Chording

Now we're getting into what all this has been building up to-- chording.

Playing chords on the dulcimer opens your musical horizons and makes it possible for you to play a more harmonically complete melody line. Making chords usually involves depressing at least two of the strings at different frets and keeping one string open as a drone. Sometimes, however, all three strings are depressed on different frets-- it depends on just what it is you want to do.

Chording allows you to create a progression or series of related harmonic situations that serve to complement or enrich the melody, intensifying its natural expression and clarifying its direction.

You can play chords in most of the modes; however, once again, the Mixolydian is the most accessible. In this section our goal is not simply to spell out all the different chords, but rather to acquaint you with various fingerings you will need to effectively play melodic chords.

Usually the use of chords relates to the concept of harmony and, in turn, harmony relates to the modern twelvetone chromatic scale. The use of chromatic notes really is not anything incredibly new, even though the consolidation and utilization of the full chromatic scale are relatively recent, having begun in the seventeenth century. In the fourth century BC., the Greeks were using at least one "chromatic" note in their music. "Chroma," meaning color, is the word they applied to the series of tones consisting of A, F-sharp, F, and E. They called this series the Chromatic Tetrachord because of the F sharp. Their other tetrachordal (fournote) scales did not have "colored" notes.

Once the monk Odo of Cluny systematized and labeled the modal scales in the tenth century, composers of religious music slowly began to juxtapose chant melodies and ranges of notes to achieve greater musical effects. Instead of having a choir sing the same note in unison, as in very basic Gregorian chanting, composers began separating the notes, eventually having voices sing two, three, and four tones simultaneously or in and around each other, creating contrapuntal as well as polyphonic (multitoned) music.

Composers and musicians increasingly realized that some tonal relationships blended more readily, more harmoniously than others-- some were "perfect concords," such as a root tone, a fourth, a fifth, and an octave; some were "imperfect concords" and only blended in specific instances, such as a third or sixth relationship; and some were out-and-out "discords," such as a second, a seventh, and sometimes a fourth.

By the end of the middle Renaissance in the 1400's, composers of both religious and secular music (including folk songs by troubadors) increasingly used chromatic notes to alter tonal relationships that did not work in the modal system; thus, the modes were altered for the sake of harmony.

To make tonal transitions smoother, the B of the Dorian and Lydian modes was often altered to a B-flat, making the Lydian a truly "major" scale and the Dorian a modern "minor" scale. Similarly, especially in secular music, the seventh tone of the Dorian and Mixolydian was sharpened to smooth the transition to the final resolving tone of the scale, the octave.

By the end of the sixteenth century all the modes had undergone chromatic alterations. Pure melody was not as interesting to composers as expanding polyphony and writing harmonic music. The five chromatic notes were accurately determined and developed during the Renaissance, and music was increasingly liberated from religious control. The Catholic Church attempted to revitalize the modes and the sanctity of music in the late Italian Renaissance by encouraging the work of Giovanni Palestrina and others. But it could not stop the rising tide of music by composers patronized by the nobility and wealthy merchants throughout Europe.

But, meanwhile, the people were also making music.

Think of a chord as a simultaneous voicing of several musical tones that create either concordant or dissonant harmony. The common chord is called a triad because it consists of three notes. Three elements make up every major triad-- a tonic, or root tone, a major third, and a perfect fifth.

A minor triad consists of a tonic, a minor third, and a perfect fifth-- so the second element of any chord is very important to the overall sound of the chord. If the third tone is three whole intervals away from the root, the chord is major. But if the third is only two and a half intervals away, it is minor-- just as in the scheme of the Aeolian mode in which the second interval is a halfstep. When you lower a note a halfstep you iminish the chord; if you raise a note a halfstep, you augment it.

When the dulcimer is tuned to the Mixolydian mode, there are a limited number of possible complete triads with a root, a third, and a perfect fifth. You just can't play a full range of chords on the dulcimer-- we only have an eight-tone scale. We can, however, play inversions (different note arrangements) of a few of these chords. Most often we rearrange two notes on either the unisons and middle string or middle and bass strings. So here's a new word for describing these twonote arrangements-- diad.

This term isn't in music books because it really isn't legitimate, but it occurs to us that the majority of "chords" we play hardly ever consists of anything more than the bass drone (the octave of the tonic), and two notes a third or a fifth apart. (Sometimes we're daring and use a tonal relationship based on a fourth or sixth tone.) We call these chord inversions, these fragments, these elements of melodic harmonies, diads, because they really only have two tones when you get right down to it.

Keep in mind that you can use diads melodically to enhance a melody line, giving a song a fuller sound and a quality of strength and resolution.

To get into playing these chords, these diads, on the dulcimer, we'll start by numbering your fingers like this:

If you are to use the tips of your fingers to play a chord, we'll notate this with a capital "T," the number of the finger, and a circle around the notation. To show where this fingertip is placed, we'll locate the notation over the appropriate fret on the correct string.

The example means you place the tip of your middle finger on the unison strings at the fourth fret. Now, if you are to lay one finger across all the strings to bar them, we'll show "B," the number of the finger, and a circle around the notation, and place the notation over the fret to be barred.

In this case, lay your middle finger across the fretboard, depressing all the strings at the fourth fret. To add pressure to the bar, try placing a trailing left-hand finger (number 3) on top of the barring finger like this:

It's a good idea to have your fingernails cut short so that your contact with the strings is uniform. Also, take care to exert a steady fingertip pressure on the strings to produce the clearest sound. It's best to leave the index finger free for adding short slides, embellishments, and other notes while fingers two and three hold down the chord position itself. Some people use the thumb for making embellishments or reaching out for other notes, but we find this terribly awkward and don't recommend it.

For demonstration purposes we'll use the area, around the third fret. As you move your chord configuration onto other frets, you'll find that they may become more major or minor, depending on the interval between the notes... but as you experiment with diads, you'll learn what sound is where on the fretboard.

In the Mixolydian you won't run into any absolutely discordant tonalities, although some relationships will sound more pleasing than others. In the minor modes you will find some-- but, remember it is our cultural musical conditioning that causes us to judge these tones as discordant. If someone complains, say you're working on avantgarde jazz dulcimer!

Keep in mind that in this section we want you to experiment with finger positions. We're not going to be saying, "this is a D chord," or, "that is an A chord." There's plenty of time in your musical life to learn specific chords and chord progressions. For now, learn the possibilities of the positions and let the harmonies of the music teach you. All of the sound examples will be in the D-Mixolydian tuning.