dulcimer

Dulcimer is a shaped stringed instrument similar to a trapeze. It has the form of a flat box with steel strings. The sound is extracted by hitting dulcimer with wooden sticks. The length and form of sticks depend on dulcimer player's taste and tradition.

dulcimer

The ways of playing the dulcimer and sounds of this instrument are very various. A skilled musician is able to extract from dulcimer low and high sounds. The dulcimer complements with its sound playing other instruments. The best tunes performed by dulcimer are fast-paced, entertaining and lively melodies and dances.

One of the heroes - innkeeper Yankel in the epic "Pan Tadeusz" by Adam Mickiewicz played Gypsy dulcimer and in that way he could "tell" the audience poignant stories.
Current dulcimer occur in just 40 countries in Europe, Asia and America.

View the embedded image gallery online at:
http://www.instrumentyludowe.pl/en/dulcimer.html#sigProId0084da794f

dulcimer-legend
instrumenty

Instruments

The instruments recorded in the project come from museum of sound with more than 80 thousand object collections from the National Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw. Together with museum staff we have chosen 23 instruments guided by the following principles – they should be definitely folk, unusual, derived from the old times, Polish and coming from different cultural backgrounds, also exotic like e.g. Asian.

Recording a full range of tone of 23 instruments - tonal and sonic scale lasted several days. Thanks to the recordings - sound banks were created and have been used in the project in two ways. The first way was based on motion-sensitive controllers which created new practical instrumentarium for use during the workshops and animation activities. The second way was placing recorded sounds on the website for promotion of the idea of the project and gathering a great number of recipients.

All instruments were also photographed and described which enabled creating of publicly accessible compendium of information about them.