Two bridges, three rows of notes
A hammered dulcimer is not a scale laid out in a line, and that is why looking up “the tuning” never gets you anywhere. Each course crossing the treble bridge is struck on both sides of it, giving two different notes from one course, and a second row of courses crosses the bass bridge below. So a “12/11” — twelve treble courses, eleven bass — is 23 courses and 46 individual strings, giving 35 playing positions across 25 distinct pitches.
Which means there are three separate rows to tune, and they are three separate lists. Find your size and your row below.
Courses are numbered from the lowest. Marked courses are the ones your instrument shows with a white or contrasting bridge cap — they are where the major scales begin. Tap a tone to hear the target, then strike the course and centre the needle.
Which size do you have?
Count the courses crossing the treble bridge, then the bass bridge. The name is those two numbers.
| Size | Range | Keys it plays |
|---|---|---|
| 12/11 | G3 – D6 (2½ octaves) | D, G, C and F major, plus most tunes in A |
| 15/14 | D3 – D6 (3 octaves) | The same, plus a complete A major and a second, lower D |
A 15/14 is a 12/11 with three more courses added at the bottom of each bridge — the top of the instrument is identical, D6 on both. So every note on a 12/11 exists on a 15/14 in the same place relative to the marked courses, and a chart for one reads on the other once you have found your markers. The other common sizes, 13/12 and 16/15, extend the same chain by one course; the maps above still name every note you have.
The fifth rule, which explains the whole layout
Three relationships generate every note on the instrument. Once you know them you can reconstruct any course you are unsure of, on any size, without a chart:
- Across the treble bridge: a perfect fifth. The left side of any treble course sounds a fifth above the right side of that same course. Right side D4, left side A4.
- Between the bridges: also a perfect fifth. Each bass course sounds a fifth below its neighbour on the right of the treble bridge. Bass G3, treble right D4.
- Up each bridge: tone, tone, semitone, repeating. Every row climbs in four-note groups a fourth apart. That is why the bass bridge has a B♭ rather than a B natural near the top — it is the fourth note of the F group, and it is what lets you play in F at all.
The pay-off is that a major scale is always the same physical shape. Start on a marked course, play four notes up that row, then cross over for the top four. From a marked course on the treble bridge you cross the bridge to its left side; from a marked course on the bass bridge you cross to the right side of the treble bridge. On a 12/11 that gives you D, G and C major starting on the treble bridge, and G, C and F major starting on the bass bridge — the same scale in two places for G and C.
The bridges are not glued down
A hammered dulcimer’s bridges are held in place by string pressure alone, and the treble bridge’s position along the string is what creates the fifth. This is the one thing that separates tuning this instrument from tuning any other on this site: part of the job is geometry, not tension.
Tuning a course, not a string
Each course is two strings tuned to the samepitch — three on the treble courses of some makers’ instruments. The dial will happily tell you a course is centred while it still sounds sour, because what you are hearing is the strings inside that course beating against each other, a few cents apart. The dial reports one number for the whole blur.
- Work one bridge and one side at a time, lowest course upward. On the treble bridge do the right side of every course before you start the left — the right side is what the bass bridge is referenced to.
- Damp the rest of the course. Rest a finger or a strip of felt on the other string so you are reading one, not the average of the pair. This is the single technique that turns hammered dulcimer tuning from guesswork into work.
- Get each string of the course onto the note with the dial, then release the damping and listen. Adjust the last few cents by ear until the beating stops — a beat-free unison is unmistakable, and no cents readout replaces it.
- Nudge, release, strike, read. Tuning pins are direct-drive with no gearing, so a few degrees is a large pitch change. Never turn while watching the needle and expecting it to creep.
- Go round again. Fifty-odd strings at tension pull hard on the soundboard, and the courses you tuned first will have dropped by the time you reach the last. Two full passes minimum.
What the dial can and cannot do here
The tuner above measures against twelve-tone equal temperament, which is the right reference for this instrument: a hammered dulcimer is fixed-pitch and plays in four or five keys, so it needs the compromise a piano needs. There is no traditional alternative temperament to argue about.
What the dial cannot do is finish a course. Two strings ten cents apart average out to a reading you would accept, and they will still sound wrong — that gap is roughly a beat every third of a second on a middle-octave course. Use the needle to get every string onto the right note and into the right octave, and use your ear for the last few cents inside each course. If cents are new to you, what a cent actually measures is a two-minute read, and it is the number this instrument makes you care about most.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a hammered dulcimer and a mountain dulcimer?
They share a name and almost nothing else. A mountain (Appalachian) dulcimer is a fretted instrument with three or four strings, held on the lap and tuned to a named chord like DAD or DAA. A hammered dulcimer is a trapezoidal soundboard carrying twenty-odd courses of two strings each — 46 of them on the smallest common size — struck with small mallets, with no frets and no three-letter tuning to name. If yours has frets and you strum it, you want the mountain dulcimer tuner instead.
What notes is a 12/11 hammered dulcimer tuned to?
Twelve treble courses and eleven bass ones, spanning G3 to D6. The bass bridge runs G3 A3 B3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B♭4 C5. The right side of the treble bridge runs C♯4 D4 E4 F♯4 G4 A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 G5, and the left side of that same bridge is each of those a perfect fifth higher, G♯4 up to D6. Select the row you are tuning in the maps above to hear every target.
Why are the two sides of my treble bridge not a fifth apart?
Because the bridge has moved, and no amount of tuning will fix it. The treble bridge is not glued down — it is held in place by string pressure alone, and its position along the string is what produces the fifth. If one course is off, that bridge cap has shifted; if every course is off in the same direction, the whole bridge has. Set the right side to its target note first, then move the bridge until the left side reads a true fifth above, and only then tune the rest.
How long does it take to tune a hammered dulcimer?
Two to three hours the first time on a new or long-neglected instrument, and ten to fifteen minutes once it is holding. A 12/11 carries 46 strings and a 15/14 carries 58, and each course has to be brought to one pitch and then made beat-free against itself, which is an ear job rather than a dial job. A new instrument also keeps moving for weeks as it settles under about a ton of accumulated string tension.
Do I need a special hammered dulcimer tuner?
No, and a chromatic tuner like this one is genuinely the right tool — it names whatever note it hears, which is what you need on an instrument with twenty-odd different pitches and no fixed six-string target set. Two features matter more than any dulcimer-specific mode: the octave display, which tells you that a course is D5 and not D4 before you spend ten minutes tightening it the wrong way, and a cents readout fine enough to close a unison.