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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 Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss from an old-time jam at the R house in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, welcome. I hope you are well. Today I'm going to be talking about a bit of an insider topic, we're going to talk about the left wrist. This is the wrist of the hand that holds the fiddle. There's a bit of a distinction made between classical and fiddling in terms of your wrist, you'll see a lot of classical players arguing for the straight wrist.
Fiddle players go back and forth. They're just not sure what to think. Should it be straight, like classical? Or is it okay to play with a bent wrist, people see players like Liz Carroll plays with a bent left wrist and plays beautifully. So sometimes people will even make the argument that it's better to play with a bent wrist. I'm going to bring out some of my own thoughts about it.
If you're trying to imagine what this looks like, it's like when the waiter brings out your breakfast at the diner, they've got the big platter on their wrist, so their wrist is bent up like that. They're bringing out the pancakes. So I say to my students: you're bringing out the pancakes.
It's very instinctive for a beginning player on violin to do this, because you want to hold up the instrument, you've got this delicate wooden instrument on your shoulder, and you want to help hold it up with your hands. So people will bend the wrist and use their hand to help hold up the instrument even while they're, even while they're fingering on the strings.
The thing to keep in mind is that when you are standing up and your arm is hanging down, and it's totally relaxed and aligned, it's straight, it's not bent. So then the natural state of your arm is to be straight. So I demonstrate this to students a lot. You know, I have them get the fiddle up on their shoulder, have the fiddle secure, either they're helping to hold it on their shoulder, or I'm helping to hold it on their shoulder.
I have them just drop their left wrist, shake it out and feel what it feels like to be totally relaxed and aligned. And then bend their arm and bring it up and see if they can hold the fiddle. Keep some of that feeling and the wrist without changing the way that their wrist is aligned without putting that bend in the wrist.
When you're holding your part of your body at a bent angle, you're putting a strain on it, it can make things difficult on your your hand and your fingers. And it can also make it a little harder to play. It doesn't mean there aren't great players who play like that. And they've generally found a way to stay very relaxed even while playing with a bent wrist.
But there is a reason that classical players don't play like that. And it's because to play really difficult music, you need to be as relaxed and aligned as possible in your wrist. Especially even just getting around the violin, using your pinky a lot too, and things like vibrato and shifting are some of the arguments people will make for a straight wrist.
I never forced my students to straighten their wrist. I will argue for it. I'll, you know ,point out the benefits of having your wrist be relaxed. If you can have it be straight and aligned doing that but it's always better to have less tension than more tension. So for a player who's been playing a long time with a bent wrist and it's not super tense, I don't make a big deal out of it. I don't want them to hold it straight and be more tense that would be in my opinion that will be worse.
A little bit about the left wrist. I like it straight but it's not that big of a deal.
Our tune today is a setting a Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss from an old-time jam at R house. This tune is usually played in D but we were playing it in G. Yes, we are still playing reels in G.
I found it in the key of D major on YouTube from a recording made in the 1920s woman named Samantha Bumgarner and she was playing it in D and there was some calling. People will also cite the playing of the fiddler Frank George out of Mercer County, West Virginia. He was recorded in a 1974 recording.
The way that we played it at the jam is how I learned it and I learned it off the album Ways of the World by Rayna Gellert. One of the old time albums that influenced me a lot. She played it in G, very close to how I transcribed it from the jam.
She says in the album liner notes that she got this tune from Frank Blevins and his Tar Heel rattlers, Frank Blevins, recorded as a 16 year old fiddle player with I believe his brother and a friend. They had some recordings out of Ashe County in North Carolina. I don't know if Frank played it in G, or if he played it in D and then Reina made it in G.
Because a lot of people have listened to her album, there's a there's a version in G now. Charley and I like to play together sometimes we actually sing it. It's got some words that go with it and the words are back and forth between a man and the woman. It can be fun to sing together as a duet my favorite line is you know Charley sings "marry me, my pretty little miss, marry me good looking." And then I sing back "I'll marry you, but I won't do your washing or your cooking." So that can be fun. But we're just we're not going to sing it right now. We're going to play it for you. This is Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss.
Thanks so much for listening, you can head over to fiddlestudio.com for the sheet music to this and all of the tunes I teach. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.
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