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 Tatter Jack Walsh from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today I'm going to be talking about playing backup on the fiddle. So a lot of what we talk about when we talk about playing backup involves knowing chords. So knowing about the music theory of chords, or sometimes you'll hear people call it rhythm. They'll say rhythm guitar, or playing rhythm on the piano. And they don't actually mean the rhythm, like the drums, they mean playing the chords, the backup notes that go with the melody, being able to play rhythm on an instrument, sort of.
Understanding chords and how they work is very, very useful. For playing backup, I'm going to talk about the different ways that I play backup for singers and for other instruments. But initially, if you don't have experience with chords, learning that learning about chords, either on the fiddle the music theory of chords on the fiddle, or on an instrument like piano or guitar, so that you know, you know, if somebody wrote out on a page, it's a G chord, and then an F chord, and then a C chord. Or even if they told you, you know, it's one and then two, and five, having an understanding of what that means and what those notes are, will make playing backup much easier.
Can you play backup, if you don't know music theory, you don't know chords at all? You totally can. If you listen to what you're playing, and you can hear if it lines up and sounds good. With the other musicians, then you're playing backup, it is a little harder, it's a little more confusing to play for me to play backup with music that's completely unfamiliar. If I don't have any idea if somebody can't tell me the chords, or I don't have them written down, and I'm just constantly listening for what they are, and trying to adjust what I'm doing to that you have to, there's a lot more things you have to do at once.
So knowing the chords, being able to read them off a chord chart, that's going to make it easier. Let's back up and talk about backup. So there's kind of two ways that you might end up playing backup, one would be behind a singer. And I'll talk about that first. And the other one would be behind other instruments, you might play in a band where you do both. In terms of playing for singers, this would be if you play in a band, country or bluegrass band. I actually haven't ever played in a in a band like that I've sat in a lot with bands.
Also the kind of playing you might do at a group singing event or campfire singing, where people are singing, but there's some instruments, and you might play along with their singing. And then you might have the opportunity to play a solo like between verses. This also goes for services for services at church or synagogue. And I do a lot of that.
As I said before, having the chords written out. It's one less thing to think about. And it can be very useful because it gives you a little roadmap for what groups of notes are going to sound good to choose from. And at first, you know, when I first started reading off chord charts, which would just be the melody maybe the words and the notes written up for the melody and then above it, the A minor than E minor, back and forth and it tells you were in the song, the chords change.
And I would have to be thinking like oh, it's an an A minor chord, what's in an E minor chord. But as I practice those, you know, those arpeggios, and I got better at knowing right away because there aren't that many different chords, especially in you know, fiddle tunes where it's just, there are only a few common keys. So I got much faster at just from reading the chord symbol, kind of immediately knowing what notes would sound good with that.
So the playing that you do with a singer, you're often playing an introduction to the song so it could be just the melody of the song sometimes the very opening of the song and then the singer starts again with the opening. Sometimes you play the end end of the song, and then the singer starts from the beginning, those both work as introductions, some people will play a lick or, you know, a little groove to get the song going before the singer comes in.
And then a lot of times, the first thing I do, when playing with a singer is a stop. The very first verse, the very first chorus, is a time for the audience to really focus on the singer on the words and the melody, and getting a sense of what the song is about, following along, getting used to the melody. And I often don't play any fills or if I do, it's very, very minimal at the beginning.
That's pretty common, a lot of times in a band, people will will actually direct me and say, don't, don't play at all, on the first verse, the first chorus come in after that. So when you do come in, what do you come in doing? Well, we're normally not playing the melody of the song, along with the singer, I would be playing some very minimal things that don't cover up. While the singer is kind of singing through notes that are moving, that might be something like long tones, and fits a G chord, just a G, I might just play the chords if there isn't a bass player, or if there is a bass player, I'll be picking other notes from the chords not playing the root.
If I'm comfortable, I can put in some passing notes between the chords, put in some rhythm that kind of matches up with the song. And the other thing you'll be doing is playing fills. So a lot of times in a song, there'll be a sentence and then kind of a musical phrase. And then the last note will be long, or it'll stop and they'll be a little bit of a few beats before the next phrase starts. And that's where you normally hear musician put in a little doodle doo doo doo doo doo.
Something they'll put in a fill to fill up that space. You know, if you listen to some bluegrass, if you listen to some country, you'll hear the fiddle, doing the fills in the fills are just kind of an up or a down a little lick that stays within the chord of that spot. And sometimes has kind of a relationship to the melody that the singer was just singing. But it's mostly just to bridge, you know, bridge over to the next phrase that they're gonna sing. So you've got very minimal playing while they're singing. And then you can put in the little fills in between the phrases.
