I now use it quite a bit, especially in group ensembles when I want to add a tonal quality which is not already in the mix of musicians. Using this technique, the longer string length of the dulcimer produces a different timbre than does that of the mandolin. Played together they are wonderful and It's great for trading licks. Be sure to try it on both the bass and treble strings.

Treble	Bass

Another pick we sometimes use is the mizrab, the pick used to play the Indian sitar. It is a thin wire finger pick which we usually place on the index finger. The wire part of the pick acts like a fingernail with which you pick and strum the strings. You may need to place your thumb against your index finger to keep the mizrab from falling off, if you do a lot of strumming with it. For picking, it allows a unique freedom of finger movement, and the sound takes on a shimmering quality.

If you use a mizrab, why not fashion a sitar-type bridge out of a piece of hardwood or bone? The trick is to allow the strings to "buzz" a little in the grooves. Maybe you only want to "buzz" the drones...so make the grooves larger than normal and see what you get.

Experiment.

Utilize what you can-- strange materials, other parts of instruments from other culture-- and see where all this takes you.

It all boils down to folk music, and never forget, no matter what anyone says, that folk music is what you do.