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 Shenandoah Falls from a session at the R House in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to talk about strings, violin strings, fiddle strings, how much do strings matter?
I was chiming in to a discussion about this, because man had an old fiddle that he found, was dusting off and fixing up getting ready to play. I love that, by the way. And his friend told him on Yeah, those strings are fine. You don't need new ones.
You know, he posted about this on Facebook, and then everyone was chiming in No, no, no, you need new strings. Yeah, I agree with them. The strings are old, get some new ones. I'm not sure what your friend was thinking.
So strings. Look, the string companies say that their strings last around 300 hours. So that could be playing about a year at an hour nearly every day. I mean, imagine if you're professional and you're playing six hours a day.
I don't change my strings every three months or even every six months, I change them about once a year unless they're looking a little ragged. If your string is unraveling, anything sharp coming off of it, even if it's not unraveling, if it's not staying in tune well.
So if you play a note and listen to it ring, and as it rings, the note kind of drops flat a little bit. That's a sign that you need to replace your strings. A lot of times people say if their fiddle isn't tuning up in perfect fifths, that's a sign. And the reason that's happening is because as the notes are ringing, they're kind of dropping down.
The strings will also get kind of dull, like you'll have to really press harder to get a sound, they won't be as responsive, it's good to keep a fairly new strings on if you really don't play a lot every two years is probably fine.
But other than that, pick a time of year, whether it's the new year or in the fall, when you're gonna get your little tune up and put some new strings on.
If you're changing strings, you want to go one by one. Don't take them all off. Oh dear, the bridges not glued on my friends. go one by one and just be meticulous about what string you're taking off what string you're putting on, make sure to replace a D string with a D string with the correct peg winding in the correct direction.
Use a YouTube video, but also pay attention to what you're doing. Which way is this peg winding? What string is this, and which peg Am I turning to tune it up? That's where things can go wrong. Breaking strings if you put the wrong string in the wrong place, or you're tuning the wrong peg, trying to get the string to be in tune. That's where you can break a brand new string, which is a little bit of a shame.
I mean, the drawback to changing your strings frequently is that strings are kind of expensive, even the dominant brand which I usually recommend to beginners or intermediate players. I think their strings are great, very solid, but they will little cost a little maybe $20 A string.
I spring for more expensive strings for my instrument I use the Obligado strings. I also liked the Pirastro strings. My Fiddle is pretty powerful sound. It's a big fiddle and it has a big sound. And so the Obligado strings are very warm and lovely and a little muted, but it works fine for me because my fiddle is such a banger.
You could definitely extend the lifetime of your strings. If you clean them off once a week with a clean handkerchief, no product on it. Just wipe them down really good. It'll be squeaky until they feel really clean. And that'll help make them sound better in the moment and also help kind of extend the life of them.
I don't know if 300 is a good estimate. But I would say change them every year. Unless you're really playing all day long. And then yeah, maybe six months. I bet there are professional like orchestra players who change them every six months.
Let's talk about our tune or tune for today is Shenandoah Falls a reel in a that we played at the Old Time jam at the R House. This is a tune that I associate with Pete Sutherland. A fiddler and musician from Vermont who passed away this winter.
It was it was a hard passing for the folk music community partly because Pete was a great musician and and also he devoted a lot of time to mentoring younger players. So when you lose someone like that, it's it's hard because so many people have been touched by the work that they did.
In terms of the tune Shenandoah falls Pete Sutherland said that he learned it from Carol Robinson, who was a fiddler in California. And she said she learned it as an untitled real from a mandolin player named Cookie in college.
Not sure where this tune came from, but it is thought that Pete gave it the name, Shenandoah Falls and kind of popularized it.
Pete Sutherland grew up in Vermont, he lived his whole life in Vermont. I guess he started on the piano. His mother was a pianist. And he was the kind of kid who gotten involved in a lot of projects. I guess he made home movies and got his neighbors and his family to act in them.
Played trombone in high school and then in college, he learned fiddle and banjo and guitar and, and went on to perform a lot also, as I mentioned before mentoring, and producing a lot of records, helping helping bands find their sound and get a really great sounding recording in the studio.
If you don't have the album, the Clayfoot Strutters, so if you haven't listened to that, I would check that out. That album was kind of the soundtrack of my 20s it's that band Cleveland Strutters. It was Pete Sutherland and Jeremiah McLean and lead Blackwell they played with some other players and boy, talk about great arranging it was just took these fiddle tunes and made them so fun to listen to.
Yeah, I love that album. Yeah, Pete is not with us anymore. He lived. He lived over a decade, I believe with cancer. We are thinking of him today and we're gonna play this tune Shenandoah Falls for you.
Listening you can find the sheet music for this tune at fiddlestudio.com You can also find my books and courses for learning the fiddle and get more information about becoming a member of Fiddle Studio. I'll be back next Tuesday with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.
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