Starting fiddle from scratch (Flat Water Fran)

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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 Flat Water Fran by Phil Cunningham from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone. Hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about starting fiddle from scratch. So the questions that I usually get about starting from scratch, people ask, you know, am I too old, too young, musical enough, or I can't read music or I have arthritis in my hands? 

So people will wonder if it's okay for them to play fiddle if they feel like they can't do it at a high level. Which, you know, I think, I always say, nonsense, anyone can play. The only good reason to not play is if you don't want to play. And if you want to play, I don't see any reason why not to. 

But people also ask, do I need a teacher? Is it okay to learn fiddle from a classical violin teacher? What do I do about my technique? Is it bad to have bad habits? What tunes should I start with? A lot of questions, which makes sense, when you're starting something new, that you'd have a lot of questions about it. I'll get into the nitty gritty. 

But first, started thinking about the philosophy of starting new things, I think it's like getting into water, going swimming, and some people dive in. And some people go in very, very slowly.

As I was thinking about, well, what's the what would be the best way to start from scratch? I think a jump start, more of a dive in, is probably a good way to start. I would compare it to kind of riding a bike where you wouldn't want to just necessarily spend two minutes a day trying to ride a bike. 

Probably better to just spend the whole weekend working on it, and you have your balance. And then once you have it, you could get better at biking in various ways. But you've got the skill of like, balancing on a bike. You kind of had to put a bunch of work in at one point to do that, and then you've got it. 

So in terms of just basically holding the fiddle getting used to playing notes on it getting used to the bow. I would say if you have the opportunity to go to a camp or a weekend or a festival, or to have pretty frequent lessons at the beginning to just get over the hump of being able to sort of hold and play the instrument, then from there, there's a lot of different ways you can develop and learn. So that's kind of recommending the jump start.

Although Charley and I, who both learned a lot of instruments, and neither of us really learn that way. We're both, we both get in slowly. So I don't know, there's stuff to be said for the other side, trying it a little bit and then trying it more and just gaining momentum, as you slowly get more of a feel for it. 

I am working on guitar. I think I'm getting a little better at the guitar. Last year had to play it when I was teaching some general music and singing with kids playing guitar, and kids didn't seem to mind that I only know a couple of chords. And I was just a beginner. So I had the opportunity to practice it. But I wasn't really working on it on my own at all. I was just playing a little bit at school when I was there teaching.

But gradually because then I had the skill of doing it. I started working on it more and asking questions of players, sort of realizing things that didn't sound good asking people how to fix it. And now I'm at the point where I'm probably practicing about 30 minutes a day, I feel like I'm making pretty good progress. So practicing playing fiddle tunes and, and playing backup for songs. 

I didn't start with a big jump in it was a very kind of slow momentum. And now I'm practicing regularly, now that I'm better at it. So it's a little more fun for me to practice when I'm better at something. I don't think that's always the case. But that was my experience most recently of learning, learning an instrument.

In terms of just kind of nitty gritty, getting started on the violin. Very important to have a working instrument. So not a VSO a violin shaped object. You need a decent wooden instrument with tuners that work, new strings, a bow with all the hair, and rosin and your shoulder rest.

It's worth getting help, you can rent something, it's fine if you don't want to invest a lot of money. I know fiddles are expensive. So if you don't want to pay the money, rent something, but get some advice, make sure you're renting something that is good quality and tunable. So that you can learn. 

Some instruments are so bad, you can hold it in your hand, you can move the bow on the string, but you're not gonna be able to learn anything because the strings don't tune up and the bow doesn't. Yeah. It's don't buy those cheap instruments on Amazon, folks. If you rent something you can rent from Shar Music or any of the major string shops now will ship instruments out. Yeah, look for look for a violin specific, I wouldn't even run from like Music and Arts. I'm being a little snobby.

Get a decent instrument. And another thing is just to find a way to immerse yourself in the sound of fiddling, I've made this analogy a lot, but it doesn't get old. learning an instrument is like learning a language. And you want to just go to France to learn French, like as much as you can. You want to be hearing the sound, the accent, all the kinds of intricacies of the genre that you're interested in.

Look up my my playlists. So I have, I have YouTube playlists, and Spotify. If you look under Megan Beller for some different fiddle genres, so find you know some time in your life to put the music on and listen to it. Also go to live shows, it's a great way to hear it. If you don't like to listen to music, not everybody does, then get some live shows on your schedule or go listen to a jam or a session in a bar.

Another thing to think about is just having an easy collection of music to work on both tunes that are easy, and also easy for you to access. So having a collection of tunes in a book or or binder if you just print them off the internet, or a YouTube playlist that you're working through. But make it easy for yourself, to know what to work on and to have new stuff to work on when you're in the mood for something new. And to be able to go back and access the things you've already learned. When you are in the mood to play something you already know. 

Have your your kind of music in one place, you don't want to be searching all over. Where's that tune my teacher gave me can't find anything to play, oh, well, I give up. Have your book or your binder or whatever's on your computer, easy to access. I would start with some tunes in a major you know, I love to start with the high 2, get used to playing. And then find your genre build your ability to play in that genre.

 The more that you learn, the more you'll kind of find out what you like, and try to go towards that. Zoom in on it. And of course, find people to play with very inspiring. I have, if you're looking for support starting from scratch, I do have a book. It's called Fiddle Studio, Book One Fiddle for the Complete Beginner. So it's a lot of information about if you just have no previous experience.

Information getting you started playing with little tunes, but also about the instrument, about the gear, all the kinds of different things to think about and consider. If you want a deep dive, you can get that book. Or I also have a course if you're more of a visual kind of video, like to see it person. So if you go to fiddlestudio.com the course one is Fiddle from Scratch, and it's basically just, you know, the video version of that book. 

But there's a lot of great resources out there. And yeah, if you have questions email me, meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.

We are going to do a waltz today. This is Flatwater Fran, and it's a waltz by Phil Cunningham. I guess it was named for someone who like to paddle on flat water. That's what I saw somewhere. 

Phil Cunningham is a composer and musician, still live. It's born in 1960 in Edinburgh, Scotland. And so he's Scottish folk musician, composer. He grew up I think in the US and started on a toy accordion. Somebody got him a toy accordion that sort of inspired his his love of traditional Irish and Scottish music. 

When he was a little older, I think he got an album by Planxty. And so that really got him got him into Irish music and it actually dropped out of school at 16 to join a band. The band Silly Wizard, tour around playing traditional music singing. He wrote a lot of songs for it. That was his life for a little while. 

Now. He's, He's older. He is still performing in the United Kingdom with Aly Balan. They have nine albums together. They have a version of this. You want to listen to them play it. He writes a lot of different kinds of music. Now he writes classical music, scores for video and TV and still of course performs traditional music and sings really interesting funny guy. Yeah look them up Phil Cunningham. So we're gonna play this waltz of his Flat Water Fran. Ready?