Why play the fiddle (Sally in the Garden)

(Note, at the last minute after I'd already recorded the speaking for this podcast I picked a different Sally in the Garden, so this isn't Brad and Ken's version, it's Marion Sumner's.)

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus-Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of the tune Sally in the Garden from a jam in Baltimore, <aryland.

Hello everyone, I hope you are well. We are getting into the heat of summer. I am working on my course Fiddle for Kids, or Fiddle Class, if you will, and you can check it out at fiddlestudiocom. It's coming along, should be out soon. You can check out all my courses there. Just go to fiddlestudiocom and click on courses. That's probably enough of an advertisment.

The topic this week is why play the fiddle. Week is why play the fiddle. I guess when I picked this topic I was thinking about just the reasons that folks pick up the fiddle. Because I'm a fiddler and a fiddle teacher. People talk to me about it. Talk to me about why they started or why they'd like to start. 

Sometimes they talk to me about why they'd never like to play the fiddle. Maybe I'll do a sister podcast called why Not Play the Fiddle. Actually I did do a podcast about stopping. That was kind of a silly topic. So this is just a discussion a little bit about why people get into fiddling, what they think about it. If you're curious about fiddling, yeah, I can just let you know what I hear. 

Maybe you'll have some new ideas or inspiration for fiddling or just kind of know how other people think about it, why they get into it. So there is the basic question why do we do anything? Something in us wants to do something and, based on our whatever combination of genetics and environment, we pick things to do. And some people pick playing the fiddle. 

I've heard from a lot of people who probably prefer classical violin. That's what inspires them, but they think fiddling will be easier. I don't think it's a bad reason to play. Why not Try it out? I think in some ways it is easier. 

But you can't really learn classical violin by learning fiddle. It's not like a stepping stone. To learn classical violin, you need to learn classical violin. It's like if you learn karate you haven't learned Muay Thai. Learn Muay Thai, you have to learn Muay Thai. Karate is a different thing and I would say the same. Like classical and fiddle, it is an easier alternative. 

And if you love the sound of the violin and you're feeling a little overwhelmed by you know, trying to work up to a concerto or something, a fiddle tune is going to be a much smaller hill to climb and you might find you like the repertoire and the sound. 

Who knows, now, some people are really drawn to the twang or the kind of folky country sound of the fiddle because they love the music. They love bluegrass or country, either as something they grew up with or knew from their parents or their grandparents, or sometimes just something they come across in the world and they're drawn to it. It's like oh, I love the sound of that. 

I talk to a lot of people who are like I just love the sound of the fiddle, the twang of the fiddle. A lot of classical violin players get the opposite. People maybe grew up playing in their school orchestra but they always loved the sound of fiddling. So they're trying to switch over the opposite of loving the sound of violin and getting into fiddling instead. 

There are folks who get started with the fiddle because of because of, like folk or traditional music heritage. I've taught kids and adults who were Irish, their family and they wanted to learn Irish music, or who had roots in Eastern Europe. You know Jewish folks who wanted to learn klezmer, or people from down south who wanted to learn some of the traditional music that came from that area. 

There are people who decide they want a hobby and they pick a hobby, and sometimes that hobby is fiddling. Maybe it's because you have a fiddle. Yeah, I've met people who said well, I have this fiddle for my uncle, have this fiddle from my cousin. I want to do something that challenges me, so I want to learn it. Basically just a hobby of opportunity, you could say. 

There's folks who are inspired by their friends or family members who played. I've taught a lot of kids like that. Oh, she saw her cousin play, or want to play, like my older brother. People like that, even someone that you heard or saw in a movie or on TV or read about in a book. Yeah, something inspiring involving fiddling and it sparks your interest. Yeah, a lot of different places to come from, but I guess all of these roads lead to the fiddle. If you're thinking about learning the fiddle, I recommend it. It's not too hard, it's very fun. Check out my courses if you need some help. Find some folks to play with. It'll be fun. 

Our tune this week is Sally in the Garden. This is a lovely old minor tune. Charlie plays it on the banjo. First. I heard it from him quite a bit back in the day when Charlie used to play a lot of banjo, and from playing it a few times recently in Baltimore. Here Seems to come out of Kentucky, as with several of the songs we're doing this month and there are some different versions with words, but I wouldn't say they were fine upstanding words, and Sally is usually not being a fine upstanding person in the garden. 