And then there's the solo. And the solo is basically a long film that would go either over the entire verse, Through the chords of the verse, or the entire chorus, or sometimes both. Solos are a time of, of kind of uncertainty, I would say, in music. And so to do a great job on a solo, you know, you have to really be in communication before it starts.
Sometimes, the singer might say fiddle, okay, now it's really clear you're taking a solo, or people from the band are looking at you in a way that you understand you should take a solo or you're looking at them in a way that indicates I'm going to take the solo, or you might even say, I'm going to take a solo. And they're understanding that so you want it to be very clear. And another way you can make it clear is by jumping into the solo quickly playing that last little fill into the solo in a way that kind of shows you here a go, it's me, now it's my turn, I'm gonna take a solo and and then ending your solo appropriately at the appropriate time.
So you want your timing of your solo, to be good and finished cleanly to leave a spot for the next person to jump into their solo or for the song to start back up again. Now, if we switch gears to talking about playing behind instruments, a lot of it is the same. But instead of a singer, another instrument would be playing the melody. So you can just not play. That's always an option. You don't always have to think of things to play, you can stop and it can be a nice change in texture, to not have that very, you know the fiddle sound, especially when you're just doing long tones after long tones after long tones. It really fills the space so then if you drop out, there's a change in the texture and it sounds good.
Long tones are great behind other instruments with put in your passing notes. For fiddling in a lot of times we do the shuffles, people will do chops, if you're familiar with that. I think that harmonizing I do harmonize with singers, but even more so with have other instrumentalists playing a harmony.
When I, when I was first learning harmonies I, I would either learn a set harmony almost like learning a tune to go with a melody. Or I would have someone else play the melody very, very slowly so that I could work out each note. And I might even write it down for myself, I know that I read chord charts, I'm generally just the easiest way for me to harmonize. If I know the tune well, or I, I'm reading it off the page, and I've got the chords there. I'm just taking notes from the chords that are near the melody, you know, I'm either above the melody or below the melody, and I'm kind of picking the notes from the chords that follow along with the melody.
And it should sound good. I mean, that's what a harmony is. The one other thing you can do, if you it's a little bit more, I would say showing off and just harmonizing but I think of a desk can as a little different from harmonizing, it might not follow the exact rhythmic structure of the melody. But it would normally be up higher than the melody maybe even, you know, higher than that sort of big, long, broad notes above soaring. People like to hear this little soar above. Yeah, maybe for slower stuff. It's not really something you do on a fiddle tune when it's specifically another fiddle. Yeah, I it's different playing with another fiddle. I tend to harmonize when I can or give them some rhythm. I might not fill as much with a fiddle.
If you want to check out some solos. If you want to hear some fiddle solos. I just was at a house concert the other night and I heard Noah VanNordstrand play with his band, the Faux Pas with some other amazing musicians, but Noah was playing fiddle. And he does little solos that are unique. They're astonishing in their technical ability. I said to my husband afterwards that's like Mendelssohn concerto level stuff that he's doing there was so fun for me to hear because I've known Noah for a really long time actually since before he played the fiddle. And now he was doing some of the most astonishing work taking a solo on the fiddle that I've that I've seen, and I've heard a lot of fiddle solo so yeah, look them up, go and see them if you can the faux pas or, or look them up online and watch note. Take some solos, blow my mind.
Okay, let's talk about our tune. A tune today is Tatter Jack Walsh, a very well known popular Irish jig. And Tatter is like Father, like the priest. Although it's not clear to me that it was actually about a priest. This is what I found about this tune. Tatter Jack Walsh was John McWalter, son of Walter Walsh, lived in Castle hollow, and was a poet and he was married to this was back in like 1630. They really keep records in Ireland, I tell you, he was married to Johanna Strong or Johanna Strange, who was a member of an old Irish family and although John McWalter was not Irish he took on and was the quote I saw was more Irish than the Irishman. I'm not really sure what that meant.
But he became a very well known poet and very distinguished and was known as Tatter Jack Walsh. The funny thing about this tune is that, I guess it's people put words to it because I kept finding songs to the tune of Tatter Jack Walsh. There's a song called The Woman who Robbed me the Price of My Pig. Another song, the Dean's Pamphlet, which was all about different kinds of fabric for some reason, and another song called King Lear. So you can look up a lot of different songs or you can just play the tune as a dance tune with no words, which is what we're going to do. Okay, here we go.
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