Doug Berch

The dulcimer album is almost done and the hammered dulcimer album is in the home stretch. Mastering should begin in a few weeks.
I’ve been recording with Glenn Brown at Glenn Brown Productions in East Lansing. The sound is wonderful, true audiophile quality.

Somehow I ended up with mp3s of an album of Khmer dance music, probably a download I found somewhere online. This is amazing, high spirited music.
The instrumentation features some type of hammered dulcimer, zither, bowed instruments and percussion.
I did a web search recently to learn more about this music and learned that the recordings [...]

This woman has the right idea!

Yesterday I recorded an instrumental version of the ballad “Reynardine” on hammered dulcimer. It is now on my “Listen” page but you can also listen to it here:
Reynardine - Hammered Dulcimer

Musicians spend a lot of time with their bodies in postures specific to playing their instrument. This can cause a number of physical problems such as stiffness, fatigue, cramping and chronic pain.
If a musician has a physical condition that exhibits similar symptoms the side effects of playing an instrument can exacerbate the symptoms making it [...]

When I first began playing hammered dulcimer around 1975 the most common instruments had 12 courses over the treble or center bridge and 11 courses over the bass or left bridge. Hammered dulcimers are often described by the number of courses over the various bridges. The dulcimer described previously would be referred to as a [...]