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 Hunter's Purse from a session at Fergie's Pub in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today we're going to be talking about how to practice scales.
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We have been practicing with our producer Talya Raitzyk, who is a former student of mine who is now an amazing arranger of fiddle tunes and fiddle music. Everything is sounding amazing. We're getting ready. Our final weeks to go and record in August. I'm really excited. So last week, Kickstarter, check it out. If you haven't, we need your help. Thanks.
So the big question how to practice scales. I did a podcast on why to practice scales. So you can check that out. I'll try not to dwell on the why but I'll just skip straight to the how I am working on a scale course as part of a little studio that will be done. Well, we got the album too. So it's in progress. I'll let you know when it's done.
I'm going to talk about the beginner approach to scales and the advanced and at the end, I'll tell you my exact scale routine.
A wise person told me this about scales: first you go up, then you go down. That was one of my kids actually told them I'm gonna put that in the podcast, they were like No, you're not.
Violin or fiddle, you start with open strings, scales, A, D, G, one octave scales. You can go from that to the minor versions, learning the minor scale, and add things like E minor and the two octave G major scale. And this kind of covers it for fiddle. I mean, if you play the fiddle, keep listening. But learn those scales, folks, A, D, G, minor versions, E minor, two octave, G major.
How do you play them? Start with just one bowl per note long bows, make sure they're in tune, have your tuner on or play along with a recording. Know your half steps. Did you know this there is a pattern of whole and half steps for every scale. And for every major scale, it's the exact same pattern. When I'm saying whole step I'm talking about when there's a space between your fingers, for instance, from one to high to B to C sharp on the A string, that's a whole step. If you're going from C sharp to D, high two to three, those fingers are like touching or close to touching. That's a half step.
So here is the pattern for every major scale ever: W, W, H, W, W, W, H. If you want write that down, write w w, h w w, w h, it's whole with a W not cool with an H. Just try it on some different fingers. Just try placing your fingers, Okay, this one's a whole step, whole step. Okay, now half those two fingers are closed, close together. Whole step whole step, whole step half. And you can start from any finger or any spot on the violin and play a major scale using that pattern. So look for that, that pattern that spacing in your fingers, I think it helps.
For the minor for fiddling, I would use the Dorian. We don't need to go deep into it. But I would use the pattern, W H, W, W, W, H, W. Anyway. If you go to the blog, fiddlestudio.blogspot.com You'll get the sheet music and then the transcription of this so you can you can see those those patterns. I'll put them in there.
Should you repeat the note at the top of the scale? Well, beginners often do and it can help them because it reinforces this is the top for advanced players not so much, I wouldn't repeat it.
Once you've got the sense the pattern of the scale, you're playing it in long tones. Your first rhythm for fiddle could be doing a basic shuffle like sounds like strawberry, raspberry. You can punch the berry if you wanted to sound with an accent on the offbeat. To practice the jig rhythm for scales, you can just do triplet triplet, put that rhythm into the scale. It'll give you some practice playing something easier than a tune, but with the same rhythm and bow pattern that you might play in a tune.
And then you can add your slurs. So try slurring two notes into a bow. And then three, die. And then four gets a little tricky. People will do those slurring patterns, and then also repeating notes. And in this case, they start with a lot of repeating notes. So repeating each note of the scale like eight times, I wish I had a motorcycle, wish I had a motorcycle. And you can cut that in half, motorcycle, motorcycle, motorcycle, and cut that in half, you know, cycle cycle, cycle cycle, and then one to note.
These are all these scale patterns are in my second fiddle book. I think it's called Fiddle Studio Fiddling for the Advanced Beginner, and I write out all the stuff that I'm trying to describe over a podcast right now. Different ways to play scales, it's great.
Learn the arpeggios that'll help in terms of when you should practice scales. At first, I would play a scale right before you play a tune. And, of course, it should be the scale for that tune. So if you're about to play Angeline the Baker play a D scale first. If you're about to play, Steamboat Quickstep playing A scale first.
You can graduate from that to just doing some scales at the beginning of your practice, which is, which is what most violinists do when people who do scales, if you're getting pretty advanced for all the stuff I've been talking about, and you're looking for more scales, maybe some shifting, you can get the Barbara Barber scale books. Even her she's got a less advanced one, I think it's called Scales for Young Violinists. It's still pretty hard.
