Tonewoods

 A Western Red Cedar and us

Garret our youngest son has taken a shine to the West of late so we have been doing some traveling out in that direction over the last few years.  We love the natural environment, our parks and seem to have a logical attraction to trees of all kinds.  In this blog, I'd like to feature some trees that fortunately will not be turned into instruments.   They represent a bygone era when old growth giants such as these were the norm rather than the exception.  I'm so grateful that we at least have parks where some of these spectacular trees can still be appreciated and preserved.  The first one we visited was this Western Red Cedar on the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington.  It is a good shot of the three of us so you can get its scale.  It is hard to get good shots of the overall height of any of these giants though. Quartered Western Red Cedar is excellent for classical guitars and other fretted instruments.


The next tree we visited was fairly close to that Cedar.  It is the oldest and largest Sitka Spruce tree in the world.   Quartered Spruce has always been one of the most popular woods for soundboards in fretted instruments, violins and the occasional hammerer dulcimer.

Oldest Spruce

Top of the Oldest Spruce

 A Sequoia in Mariposa Grove with Garret

In a recent trip to Yosemite's Mariposa Grove of Sequoia Redwoods we got to see some beauties.  The scale of these trees is difficult to capture.  It is an amazing experience to stand in their presence.  The cross section of a Coastal Redwood in Muir Woods near San Francisco indicates this tree is around 1392 years old. This is the wood I use for hammered dulcimer soundboards and other instruments.  I used to be able find some of this old growth wood at small owner operated lumber yards but most of that material is now gone.  The wood was used from everything from siding to signs.  I'm currently using Redwood that is being harvested from stumps left from when they were still cutting down old growth trees. In my career, I've probably used a quarter of one tree.  These babies were so big when felled that they used to drill holes in them and place dynamite in the holes to bring them down to a manageable size.

Grizzly Giant in Mariposa Grove.  About 2400 years old

Garret next to a Coastal Redwood cross section in Muir Woods

If you get a chance pay these trees a visit.

Note: You can double click on any of the photos and get it's full size. 

If you'd like to get better descriptions of these three species visit these links.

Western Red Cedar
Sitka Spruce
Redwood  

The Yangqin

The Yangqin

Xia Xiannian

I have always been fascinated by the Chinese yangqin.  In the world of trapezoidal instruments struck by “hammers”, the contemporary yangqin rivals the cymbalom in its range and complexity.  The yangqin is a relative newcomer to Chinese music. The instrument’s name provides a clue that it originated from abroad—yang means “foreign” and qin is the ancient Chinese plucked zither.  Although originally thought to have been introduced to the Chinese by the Persians through the Silk Road, more recent research by Paul Gifford in his book The Hammered Dulcimer, A History suggests that the instrument was brought by European sea merchants to south China in the eighteenth century.  The traditional yangqin’s shape, diatonic tuning, and long hammers held between thumb and index finger suggest that they were influence by the hammered dulcimers of Europe, rather than the Persian santur.  The instrument initially was a fairly simple fan shaped affair with a range of only eight treble courses and eight base courses probably strung with brass.  During the 1960s the instrument evolved into models having two, three, four and sometimes five main bridges greatly extending its range .  Steel and copper wound strings with as many as five strings per course were introduced in order to give the instrument more resonance and volume.  The playing hammers are made of flexible bamboo with a half moon head covered by rubber. The rubber side produces a softer sound and is used most frequently.   When a crisper, more percussive sound is needed the hammer is flipped striking the strings with the bare bamboo.  The ends of the hammers are sometimes used to pluck the instrument as well. 

As the yangqin is a type of hammered dulcimer, it shares many elements of construction with other instruments in the hammered dulcimer family.  Some unique features include its tuning scheme,  the construction of its bridges,  a fairly open back,  cylindrical metal nuts that can be moved for fine tuning, and a hinged cover which is opened to access the tuning pins.  It seems that most yangqin are manufactured and in quantity as the instrument is quite popular.  Models vary in size, range and quality. They usually include an ornate folding stand. 

Tuning

The yangqin is a chromatic instrument with a range of slightly over four octaves. Middle C is located on the tenor bridge, third course from the bottom.

The pitches are arranged so that in general, moving one section away from the player's body corresponds to a transposition of a whole tone upwards. Similarly, moving one section towards the left of the performer generally corresponds to a transposition of a perfect fifth upwards. These are only rules of thumb since the arrangement has to be modified towards the extremes of the pitch range to fill out notes in the chromatic scale. Such an arrangement facilitates transposition.

There are usually four to five bridges on a yangqin. From right to left, they are: bass bridge, "right bridge", tenor bridge, "left bridge", and the chromatic bridge. During playing, one is supposed to strike the strings on the left side of the bridges. However, the strings on the "chromatic bridge" are struck on the right, and strings on the "left bridge" can be struck on both sides of the bridge.

The Yangqin like North American dulcimers is capable of producing not only single notes, but also chords and quick arpeggios. It is widely used as both a solo and accompanying instrument, and remains one of the principal instruments in a Chinese orchestra.


More photos, the tuning scheme and links to relevant material

Sound Hole Designs

One of the very first sound hole images

A later image of a sound hole in my style

Making unique artistic sound hole images has always been integral to the overall design of my hammered dulcimers.  My first sound hole designs were heavily influenced by Richard Amarnick, a fellow art student who cut original works out of paper.  He would often cut up menus and napkins and leave the results on restaurant tables.  Since my sound holes are circular, I started with circular blanks of paper and cut into them creating hundreds of possible designs but only selecting the best. These designs were glued onto specially prepared curly maple blanks and cut by hand using either a fret or scroll saw.  The unique designs give each instrument its own special character.

Another in my style

Cut and engraved with a laser

Tulipwood maple leaf

An image with an abalone rim

Bowed Psaltery

Over time, customers requested that I help them create unique designs of their own choosing.  What started as a trickle now has become a flood, as a much larger proportion of my hammered dulcimer orders sport custom sound hole designs unique to that customer’s instrument. Some are quite simple, others very complex.  Some are so complex and with engraving that I have had to occasionally rely on laser cutting.  Each has been the result of a collaboration with the customer.  Designs present a myriad of structural and visual challenges involving a lot of give and take.  Except for the more traditional Celtic designs, I never repeat a design.  I have built over 1560 hammered dulcimers and they almost all have unique signatures.  I've even begun to create personalized designs for my bowed psalteries.  I’ve produced a slide show showing just a small percentage of the images set to the music of Steve Schneider and Paul Oorts.  I’ve included some of my early designs and a selection of more recent ones.  If you'd like to see more, you can see them on my sound hole page and in an album on Facebook.  Making an instrument personal has been a wonderful way of connecting with customers and keeping my creative talents honed.

Tsimbl

Although I don't sell a lot of them, I offer another version of the hammered dulcimer, the tsimbl.  This fully chromatic instrument is a close relative to the full sized cimbalom.  The layout is quite different then the traditional fifth interval American version of the hammer dulcimer but seems to suite players who play more Eastern European folk and Jewish Klezmer music. I make a couple of different sizes; a small 13/12 and an 18/17,  One of my most far flung sales was to Ignat Karmalito  who resides in Russia and plays with the group Digital Samara.  You might be interested in checking out their music.  If you'd like to see the instrument I built him as well as a tuning chart, visit my tsimbl page.

Here are some additional links to information about Tsimbls and Cimbaloms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimbalom.
http://www.tsimbl.com/  
http://www.klezmershack.com/articles/horowitz/horowitz.tsimbl.html