The hammered dulcimer is a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board.

Typically, the hammered dulcimer is set on a stand, at an angle, before the musician, who holds small mallet hammers in each hand to strike the strings ( cf.

A chromatic hammered dulcimer

The strings of a hammered dulcimer are usually found in pairs, two strings for each note ( though some instruments have three or four strings per note ).

A hammered dulcimer, like an autoharp, harp, or piano, requires a tuning wrench for tuning, since the dulcimer's strings are wound around tuning pins with square heads.

The hammered dulcimer derives its name from the small mallets that players use to strike the strings, called hammers.

The hammered dulcimer was extensively used during the Middle Ages in England, France, Italy, Germany, Holland and Spain.

Renowned studio percussionist Emil Richards had a hammered dulcimer in his giant Emil Richards Collection and used it in numerous soundtracks, especially in those with eastern Indian or American Country themes.

Versions of the hammered dulcimer are used throughout the world.

In Eastern Europe, a larger descendant of the hammered dulcimer called the cimbalom is played and has been used by a number of classical composers, including Zoltán Kodály, Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez, and more recently, in a different musical context, by Blue Man Group.

The khim is the name of both the Thai and the Khmer hammered dulcimer.

The Chinese yangqin is a type of hammered dulcimer that originated in Persia.

* United Kingdom – hammered dulcimer

* United States – hammered dulcimer

* List of hammered dulcimer players

* List of hammered dulcimer builders

A comprehensive history of the hammered dulcimer and its variants.

* Smithsonian Institution booklet on hammered dulcimer history and playing

* Smithsonian Institution booklet on making a hammered dulcimer ( by Sam Rizzetta )

This sort of music is played on acoustic instruments, such as the fiddle, banjo, guitar and double bass ; certain instruments, including the piano, accordion, concertina and hammered dulcimer, are popular in specific regions.

* Malcolm Dalglish, hammered dulcimer player, composer, and choral director

* Dan Landrum, hammered dulcimer player who tours with Yanni

), it also featured Johnny Scott ( Van Morrison ) on guitar, and James Lascelles ( Frank Zappa ) on hammond, mini-moog, piano, hammered dulcimer and percussion.

A typical 19th century European orchestra included a first violin, a contra-violin ( or modified 3-stringed viola also called Groyse Fidl Big Fiddle, Sekund, Kontra or Zsidó Bratsch ), a tsimbl ( cimbalom or hammered dulcimer ), a bass or cello, and sometimes a flute.

Cathedral glass comes in a very wide variety of colors and surface textures including hammered, rippled, seedy, and marine textures.

Rockets could be of various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about long and diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about 4 ft long.

These rockets could be of various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron about long and diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about long.

The upper class used instruments like the flute, violin and harpsichord and danced formal dances like the stately minuet or English country dance, while the lower classes preferred reels and jigs, accompanied by various kinds of guitars, drums, banjos, transverse flutes and recorders, as well as, more rarely, hammered dulcimers and harpsichords.

The concert cimbalom developed by József Schunda in 1874 in Budapest, Hungary was closer in its range of pitch, dynamic projection and weight to the proportions of a small piano than the various folk hammered dulcimers had been.

They include hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, Uilleann Pipes, shawm, nyckelharpa, harp, cittern, tromba marina, hammered dulcimer, Klangbaum, and various types of drums and percussion.

Gary Kamiya of The San Francisco Examiner observed, " After watching this film, you feel as if Martin Luther had hammered every one of his 95 theses onto various parts of your anatomy, using dull thumbtacks.

The sound of the Marxophone is also reminiscent of the various types of hammered dulcimer in music traditions world-wide.

In addition to these instruments are the khlui ( vertical fipple flute ) in several sizes and ranges, a goblet drum ( thon-rammana ) and, occasionally, a small hammered Chinese dulcimer ( khim ).

When scholarship during the nineteenth century identified the faces in their carved decoration as Isis, Serapis and Harpocrates, a restoration under Pius IX in 1870 hammered off the offending faces.

In recent years the largest of the trees, Kirk's " Minister's Pine ", has been damaged by vandals who have hammered coins into the bark.

In this way, Eyre was able to demonstrate substantial historical precedents for individual Christadelphian teachings and practices, and believed that the Christadelphian community was the ' inheritor of a noble tradition, by which elements of the Truth were from century to century hammered out on the anvil of controversy, affliction and even anguish '.

In the standard process of making type, a hard metal punch ( made by punchcutting, with the letter carved back to front ) is hammered into a softer copper bar, creating a matrix.

The best quality woks are almost always hand-made, being pounded into shape by hand (" hand hammered ") from two or more sheets of carbon steel which are shaped into final form by a ring-forming or hand-forging process.

Lennon was intrigued by Ono's " Hammer A Nail ": patrons hammered a nail into a wooden board, creating the art piece.

The purity of 92. 5 % silver ( i. e., sterling silver ) was instituted by Henry II in 1158 with the " Tealby Penny "— a hammered coin.

By 1696 the currency had been seriously weakened by an increase in clipping during the Nine Years ' War to the extent that it was decided to recall and replace all hammered silver coinage in circulation.

During the First World War, screw pickets were used for the installation of wire obstacles ; these were metal rods with eyelets for holding strands of wire, and a corkscrew-like end that could literally be screwed into the ground rather than hammered, so that wiring parties could work at night near enemy soldiers and not reveal their position by the sound of hammers.

The guild's work is characterized by plain surfaces of hammered silver, flowing wirework and colored stones in simple settings.

Many of these routes, hammered by countless hoofs instinctively following watersheds and the crests of ridges in avoidance of lower places ' summer muck and winter snowdrifts, were followed by the Indians as courses to hunting grounds and as warriors ' paths.

The original baptismal font of hammered copper on a turned wood base has been returned to the church, as has the bell wheel used by the Ohlones during the sacred parts of the Mass.

After being defeated by Barak, Sisera was killed by Jael, who hammered a tent peg into his temple.

These forms were hammered in by the bladesmith and only the surface finish was ground.

Forging is different from machining in that material is not removed by it ; rather the iron is hammered into shape.

* In the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World a trepanation is performed on a crew member, who had suffered a severe depressed fracture of the skull, by the ship's doctor, with the hole covered by using a coin that had been hammered into shape by the ship's blacksmith.

However, Dr. Feather stated in the same documentary that an iron pin – long claimed to be a nail from the crucifixion, hammered into the blade and set off by tiny brass crosses – is " consistent " in length and shape with a 1st century A. D. Roman nail.