Doug Berch

Woodworker Qing made elaborately carved wooden bell stands.
When others saw the completed bell stands, they were startled and thought they must have been created by supernatural beings.
The Marquis of Lu saw one of them and asked: “What special art (artistic skill) do you have to be able to do this?”
He replied, “Your humble servant is [...]

Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of our Beloved. It is because music is the picture of our Beloved that we love music. But the question is what is our Beloved and where is our Beloved? Our Beloved is that which is our source and our [...]

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 [...]

I have mentioned before that I prefer working with hand tools. There are a number of reasons for this. A hand tool becomes an extension of my hand when working and I feel more intimately involved in the work. I get a sense of feedback from the wood and the tool letting me know what [...]

As a musician who is getting back to solo performing after a long break I have found myself putting off writing copy for two brochures. One brochure is what I will send when booking concerts, the other for things like weddings, events, etc.
I have put off writing these brochures because it is always a [...]

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”
“What one has to do usually can be done.”
“What is to give light must endure the burning.”
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
“A little simplification would [...]

“I like the man who cultivates poetry for self-instruction, not for lucre, and the man who practices music for pleasure, not for gain”

- Ibn Muqla

Many years ago I was playing a friends homemade fretless banjo and a young boy who was listening asked if I could also play a “real” banjo.
I told him that the banjo I was playing was real and if it wasn’t how could I possibly be playing it?
His response was something like “You know what [...]

A beautiful snowy day. I get to spend the day in the shop. In a few hours I will have set up another prototype dulcimer and will be playing it. It’s a nice way to start off the month.