Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Megan Beller. And today I'll be bringing you a setting of Chips and Sauce from a jam at the Peabody Heights Brewery in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today I'm going to be talking about shifting and positions. This is a two part series. First time I've done that the first part will be positions. So we'll talk about positions this week, and then next week, I'll come back to you and talk about how to get to those positions.
Before I start, I just want to say thank you. A couple of months ago, I asked for reviews and ratings on the podcast specifically from Apple podcasts. And I got some really nice reviews and ratings. So thank you very much. And I just especially wanted to call out thank yous to BJ Rhoades six. John Stinson, String Dancer, Vagabond Stan and Gabby Portu.
So let's talk about shifting and physicians. Working on this topic made me think about when you're in music school in conservatory, there's certain sounds that are unique to different instruments. Like everyone does scales. So no matter what instrument or even vocalist, you'll hear people practicing scales, but brass and woodwind instruments will play long tones. It's kind of the only instrument you'll just hear them playing notes over and over again, as long as they can. Yeah, piano doesn't do that. You know, drummers always have their metronome on singers have their their vocal warm ups, which are very unique to singing.
And string players have their shifting exercises, which are sort of ... and so on and so forth. For every conceivable note on the violin, or viola. Those shifting exercises are how we practice getting into positions.
So we'll start with the basics of positions on the fiddle. When you're learning fiddle. Whether you have tapes on or you're just finding the notes on your own, you are playing in first position, open string, A string is an A, and you put your first finger down your one and you're playing a B, your hand is positioned so that your first finger your one is basically a whole step above the nut of the violin, where it's just the open string, there is kind of the up position, people will call half position where your hand is really centered around just a half step, playing in B flat, some people would call that more maybe like B flat minor, they would call that half position.
But first position, and then if you were going to move your hand so that your one is now instead of playing a B on the A string, it's playing a C or a C sharp, that second position. So you've, you've shifted your entire hand one note up. And now you can play you know, 1234, you can play scales up and down the fiddle. But if you play your open strings, they won't be in the places you're used to them being in first position.
And if you come up a note from there, your third position and it goes up and up and up. You know, your hand comes around the shoulder of the violin. And you can actually play in position kind of all the way up to where the rosin dust is. If you you know if you go hear a soloist play concerto on the violin, they'll be playing notes at the very top, what I think of as the top of the fingerboard, very, very close to the bow and lots of notes all over and down in first position.
So those are the positions but for the first couple years of violin or fiddle, you're playing in first position and you don't have to worry about those other ones usually about three years in. I like to introduce people to third position if they haven't, you know asked about it, we start learning third position, and maybe working on a tune that has some third position in it, or just getting familiar with getting up there and getting back.
For fiddle, if we're just thinking about fiddling, most of those positions are really not used very much at all, you would use third position, mostly just for a note, there are tunes that have notes above the B. So on the E string, you know, the b is your pinky. And there's tunes that have a C or even a D, or an E. I just saw John carry on playing his version of money mask and was playing that Hi eat fourth position, or an extension from third? Oh my goodness. So you would basically just use third position in attune that called for it.
The only other time I use positions in fiddling unless I'm playing something like klezmer where I play a lot in position, because you play everything down the octave and up the octave. And you're kind of competing with the clarinet and they're loud and you have to be either louder or higher, or both. Anyway, I digress. I will sometimes and this might just be a me thing. But I like to experiment with droning. I don't really cross tune at this time very often. But I'll shift up to third position just to drone different notes against an open string. That can be fun. Yeah, something I experiment with.
Oh, I have a little list of fiddle tunes that use third position or these are just ones that I play Brilliancy, Sweet Milk and Peaches, that's an old time tune McArthur Road, Irish, Reel de mon Gibard, that was on the podcast. Naftali's Favorite. That's a term that I wrote and the Road to Erogie. Lots of students like that one.
For classical violin. Third position is also the most used position besides first, but it's used in different ways. Classical players and fiddle players have different goals. So fiddle players love to be loud. And they don't usually mind if notes stick out. Classical players like to keep everything very even. And you don't want anything to stick out. So fiddle players will play a lot of open strings. And in fact, when you're droning, you're just adding, adding more and more open strings, all the open strings, think about cross tuning, as many as possible open strings, classical players do not like to plan open strings, they'll use their pinky.
Or once you have third position. If you're like me, and your pinky is not that strong, you'll shift up to third, very consistently, for playing notes like you know, a ie D, where you could play it with an open string, or you could play it with a four. But instead shift up to third position and play those sort of weaker finger notes with your stronger fingers. second position is used in rare cases, sometimes there's a passage that uses just the note, sort of right above the pinky, you know, on the A string like the F sharp over and over again, or on the D string, it would be the B and it just keeps going back and forth.
And so if you're in second position, you can do it on one string, classical players love to keep it on one string. fifth position specifically has some very useful aspects. fifth position, when you play the notes, you're using the same fingers as first position. So your play a B with a one, just like first position, but it's one string over. But if you can kind of forget about the string thing, it can feel very familiar to be playing in fifth position. So a lot of times if you have a passage that has high notes and low notes, and they're all mixed, rather than try to shift up and down, people will just hang out in fifth position, because they're pretty comfortable playing on all four strings because the fingering so similar to first and they'll just play over the strings stay in position around there.
You will hear classical players a lot of composers sometimes will ask for something to be all on the G string. And in that case, the D string is very thick and it has a very particular quality of tone. And so they want that part to have a very dark, rich tone. So they want you to shift up and it it can sound very dramatic to play a whole opening on the G string like the opening of Csardas, or the Saint Seans Concerto Number three, something like that.
Just a little tip about positions. And we might get into this more next week with shifting but it is good to know that the way the string works. As you get higher on the fiddle, the notes get closer together. So a whole step in first position is kind of the biggest whole step on the fiddle, and a whole step in seventh position, your fingers are much closer. The higher you get, the more your fingers will creep in to be closer to each other because the string is shorter. That's kind of how much I know about that. Somebody has a great explanation of that phenomenon. I could use it because I have students ask about that a lot.
Our tune for today is Chips and Sauce by Ira Bernstein. So Ira Bernstein is a very well known dancer. A lot of different kinds of traditional American forms of of dance. I think he does other French Canadian Irish. I think he does all different kinds of folk dancing, but he is especially known for clogging, or it's called flat foot. He grew up outside of New York City. He also lived in Vermont, in Maryland, and has now I believe, lived in Asheville for for many years and won numerous competitions in old time flatfoot and he goes to Clifftop a lot.
I have to say we at our jam in Baltimore, we play a lot of tunes from Clifftop because a lot of folks go there. So this is one of those tunes I think that kind of came via Clifftop and I referenced in wrote this he plays old time fiddle. It's played on all over kind of on fiddle and banjo. Some people will play this cross tuned.
It's played by Earl White. You can also look for a version by the Onlies their album long before light. I guess the story that I heard about this tune, I was like searching through long discussions and Banjo Hangout and stuff. So I found this story somebody wrote that what Ira said about this tune was that he wrote it while he was staying with friends in the Northeast. And the host that was hosting him had a really good homemade salsa that they made but called it sauce they called it chips and sauce. So that's the name of this tune and we're gonna play it for you you're ready.
