Compiled by Fiona Potts
Editor’s Note: I would like to thank Nick Blanton for his guidance on this feature. Sam was a steadfast DPN columnist for many years, and when he passed away in 2021, it was Nick who wrote DPN’s obituary (Vol. 48 No. 1).
In this issue, however, I wanted to share Sam Rizzetta’s story in his own words – first with excerpts from Maddie MacNeil’s interview of him in Vol. 9 No. 1 (1983) (we adapted the cover of that issue for this anniversary issue), followed by selections from his “The Answer Column” and “Technical Dulcimer” columns through the years. An index of the topics which had been covered to date which appeared in Vol. 29 No. 2 (2003). An update (or anthology) seems overdue!
“An Interview with Sam Rizzetta”
I also met Howie Mitchell. His approach to instrument making was totally new to me and kind of delightful. He would just put something together and see what happened. I’d never thought of that approach before.
Sam Rizzetta
When I was a youngster, I had an uncle who came from Montana who was a wonderful musician. He was great on the tenor banjo and I used to sit at his knee at Christmas time and listen to him play. When I became interested in stringed instruments, I was influenced by him.
As a teenager I fooled around with musical instruments. I was always building things, painting, and drawing. I was drawn to guitars at first because of the decorative work you can do with them. I really went overboard with doing mother of pearl inlay and carving and things like that on some of my early guitars. But now I am more interested in function and acoustics.
My interest in dulcimers started while I was living in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in the early 1960s. I can’t remember which type of dulcimer came first. Probably I first encountered the hammered type of dulcimer and I gave it no consideration because the only ones that I saw were old and looked very crude and primitive. I thought there can’t be anything to them, although I repaired a few for people.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I actually heard one played well and then I thought, “Where has that instrument been all my life”? I could have kicked myself for not learning more about them when I first saw them. It was probably hearing Chet Parker, still one of my favorite players, that really got me excited about the hammered dulcimer.
When I moved out East to the Northern Virginia area, I was surprised to find there were dulcimer players out here – hammer dulcimers as well as fretted dulcimers. In Michigan we just assumed that the dulcimer was unknown anywhere else in the world because we had never seen one anywhere else. The more I travel, the more I find that it is a very cosmopolitan instrument.
Out here I met Russell Fluharty who has certainly introduced the dulcimer to a lot of people. I also met Howie Mitchell. His approach to instrument making was totally new to me and kind of delightful. He would just put something together and see what happened. I’d never thought of that approach before.
My background in both art and biology came together in instrument making. My real interest in botany dealt with trees and practical uses of woods. Bringing art together with an interest in the acoustic properties of woods led right to instrument making combined with my interest in traditional music.
One of my zanier ideas was to design and build a family of hammer dulcimers of different sizes to play in ensemble. I often played duets and trios with some of my other dulcimer playing friends such as Sandy Davis and T. William (Bill) Smith. Sometimes we all played on one dulcimer. It was so much fun that I began wondering, what would it sound like if we had a soprano dulcimer and a bass dulcimer to go along with the normal range instrument. Fooling around with that idea ultimately resulted in the formation of Trapezoid in about 1974.
I was living near Charlottesville and some of the friends with whom I had been playing lived far away. It was not practical to get together very often and certainly not to have a band. The original idea of Trapezoid was to get a group of these friends together for one summer and travel around the country playing dulcimer quartets.
In Charlottesville I met some musicians who were interested in learning the dulcimer. One was Pete Vigour. We lived close by and wound up playing a lot of dulcimer music together. Eventually I talked Paul Reisler into joining us to play bass parts on a third dulcimer. Paul Yeaton, who was staying at Paul Reisler’s house, is a fine mandolin player. He picked up the hammer dulcimer, too, and so the four of us started working together as a band, playing some dulcimer quartets.
Eventually everyone went off to do other things and move to other places, and it wasn’t possible to keep four dulcimer players together. That particular Trapezoid died out, and it’s now a very different kind of band. Paul Reisler is the only original member.
By the time I started trying to play some of the more difficult things that I heard Chet Parker doing, the instrument was just so much fun that I had to keep trying. The tone is so exciting because it incorporates elements both of melodic instruments and percussion instruments all in one.
I have absolutely no musical training. I do read music just a little from having taught myself, but I’m not a good sight reader. I have to struggle through a piece of music, so it’s far more fun for me to learn tunes by ear. I do get interested in other kinds of music and I learn them any way I can.
In building an instrument, I’ve considered that I’m providing other people with a tool for their own creativity. When I hear what they’re doing, it’s nice to think that maybe I’ve provided them with a tool that lets them take their own creativity and their own art in a direction in which they wish to go.
