Simplified Self Accompaniment

by Dave Murray

There are a number of ways of thinking about chords; memorizing them, moveable chord shapes, learning them for each tune from someone's TAB, etc. The task seems difficult at first. There is a very simple way of thinking about it, moving drones.

We normally tune our mountain dulcimers so we can play the melody on the treble string and tune either the bass of middle string to the key tonic and the other to the 5th. For a D tuning it is common to tune the bass string to D (the tonic key note) and the middle string to A (the 5th above D). The treble can now be tuned to D for D Major Mixolydian, or A for D Major Ionian, or C for D minor Aeolian. In each case if we strum all of the strings as we play, and the bass and middle strings drone to the root and dominant 5th of a D chord. Since that is the key that we are playing in it will generally sound good. There is no major or minorness to the root and 5th combination.

We commonly see accompaniment chords marked above tablature or musical notation for a song. Often those chords are the 1st, 4th, and 5th (I-IV-V) of the scale in the key that you are playing in. While playing in D, that is D, G, and A.

We have drones for D without doing anything special. When the accompaniment chord is the subdominant IV or G the root and dominant 5th notes are G and D. We already have a D on the bass string, so all we need to do is fret the middle string at the number 6 fret for our G while playing the melody on the treble string.

When the accompaniment chord is the V, or A we have our root A on the middle string and the 5th, or E, can be made by pressing the bass string at the number 1 or 8 fret, depending upon which is closer to the note that we are playing on the melody string.

These are partial chords that we can use to accompany ourselves while playing the melody. You get an effect that is as close to having someone accompany you with the chords as possible when playing by yourself. You also keep the character of mountain dulcimer drones while getting the effect of a chordal accompaniment. Sweet music!

Here is an example using the song Wildwood Flower (timing not shown):

   D               A     D                           A     D      
D|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-1-1-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-1-1-0-0-0-0-0
A|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
D|-2-3-4-5-7-2-3-2-1-2-1-0-0-0-1-0-2-3-4-5-7-2-3-2-1-2-1-0-0-0-1-0

   D               G     D                 A     D          
D|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1-1-1-0-0-0-0-0-|
A|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-6-6-6-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|
D|-4-7-9-9-8-7-4-4-5-7-5-4-2-2-2-2-2-2-4-2-1-2-1-0-0-0-1-0-|

It's a bit of a stretch, but playable, for the "Wildwood Flower" to make a finger capo for the chord/drone changes. In the example below I use fingers for the 'G' 3's and thumb for the melody, then index for the 'A' 4's and pinkie for the melody notes. Some tunes might be easier to use the finger capo, depending upon the relationship to the melody notes, or you might play different iterations with different methods for variety.

  G      A      
D|3-3-3-|4-4-4-|
A|3-3-3-|4-4-4-|
D|5-7-5-|1-2-1-|

This is a method that could be applied to many tunes without having much to remember.

Steven K. Smith does something more sophisticated in the virtual classroom on his web page with this idea. He shows a twelve bar blues as a minor pentatonic melody while accompanying with the 5th and 7th (instead of root and 5th) of the chords.