Comparisons

At this point I have quite a few dulcimers - and, being fairly new to the dulcimer world I am trying to understand the differences in the sound of instruments from various makers, both older examples as well as newer ones. To this end I have set up a number of instruments side by side and tried to hear their differences. The first photo is a shot of such an effort. Way too confusing. Then I noticed that I could see differences in the sound trace when I was working with recordings in Sony's Sound Forge program. So, I figured perhaps I could record a variety of instruments and perhaps learn a little about the instruments. The 9 pictures of sound patterns below are the results of this experiment. I first said the name of the instrument, then recorded a series of 5 notes up and 4 down, played 3 times, at different locations on the instruments. Typically I started D3 on the bass bridge (with the exception of the Rizzetta - where the first set was from G2, the second set starts from D3), followed by C4 on the bass bridge, then G4 on the treble bridge, and finally G5 on the left side of the treble bridge.

The individual traces are shown for each of 8 instruments, while the last picture shows all of the traces in one photo. Note that if you click on the larger photo it will go to full screen.