bowed dulcimer

{{Short description|Musical Instrument}}

The bowed dulcimer is a musical instrument. Designed in the style of the Appalachian dulcimer (a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings), it is either a standard instrument played with a violin bow, or a purpose-built dulcimer designed around bow playing. The purpose-designed instrument is described as resembling a hybrid between a dulcimer and a cello or viola da gamba.{{cite book|author1=Margaret S. Barrett|author2=Sandra L. Stauffer|title=Narrative Soundings: An Anthology of Narrative Inquiry in Music Education|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RbqbWdhZWA8C&pg=PA89|date=28 February 2012|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-94-007-0698-9|pages=89–}}

Bowing as a technique of playing the standard dulcimer has some historical roots;{{cite book|author=John Rice Irwin|title=Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W-vZAAAAMAAJ|year=1983|publisher=Schiffer Pub.|isbn=978-0-916838-80-5|page=64}} L. Allen Smith feature several examples in his historical survey A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers (1983).

The more modern purpose-built version of the instrument was developed by Kenneth Bloom of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina in the late 1990s.