Maybe she's waiting to meet someone or maybe she's up to no good. Either way, we won't be doing the words but we will be doing the tune. So this is Sally in the Garden and there's a version on a Brad and Ken Kolodner album that you can check out where they pair it with Home with the Girls in the Morning. So a couple of really nice minor old time tunes. Here we go. 

Thank you. Thank you for listening. 

You can find the music for today's tune at fiddle studiocom, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day. 

Busking on the Fiddle (Old Aunt Jenny With her Night Cap On)

 

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of the tune Old Aunt Jenny with Her Night Cap On from a jam in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Hello everyone, I hope you are well. It is very hot today in Baltimore and I have the air conditioning and the fan turned off so they don't interfere with the sound of the podcast. But, holy cow, I got to run through the rest of the recording here and get it off, because it is quite warm right now in Baltimore and, I believe, in the rest of the country too. We're talking about busking today. 

Busking is when you play on the street for money. I used to busk when I was in college mainly. I did a few times in Rochester for various reasons, but the main time I busked I would buy a ticket to New York City. I had some. Especially just after college a lot of musicians from my school went to New York to try to make it in New York and I would fly there and visit folks. 

But I didn't have a lot of money, so I'd get myself a ticket on JetBlue and fly in and then busk in the subway to make the money for my trip, to have food to eat and kind of help pay for the expenses, have something to buy concert tickets with, et cetera. I did a lot of busking in New York City. Most of the time didn't get a lot of attention for it. 

I think I was mostly playing fiddle tunes, but people would stop a lot and they would ask is that a violin or a fiddle? So I had to. You know, learn jokes and things to say about that. I think I have a podcast episode called what's the Difference Between a Violin and a Fiddle, With a collection of some of those jokes. 

There wasn't really anything to it. I never got a license, which you probably need now. This was back in the early aughts. I just got off the plane, got into the subway, have my backpack on my back and my violin. Those were the only things I had. So open the case up and play the fiddle and get money in the case. These days you often need a license to busk. 

There's also a pretty new phenomenon now that happens that I've seen quite a few times, which is the sort of fake busking. I don't know if any of you have seen this. Someone will be holding a violin or a fiddle and it'll be plugged in and amplified but the sound coming out of the speaker is canned. It's just some recording. 

You know, if you play you can tell. I've seen a few people playing amplified where it's real, but a lot of times when the sound is amplified it's not. And sometimes a person knows how to play the violin and is playing something sort of similar to what's coming out and sometimes it really seems like they uh, yeah, like they're just pretending, like those actors on TV who sort of move their arms back and forth Like you would if one were playing the violin. There's no, uh, there's no evidence of muscle memory or familiarity with the motor movement. I see that I guess I try to give money to buskers, but I don't think I've given money to people who were just faking it with the violin. 

You get requests when you busk. Probably the biggest request I got was just Devil Went Down to Georgia, which is a hard thing to pull off. On solo fiddle I had a couple things I could do. I could play that fire on the mountain part and I could do a little bit of the devil's solo, a couple special effects. It was usually enough. People ask for stuff like Cotton Eye Joe or Dueling Banjos or Turkey in the Straw. 

If I was playing a lot of fiddle, you know, one thing I like to do is sometimes if there was a background, there's a background sound that had a pitch, like a horn or a motor or something I'd play along with that A beep playing with a beeping noise. I've done that. I've gotten gifts. I've been sketched when I've been busking. I don't still have any of those sketches, but I remember that happening. 

That's something that's really nice actually if you're an artist and you just sketch a little picture of someone and leave it for them. I got a couple of stories on the Facebook Fiddlers Association when I asked this what have I got? Devin Ledger said he was given a beautiful and expensive ukulele when busking. That's amazing. I've gotten random things for presents, but never a musical instrument. Mark Caudill said that he saw a wonderful violinist busking in Charlotte, north Carolina, and while he was listening a couple of kids snatched a couple dollars from the case and ran away. 

And he says the busker set down his probably $60,000 fiddle and effort it is to learn to play them and, frankly, how little we often get paid for doing it. It's a strange set of incentives, I guess you could say. John Kerr says that he had an experience at a conference where there was someone busking on the mandolin and he went out to hear this guy play and eventually the guy said well, hey, do you want to just play for me right now while I go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee? So that was how he got pulled into busking for the first time. That's funny. 

