What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Rev. Rye]

So, while listening to Nina Simone’s version of “Black is the Colour”, I got interested in the song. Apparently, her version has a tuning made by folk singer John Jacob Niles





The weird thing is looking into the instrument he’s using, everything makes less and less sense. Apparently, the thing that looks like a renaissance lute is actually a self-built Appalachian dulcimer.



What truly puts this into “giving up on logic” territory is that someone apparently managed to study that damn thing, and the tuning is just legitimately baffling. It’s easy enough to comprehend at first, but then you find out that the strings range in tuning from the A string on a bass to an extremely high A string (equivalent to fretting the first string of a guitar on the fifth fret.) The scale length is 25 1/2”, which is normal scale length for a guitar. Strings skinny enough to accommodate such a high A at such a length are barely possible even these days.





Apparently, you might have luck if you go as low as 0.007 inches, but even that has mixed results. And someone managed to get strings as skinny as 0.00625”, but I can’t find them.