I’m doing what seems like fun. Life is too short not to take time to do the things that are enjoyable and worthwhile.
The Idea Guy
Instrument builders generally fall into a few categories. Many are fixated on historic models – making a Martin D18 or Gibson F5 better than Martin or Gibson. Some fall into ornamentation, like doing elaborate pearl/abalone inlaid fretboards. Sam could do all that, but really liked to be an Idea Guy.
These ones want to do something completely new. This is why Sam gave up guitar and mandolin making in the 1980s. In designing dulcimers he’d found more room to try new things. But while many of us would take a leap and, like Guarneri, end up giving it to the woodstove, Sam had a knack for landing reasonably close to where he’d aimed. His first try was seldom perfect but always workable.
We did end up sometimes being surprised by the changes that came with decades of use (that, for example, even very thick birch plywood would sink, bulge and flow under long-term loading) but Sam never thought he was infallible. Because he was not just an Idea Guy. He was also a Revivalist.
When I’d ask about his Legacy to the Future, he’d say, “let ’em build their own instruments”. What comes through in many of these columns is Sam encouraging others to design, think, and build. He is showing the tools, and telling you to go for it. If you read any of these and are motivated to make something, assume that Sam will be smiling down upon you.
Nick Blanton (Nicholas Blanton Instruments)
“The Answer Column”
Here is a small sampling of the questions and answers from Vol. 11 Nos. 1 and 2 (1985).
Will a change from a plywood mahogany soundboard to a solid birch or other solid wood soundboard give a louder, brighter, longer, same or different sound? I still can’t figure out how the hammer dulcimer makes that sound, but I love it!
I love it, too, as you might suspect, but the secrets of hammer dulcimer tone can be an enigma. If everything else remains the same, a change from plywood to solid wood soundboard will yield a bit more volume, brightness, and longer sustain of notes once they are sounded. These changes may or may not be desirable depending on the tone you are starting out with in using the plywood soundboard.
Greater harshness may also result. The dulcimer is a combination of many factors working, we hope, in harmony. Soundboard material, while important in regulating the tone produced, does not by itself determine whether a dulcimer will sound pleasing or displeasing.
How does bridge design affect hammered dulcimer tone?
Bridge design has less effect than other facets of design. A harder cap material will be brighter with more sustain and can increase harshness if it is present. These characteristics, although prized in other instruments, can be detrimental in the dulcimer. As for single bridges or multiple little bridgelets I believe the differences are so minor as to be irrelevant. There are much more effective measures for controlling tone.
How does the type of wood affect tone?
Different woods would be treated differently as design elements depending on tone qualities sought and they would require different approaches to bracing, scaling, and dimensioning to take advantage of their good characteristics and minimize their desirable traits.
Heavier, harder woods generally emphasize a sweeter tone with less volume but good projection. Softer, lighter weight woods emphasize a higher overtone structure which can introduce brightness and harshness, and they also tend to sustain longer – an undesirable trait for most dulcimer playing. But other facets of design can also regulate such traits.
Personally, I rather like the sound of such medium density woods as mahogany and butternut. I am, of course, talking about soundboards. Wood types will also make similar but less pronounced differences for the other parts of a dulcimer frame.
I have been playing hammered dulcimer for two years but I’m not happy with my playing. I only play melody and cannot fill in with chords or embellishments, thus, my playing sounds flat. How do you suggest I improve myself?
Learning accompaniment is a great asset in acquiring fill in ideas. I suggest working with guitar or dulcimer tune books that include accompaniment chords. Learn the notes of those chords and how to play them as 2 note chords on the down or offbeat. Also play them as arpeggios. Use them to play accompaniment to recordings or tapes of the melodies. Tape yourself playing melody and then do accompaniment during the playback.
As you become more familiar with the chord progression and accompaniment patterns for a given tune you will find yourself able to incorporate some of the accompaniment while playing the melody. Go slowly. Don’t try to squeeze in more than will comfortably fit.
Of course, there are numerous other fill-in possibilities besides chords. These are melodic embellishments which are well covered in many books. A better bet is to listen to good fiddle playing in whatever musical idiom you prefer, Irish, oldtime, bluegrass, etc.
Rhythm fill-in is an obvious device on dulcimer. A study of percussion techniques will give an infinite variety of ideas. Spend some time studying drum techniques; many books and teachers are available.
Most helpful to me is playing accompaniment to other musicians in sessions or jams. Especially helpful is accompanying singers as the melody and accompaniment is so well separated for the ear.
This really only touches the surface of fill-in ideas. But if you work toward a familiarity of chord use and rhythm techniques, you will more easily be able to hear, understand, and emulate the fuller solo arrangements you hear from experienced musicians and on record.
