dulcimer chords for DAA tuning
22/03/2011

dulcimer chords for Ionian / DAA tuning  

these charts show some popular DAA chords, which which you can play many, many songs  

about playing chords on the dulcimer

these dulcimer chords are all triad chords – but they work really well and sound nice 

(pedantically) chords should have 4 notes (or more)
so D should be D-A-F#-D with a D below and above

the low D is called the root note
hence on my chord chart I’ve not called the lowest D chord (2-0-3) the ‘root’ chord but the ‘base’ chord
the root chord is in fact the 2nd inversion (7-5-7) but it doesn’t feel appropriate to call it that  

where this system theoretically fails is with chords like seventh chords, which should have 4 notes
eg: A7 has the notes A, E, C# and G – with the G being the seventh note

the question is do you play 3-0-4 / G-A-E or 3-2-4 / G-C#-E – both have the seventh note
3-0-4 sounds softer and 3-2-4 has a more dischordant/harsh sound

the answer is, of course: ‘horses for courses’ - I use 3-0-4 most of the time but occasionally vary it with 3-2-4     
in the context of a song in the key of D, the A note will appear often in the melody and many of the chords – so omitting then A note from an A7 chord does not sound wrong (pedantically it’s not an A7 chord but it sounds like it, in context) – it’s important to take these things in context

because I fingerpick / arpeggiate, sometimes I will alternate between 3-0-4 and 3-2-4 and back again, all in the same bar/measure to include all four notes of the A7 chord and add a little subtle variety

dulcimer chord shapes for DAA tuning

shapes for major chords ~ these three chord shapes will all give major chords

 shapes for minor chords ~ these three chord shapes will all give minor chords 

shapes for seventh chords ~ these three chord shapes will all give seventh chords

to learn more about dulcimer chords in DAA you might like to attend one of my song accompaniment in Ionian classes