But, but it'll have the the easier stuff and then and then it'll go up from there. So expect to see double stops and shifting even in that book. It's not three octaves, it's mostly one and two octaves. People keep going with scales until they get to three octave scales. You know, when you are a teenager and you're doing an audition, you're expected to play three active scales and all my lessons in college, I would always play three active scales and I still play them. Only really, if I have a classical performance coming up, or I'm working on a really hard piece, I will play those three active scales.
You can use the Barbara Barber, it would be the Scales for the Advanced Violinist or good old Carl Flesch. It's a classic Carl Flesch my first one was like held together in duct tape. I used it so much. And then I have a new one. And now that one's falling apart. So I don't know if I'll have to get a third Carl Flesch scale system. It's that kind of book you'd go through them gets a lot of use every every day.
Those scales system books for advanced violinists will add the third octave, they'll add the arpeggio series, things like broken thirds, and then all the double stops in scale, playing a scale in thirds moving thirds going up the scale and down or six octaves tense. Oh my gosh, save me now.
So there are 12 different notes. And there's all these different ways you can play and practice a scale. So you can in the classical world, you learn them systematically. So you you have your book, and you work on a certain number of things you can do with A major and then you move on and work on that number and E major and you kind of go through all 12. Then you go back and you add more stuff.
But eventually, it's kind of the same as what I said with beginners, like work on the scale for the piece you're playing. thing that's a classical players do too. I'll just tell you, when I play scales, I'll give you my exact routine. I don't really play him for fiddle. Maybe I should. I don't.
If I'm going to haul out Carl Flesch and play scales, it's because I'm practicing something hard. So if I was practicing like the Buch Concerto G minor, I would open it up to G and play my three octave G major and octave G minor scale. Do them one note to a bow and two, both with vibrato, then 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24 notes to a bow. Redoing things slowing down as I need to, then the whole arpeggio series broken thirds and chromatic all in three octaves. And then I would do only holding for one or two octaves. I would I would do thirds, six and octaves.
And if I had a piece that required tenths, I think I would not play that piece. Because I'm not that old, but my hand does not like playing tenths. Oh my goodness. I am a little tired from talking about that scale routine.
Our tune for today is The Hunters Purse. Ooh, fun reel in A minor. This is our last tune from Philadelphia. And we'll be back to old time next month old time in August. I'm excited. Originally, I think this tune was the earliest printing of it was 1865 as Headi's Wishes, but mostly it's called the Hunter's Purse recorded by Sligo Fiddler Paddy Killoran. And he called it Hunter's Purse.
So there's a story from the biography the chieftains from John Glatt, so here's what he said. Guess this book was from 1997, bandleader and Piper, from the chieftains Paddy Maloney, hired the services of lilter Pat Kilduff, especially for the recording of the Hunters Purse on their album, chieftains three. So the recording studio was in London, but Kilduff was not a big traveler, and rarely went away from his home, which was in County Westmeath where he was born.
So they they put him in a hotel in Dublin before his his flight to London. And they, you know, they got him a beer and a chance to meet the fiddler from Belfast, Sean McGuire, and they ended up staying up all night, lilting and drinking and lilting and drinking. And then he was like a wreck in the morning. They had to fly him to London to get them to work on this. That sounds about right.
Kevin Burke teaches this tune. I would go look it up if you can. The hunters purse, Kevin Burke. He teaches it on a site called fiddle videos.com. Well, they have some great fiddlers on that site. I was I was scrolling through it Kevin Burke is their Hanneke, great teacher, Meghan Lynch Chowning and the fiddler from La Vent du Nord. Who is that? Andre Brenet.
They are award winning fiddlers. I, someone asked me recently, if I had ever won, like a fiddle contest. I have never even entered a fiddle contest. I was on the dance track, you know, in in boxing and in kickboxing, which I did for many years. There's this term the journeyman. So there's these rising stars and, and then there's the the journeyman boxers. And it's sort of somebody who's been doing it a long time. They're very experienced, they're not flashy, they were never a star or prodigy. They just show up, they do the work. They're reliable.
So I am kind of a journeyman fiddler. I play my dances, I don't enter contests. I haven't won any awards. But I do consider myself although I am by no means a master fiddler. I do consider myself after after the numbers of kids and adults I have taught over my my lifetime a master teacher and I would say that since I have so many students who are now better than me and play or teach professionally at a very high level. I tried to accept the evidence that that's true.
So I'm not an award winning fiddler, but I'm over here doing my part teaching this amazing instrument called fiddle. Oh, it was kind of a random rant. Okay, the Hunter's Purse. That's what we were talking about. The Hunter's Purse.
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