Renaissance Man
As enthusiastic newbie hammered dulcimer makers in 1977, it was clearly evident with any amount of research that there was one man at the forefront of the modern development of this amazing instrument – Sam Rizzetta.
Over our first few years of designing and building, we were excited to be finding homes for our ever-increasing numbers of dulcimers. To celebrate the opening of our new production shop, we hosted John McCutcheon for a concert and workshops. He took one look at our operation and told both us and Sam that we really should combine forces – Sam’s unending compulsion for design and our love of fine production woodworking. In 1983, we flew Sam out for two weeks in our workshop, and a collaboration was born.
As the years went by, we witnessed how much of a Renaissance man Sam was: inventor, scientist, crafter, pilot, fisherman, canoe and kayak builder, wilderness hiker and camper, carbon fiber composite engineer, musician, composer and recording artist. He missed no opportunity to share his interests: kayak fishing with him and Nick Blanton; flying in his two-seater airplane where, to my surprise, he handed me the controls; and sharing a tent at Evart (where his snoring competed well with the late-night jams!).
His experimentation and design work literally changed the course of dulcimer building in the US and his legacy lives on in elements of most current-day builders’ work. He generously and humbly shared with us and the world at large his knowledge and love of the hammered dulcimer. We have been privileged to share that with thousands of dulcimer players in our commitment to upholding Sam’s high standards of tone, workmanship and design.
Ray Mooers (Dusty Strings)
“Technical Dulcimer”
[1801 Cover image near this part]
The first question in this section appeared in Vol. 18 No. 1 (1992), another issue with Sam on the cover. The second from Vol. 20 No. 3.
We go to a weekend house every weekend. In the winter we turn off all the heat and drain the pipes during the week. Do you think it would be safe to leave out hammer dulcimer there, or would the cold during the week hurt it?
The cold should not be unsafe for the wood in the instruments; furniture and other woodworking survive just fine. And the usual range of cold shouldn’t be too much problem for the adhesives used to put the instrument together, as long as it is allowed to cool and warm slowly.
But, there are some hazards. Cold will make the metal strings contract, increase tension, and make pitches go sharp. You may be faced with constant tuning chores, and the increased tension during cold periods can over stress the instrument. A solution to the stress is to flatten all string pitches on the instrument, a half step or a step, before leaving it in the extreme cold. But this is a lot of work and the changing stresses on the instrument will decrease tuning stability.
Another problem is that during cooling, after heat is shut off, moisture just might condense out of the air onto the metal strings and tuning pins. You may find that strings and tuning pins will start rusting at an accelerated rate.
Personally, I do like to keep my instrument in a relatively cool part of the house; I believe this is better for them in many ways. But I wouldn’t be comfortable with leaving a valuable, favorite dulcimer in an unheated house when temperatures may fall well below freezing. For those few weeks of the year I would take the instrument with me, or keep a less valuable, knock-around instrument in the weekend house.
Over the years I have enjoyed your Technical Dulcimer columns in DPN and your article in “American Lutherie.” Have you considered collecting and publishing them in book form? I’ve found them very helpful and thought provoking.
I’m wondering about your current thinking on the use of plywood vs. solid wood for the backs of hammered dulcimers.
It is good to know that this column has been helpful, and publishing the collected columns in book form sounds like a great idea. I don’t personally have the time to do it, but perhaps someone would be willing to take the task on someday.
Structurally, plywoods and solid woods have different attributes and shortcomings. Plywood panels are more resistant to cracking and dimensional instabilities due to humidity. Certain shocks and stresses are readily absorbed by plywood without breaking. On the negative side, plywood may be prone to failure due to delamination and internal weaknesses due to voids (holes in the internal laminations).
Higher-quality plywoods made for aircraft and marine construction can be somewhat safer. Plywoods are less stiff, and therefore, more easily warped. And although plywood panels may be convenient, they are likely to be more expensive than solid woods of comparable structural quality.
Solid woods of similar weight are likely to be much stiffer than plywoods, and offer greater compression strength. It is more important with solid woods to dry and cure the woods adequately and work in a climate-controlled shop. The primary concern is to have the solid woods adequately dry so that the dulcimer top and back do not dry and shrink after assembly. Shrinkage is a primary cause of cracking.
If an instrument may have to endure a climate with dry seasons, warm or hot conditions, or heated indoor air during cool or cold winters, then drying, shrinkage, and cracking are very real concerns. It is nearly impossible for an instrument to go through life without enduring some combination of these conditions, so you must allow for them. If you cannot control your dulcimer building environment, then plywood might be a safer choice.
Note that there are not necessarily value judgments we might attach to all these tone characteristics. It depends on the music, the player, and especially, how good the rest of the dulcimer is.
