dulcimer chords for DAA
popular dulcimer chords for Ionian / DAA tuning
dulcimer chord shapes – with these popular chords, you can play many songs
this chart as a PDF dulcimer DAA popular chord charts
about playing chords on the dulcimer
these dulcimer chords are all triad (three-note) chords but they work really well – technically however, chords should have four notes (or more) so D should be D-A-F#-D with a D below and above
the low D note in the D major chord is called the root note – on my chord chart however 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 four 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 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 depending upon desired effect and the mood of the phrase
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 (technically, it’s not an A chord but it sounds like one, in context) – it’s important to take these things in context
because I finger-pick/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 always give major chords
shapes for minor chords ~ these three chord shapes will always give minor chords
shapes for seventh chords ~ these three chord shapes will always give seventh chords