Rob McGeorge. I went to Stewart Island off New Zealand with no return ticket and no money. So he busked and got food and a ticket, a place to stay and money. Yeah, that's yes. That's kind of how I used to do New York City Get down there, make the money to get back. And Ed Pearson had maybe my favorite comment there is busking. And there is busking during Oktoberfest in Munich, germany. 

Yeah, so busking is a different kind of proposition, when everyone will be drinking heavily. I don't know, I don't know about that. Know, I don't know about that. I may be getting too old for that. You can try busking. 

Probably my most memorable time as a listener to folks busking I heard some great musicians when we were in Dublin who were playing on the street. I really enjoyed that. But actually during the COVID lockdown we have a busker at a farmer's market that's right around the corner from my house. On Saturdays he goes by. 

If you live in Baltimore you might know this guy. He goes by Merdolf, which he told me is Merlin and Gandolf combined, all the magic, and he plays a big variety of stuff, lots of sort of folk tunes, pop tunes, all kinds of things. He plays guitar and sings. So I've been seeing him and hearing him at the market near my house for many years. 

You know, I've been coming to this market on and off for at least 10 years, probably 15. And during lockdown he wasn't out there playing. They wouldn't let him. And then the first time they let him back he had I don't know, he had, you know, whatever he had to do for singing to try to cut down on spreading any germs. But I hadn't really been hearing any live music at that point, except what we could play with you know the folks in our bubble. 

We could play with, you know the folks in our bubble. And yeah, I remember hearing him and listening to him and I was just, I was basically moved to tears. The music just made me think about everything that was happening and made me feel connected out to the world at a time when I was feeling super, super disconnected, as we all were. 

Yeah, so that was probably my most memorable experience. I think I was, yeah, just getting a little weepy, tearing up at the farmer's market listening to Merdolf play the first time he was back after lockdown. Really sweet guy, anyway, busking. If you have a good busking story you can send it to me. 

Our tune this week is Old Aunt Jenny with Her Nightcap On. This is a popular tune. I like this one. It's from West Virginia, also played in Kentucky, passed on through. Bruce Green said he learned this tune from Estill Bingham who lived in Bell County, Kentucky, near the Cumberland Gap. 

We're going to play Cumberland Gap another week but that's, of course, where Kentucky and Tennessee and Virginia all come together. A lot of tunes called Cumberland Gap but he played it in G but some people play it in cross A. I guess Lella Todd, kentucky player, played it in cross A. 

Clyde Davenport played a tune in G kind of similar. There are words to it, nothing too exciting. Who's been here since I've been gone? Old Aunt Jenny with her nightcap on. There was probably more at some point. Some folks have a crooked version of it, but this is how we play it here in Baltimore. Here we go. Thank you. Thank you for listening. 

You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day. 

I try to play jazz (Cluck Old Hen, Ed Weaver's version)

 

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus Beller. Today I'll be bringing you a setting of the tune Cluck Old Hen by Ed Weaver's version from a jam in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello everyone, I hope you are well. I call this episode I try to play jazz because I recently tried to play some jazz and then I thought it'd be fun to talk a little bit about jazz and give people a sense of how I look at it, how I think about it, how I practice it, how I try to play it. 

Of course I'm not a jazz violinist. I got roped into it because I got asked to play a Klezmer gig and I said, oh sure, I love Klezmer and I love playing and performing Klezmer. Then I found out I also had to play a jazz set, so that was exciting. 

The world of jazz has a, I would say, a fairly high bar for being able to join in with people who do it a lot. You're really expected to have a lot of knowledge to either know the tunes all the standard tunes from memory, even be able to just transpose them into another key, kind of on the spot. Or, if you don't know something, be able to read it off the page and translate what's written on the page into the style of swing or jazz. 

It's something that I can do with fiddle tunes look at the way they're notated on the page and translate them into a more stylistic version. But that requires a lot of practice and background, a lot of experience both in the style and to be a pretty experienced music reader and comfortable with that. And in addition to knowing or reading the head of the tune, the melody, you also are expected to play a solo over the changes. 

That's both exciting and a little bit nerve-wracking, especially if you don't do it very often. The chords you want to be familiar with for jazz, the basic triads that you get in fiddle music, but you're going to get a lot more sevenths. You have your minor and your major chords, but you also need to be very comfortable with the seventh, the major seventh, diminished and augmented chords or having, you know, the sixth or the 11th thrown in. 

