You can play tunes the very first time you pick it up, even if you can't read music. The neck of the dulcimer is fretted like a guitar. The first fret is "1", the second fret is "2", and so on.

Maylee Samuels has been playing the dulcimer for 30 years and, in advance of a local dulcimer St. Patrick's Day-themed workshop set for March 14, she offered Jan Risher a lesson.

The Mountain Dulcimer: How to Make It and Play It (After a Fashion). Huntington, VT: Folk Legacy Records, 1966. Record and booklet. Odell, Scott. "The Appalachian Dulcimer." In The 1968 Festival of ...

“If you can hum a tune, you can play the dulcimer,” said Shelley Stevens, a founding member of the club. She picked up the dulcimer in 1984. “And life has never been the same since,” added ...

Amanda Seyfried playing the dulcimer and singing Joni Mitchell on 'The Tonight Show.' - Credit: Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Image.

The only instrument I had ever had across my knee was a bongo drum, so when I started to play the dulcimer I beat it. I just ...

Amanda Seyfried playing the dulcimer and singing Joni Mitchell on 'The Tonight Show.' Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Image.

It didn’t show: Seyfried went on to sing and play a pitch perfect version of the first part of California, from Mitchell’s aforementioned Blue album, hitting some seriously high notes in the process.

The scholarship covers class fees, a rental dulcimer if needed, and lunch and dinner throughout the week. Activities start June 30 and classes are held Monday through Friday, July 1-5.

Chester Englander is a big name in a small world: he is playing the cimbalom, a jumbo hammered dulcimer that resembles an inside-out piano, in John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met.

Maylee Samuels has been playing the dulcimer for 30 years and, in advance of a local dulcimer St. Patrick's Day-themed workshop set for March 14, she offered Jan Risher a lesson.