Minor Strumstick

Just me messing around on the strumstick in a E minor (capo on the first fret of the D Grand Strumstick).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• strumstick
• minor
• mcnally
• dulcimer

[rmcdaniel423]

Very cool to see a minor key being played on one of these.

I have a question for you. I'm about to start work on crafting a simple DIY instrument. It will use a wooden salad bowl for the body and I'm thinking of doing a strum stick style fret setup. However I want to use it for middle eastern/Indian type music, like for belly dancers. I don't really know music theory. What kind of key or tuning should I look into to get that sort of sound?

[foxtrot11]

@rmcdaniel423 if you build it like the regular strumstick you can capo it at the 2nd fret and get both a blues scale as well as a modified arabic scale.

But to answer your question fully.

This is how you build a major scale in frets:

0 2 4 5 7 9 11 12

an arabic scale goes like this in scale degrees:

1 b2 3 4 5 b6 7

or in frets

0 1 4 5 7 8 11 12

Sorry this reply is so late. Hope you worked it out

[foxtrot11]

Thanks y'all. I look forward to uploading a newer version of this song and others in the near future and seeing what you all come up with on this cool little instrument.

[MEEvju]

I can hear that you are listening to alot of metal by the way you play. I like the strumstick though, I have one of those my self. Brilliantly entertaining instrument.

[flameguy55]

Awesome Great job, the beginning sounds like the Jason music

[Spluce1]

shows the versatility of the instrument, and what the player is capable of doing... well done