Playing the Dulcimer
In practice, a wide variety of playing styles have long been used. Jean Ritchie’s The Dulcimer Book (1974) shows a woman playing the dulcimer with a bow instead of a pick-with the tail of the dulcimer held in the player’s lap and the headstock resting on a table pointing away from her. In their book In Search of the Wild dulcimer (1974), Robert Force and Al d’Ossché described their preferred method as "guitar style": the dulcimer hangs from a strap around the neck, and the instrument is fretted and strummed like a guitar. Still other dulcimer players use a fingerstyle technique, fingering chord positions with the fretting hand and rhythmically plucking individual strings with the strumming hand, creating delicate tunes. Some even use a hammer, especially with the mountain dulcimer type.