I can get pretty far with that. I think there was one tune on the gig that was Antonio Carlos' Jobin tune and the chords were so complicated. I said I don't know if I can play over these changes. I can play the melody. I didn't know if I could take a solo on it. If it's a pretty simple tune and you know the tune really well and you're not that familiar with chords and how they work, you might be able to just fly by the seat of your pants and kind of pants the solo, fly by the seat of your pants and kind of pants the solo, riff off the melody or off what you're hearing from the folks playing the changes behind you. 

But I wouldn't count on being able to do that. If you're going to be playing a lot of jazz, you want to be able to read the chords off the page. Use that to help you play the solos. If I'm doing a really tricky transposition you know it's a tune, I know, but they're asking me to play it in some crazy E-flat minor or something because that's the key the singer needs then I may just go off the page and go by my ear because I can't calculate the transposition quickly enough to do that and make up a solo at the same time. 

But it's nice to be able to read on the page. It gives you the map, basically to know where you're going when you're improvising a jazz or swing solo. I'll give you a couple of suggestions. Of course, remember I'm not a professional in this area, but this is what I think about. If I get into this position, which I did recently I have to do my best to keep up with a band and try to sound like a swing violinist, even if that's not my usual gig.

I try to keep things really simple. I mean, when I say really simple, using one note like for a while, pretty simple rhythms, like for a while, pretty simple rhythms and then you can add some more rhythms to that note. Or you can use your simple rhythms and play a couple more notes, basically add a little bit of complexity as you're going through the form, but you never have to start out with a lot of fancy stuff. 

You can always start out with just one or two notes and a pretty simple rhythm. Or you can start off with the literal melody of the tune and start to riff over it as you go through the form. Making your own patterns is a suggestion I've gotten from players that I've played with that I've asked about this. Hey, can you give me tips for improvising solos, Just coming up with a little riff or a melody that has a few notes and when the chord changes, playing it again in the new chord, moving it around that way or moving it up and down in a scale. 

And you can always change it a little bit. A little bit of change in the rhythm, an extra note here or there, or you can just change the way you play it, the dynamic or the articulation or how you slide into the notes or out all of that. It's always good to leave space. Leave way more space than you think you need to. I never leave enough space when I'm soloing and you kind of want it to arc. 

If you're going to have a really loud part or really high part, you want that to be, oh, whatever. It's like three quarters of the way through the period in which you're soloing. Sometimes I can make that work for me and sometimes I can't. But when I practice jazz I've got my real book and sometimes I'll have an app that'll play chords. 

So you open it up, you know, find all of me and maybe if you're playing with a person who can play the chords for you or I'll put them on the you know iReal Pro Jazz app. Play the All of Me chords and slow them down, because that's what I need. Play the head through once, then I'll play, let the chords go through again and I'll just outline the chords. You know. Play 1, 3, 5, 3, 1, 3, 5, 7, and do each chord as it comes, and then I'll usually take a crack at doing a little soloing over. 

That's about it. Maybe I'll play the head at the end and practice putting in some variations, you know, jazzing it up a little bit, so to speak. That's how I practice jazz. You know, if you go on the internet and you Google how to practice jazz there's a lot of discussions on YouTube, on Reddit you can find ways. But that's it's a pretty basic little way to start out and you don't need much. You just need a little bit of sheet music. 

Get yourself a real book or a fake book, and it can be nice to pay whatever 10 or 20 bucks for the app that'll play you the chords. It'll make it a lot easier to hear the changes. 

Okay, our tune for today is not jazz. This is Cluck Old Hen, but you will not recognize it as the Cluck Old Hen we're mostly familiar with. You know Cluck Old Hen, cluck and Sing s Ain't a seen an egg since way last spring. I like that one. 

But this is Ed Weaver's Cluck Old Hen. The Fiddler's Companion book calls this Cluck Old Hen 6. So I guess there were five others considered more important into the Milliner R and Koken collection, the Bible, full-time music, and of course they had a CD that went with. That Just Tunes, but I guess this was how they played it out in the Shenandoah Valley. Cluck Old Hen. Ready. 

Thank you for listening. You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom along with my books, courses for today's tune at fiddle studio. com, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.