What has only three strings and has a sound somewhere between a banjo and a guitar? No, I’m not talking about student violins, I’m talking about the McNally Strumstick, or more specifically the Diatonic D Grand, our victim today.

We’ve recorded just about ‘all she wrote’ on this instrument- picked, plucked, bowed, and more, with sampled releases, easy string selection via modwheel, two mic positions, and at up to 3 velocities and 4 round robins- 1,700 samples and 20 articulations in all.

No Such Thing as “Simply”

Sampling was done over a six hour period (with breaks for the sake of the fingers) in a studio environment.

A total of 20 unique articulations were recorded on the full diatonic range of each string at 2-8 RR for all non-fx techniques and up to three velocity layers.

Releases were also sampled, to allow the strings to be damped properly.

To Bowed and Beyond

In addition to your typical finger plucks and picked strums, we also included some truly esoteric strumstick goodies- bowed articulations including standard arco, tremolo, and trills performed in da gamba fashion, slide effects and chords, and a full range of different hammered dulcimer mallet techniques.

The centerpiece of the instrument is the string selection method, operated with modwheel. The idiomatic technique is achieved by pushing the mod-wheel all the way up to emphasize use of the top string, but moving it to the middle and bottom will emphasize the middle and lowest string, respectively.