Maclaine Colston's Circle of Death by Peter Collinson

I wrote this shortly after the Hope meeting in 1996, and haven't published it, because I learnt that Maclaine was writing something for the newsletter. That piece is now available. But this explains it slightly differently, and augments Maclaine's page I think.

At the Nonsuch Club's annual meeting at Hope in 1996, I took a number of classes from Maclaine Colston. Maclaine is one of Britain's premier players of the Hammered Dulcimer. Maclaine is a terrific teacher, he seems to have spent some time analysing what he does and how to get that across to people.

Anyway, one of the little exercises that he taught at Hope was the 'Circle of Death'. It's aimed at improving your weak hand, in my case, the left one. The hammering sequence is shown in the diagram by the numbers in the coloured circles. If you look at the pattern, you'll see that you are striking with alternate hammers.

The horizontal lines show the treble courses on your instrument, with the red vertical line being the bridge. Note that the musical notes that marked by numbers 2 and 5 are the same, so this sequence works at many positions on your dulcimer.

If you can do this easily, then it works as a good accuracy exercise by moving the pattern to start on the bass strings. Of course, whether this works for you depends on how your bass strings are tuned. Alternatively, try moving the top note (strike 5) down a string progressively.