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Website for Alyssa Rodriguez: https://www.alyssafiddle.com/
Alyssa's Kickstarter for her upcoming book Tales and Tunes:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chicory/tales-and-tunes
Meg Wobus Beller:
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 Polska från Tenala from the EP Postcards by Alyssa Rodriguez. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking to Alyssa Rodriguez. Alyssa plays the fiddle. She also plays the nyckelharpa. We'll hear more about that. She performs and records and she composes music and she also teaches. A lot to talk about. Alyssa, welcome. I am so happy to have you on the podcast and I'm really excited to hear all the things you're working on.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here Great.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Well, when I looked up your bio because we never talked about how you got into fiddling I met Alyssa last summer. It said that you grew up on a farm in Connecticut, but I know that you learned to play the nyckelharpa when you were overseas, maybe in Finland. So do you want to just talk about your childhood, how the music that you played growing up, and then how you came to fiddle and play the nyckelharpa?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Sure. So to be clear, I grew up next to a farm. I am not a farm girl. However, to this day, when I do go home, I am greeted at dinner time by the sounds of sheep and geese, and instead of a rooster we now have a donkey that likes to prey at 5 AM. So it's always a fun experience of living next to the farm. But I think, more importantly, I grew up in nature, in the woods, which I think lends itself to a lot of having to be creative and occupy yourself as a child, because there's just a lot of space. So when I was growing up, one of my first musical memories is actually picking out La Cucaracha on a toy piano, and I've always just been very good at learning things by ear. I was kind of progressed into when I was a tween being really into the music from the newly released Lord of the Rings movie and I would pick out those themes on a little keyboard. And when I discovered fiddle music I discovered it really had the same sound world as this music from film. So I hope that's a logical progression.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Did you play violin? Were you playing the violin?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
violin growing up but before I started violin I had toy instruments lying around with the keyboards and stuff. I did start violin in school orchestra. I didn't start with the Suzuki method, even though I now teach it. But yeah, getting from Connecticut to nyckelharpa, basically I got into folk music living in Ithaca or I did my degree in music composition. My early compositions were really influenced by a lot of film scores, and I just like to think of it as now I play the real-life version of film music.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Wow. So you went to music school. Instead of majoring in violin, you majored in music composition. What, I'm just, for my own curiosity. How was that?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah. So again I came in with a lot of music you know arranged for orchestra and such or string quartet. That was like really heavily influenced by film music and I really wanted to be a film composer. Yeah, and I took some classes at Ithaca and film composition and I realized that I'm just not into technology enough to like Set on computers for hours a day, because that's what the reality of it is. It's like it's very tech heavy and like you know, have to sit in a dark room for many hours with no sunlight and do editing. Editing, yeah, (using the DAW and everything) Yeah, oh yeah, I used Daws and all. I did some student films in college. It was cool, but I am just a really hands-on person and so around the time I was becoming less interested and sitting in a dark room making film scores. I was also getting into film music. In Ithaca's Contra dancing I was playing at the Chapter House, the Irish pub, and playing some tunes with the local musicians. I had a friend who was really into film music and he taught me some tunes and by the time I was a senior in college I was playing for Contra dances, I think they influenced my music by the time I was in college.
Meg Wobus Beller:
That's a quick progression?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
I know it's a very quick progression over four years.
Meg Wobus Beller:
So that's a little bit about how you were composing music and you discovered fiddling. You started playing for dances, but you also have this whole other musical world around Scandinavian music, so do you want to talk about? I know you went to Finland on a Fulbright, which is pretty impressive. How did that come about?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, in Ithaca there's this woman there who plays a Scandinavian music called Laurie Hart. (Yes, I know Laurie.) I studied with her at the time, but I did know about her through my friend that started fiddle and after I graduated I wanted to take some lessons with her to get better at fiddling, but also just explore Scandinavian music, which I started getting into when I moved to Rochester because someone gave me some Väsen albums.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Oh my gosh, I love Väsen too, so that was what hooked you in.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, I just got really into like those three CDs and I started learning all of the music on violin.
Meg Wobus Beller:
but it sounds like, from what you've described so far, when you hear something that hooks you, you do like a deep dive.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, I get really into it. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Okay, so you're in Rochester, you're learning some Scandinavian music on the violin, and then how did you end up in Finland?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, I know how did you get to the Fulbright? Well, I studied Scandinavian music for the next five or so years with Laurie and also went to this amazing camp in New Hampshire called Nordic Fiddles and Feet. Yeah, and then in 2019, I decided I was going to try the Nyckelharpa because they had ones that you could borrow and I knew what I thought was a lot of their rep already. I was like, let's see how it originates. On the Nyckelharpa. It turns out to totally different repertoire than Fiddler repertoire because Nyckelharpa is such a unique instrument. Okay, I got hooked on the Nyckelharpa because I just really like the range. It's a little bit like the viola register and it's very resonant. I guess it just really hooked into my love of film music and modal stuff and it just felt like, oh yeah, this is okay, the music I was attracted to growing up in film music, but again, in real life, it's the tradition that had I known about, probably would have been really into growing up. I just didn't know about it.
Meg Wobus Beller:
So what is a Nyckelharpa? Can you describe the instrument?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah. So there are many descriptions of this instrument. I think the one that's on the Nyckelharpa American Nyckelharpa Association website is it's your grandpa's old fiddle meets a typewriter, which is fantastic. And another one is it's a hardware store meets a fiddle because it has a lot of moving parts. Essentially it's a keyed fiddle Nyckel or nukul, if you're interested in it, with the proper Swedish accent is key and Swedish, so it's literally keyed instrument. Harpa is like a general word for that. Or you can think of it as harp, because it has a lot of strings that its job is just to resonate and make me sound good as I say yeah, so I have 12 strings, that they just are there to create resonance whenever I play any kind of note.
Meg Wobus Beller:
have to keep them all in tune.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
I do. Fortunately there's steel strings, so I know you can. I had someone recently say at a gig it looks like you need a PhD to tune that thing, which is not wrong, because I'm going to this program in Sweden this coming fall for nyckelharpa and I know a lot of being really good as a nyckelharpa player is getting the instrument to sound really good from a tuning perspective, because so much of it is about tuning. For this particular instrument you have the 12 strings that just resonate whenever you play any kind of note. So if you're playing an F or F sharp or G or G sharp, all of those have a string that will make it sound twice as good because it resonates when you play that note. Or, as my friend says, that string says that's me.
Meg Wobus Beller:
And then they ring.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Okay, yeah, and then you have the wooden dowels, but actually stopping the string, you have a key that moves a piece of wood that stops the string from the side. Okay, which sounds very complicated, but I always describe this. Which I discovered in my research is this is pre-fingerboard technology. They did not know back in medieval times that you could stop a string with your finger. They stopped at the side of their fingers and they're like, oh, what if we had a key to do that instead of doing that with their finger? Okay, and they have this huge mechanism versus just like cutting it against a fingerboard or fretboard. Yeah, which is a lot of wood.
Meg Wobus Beller:
So you don't have to worry about getting your finger in tune.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Essentially, but you have to make sure the piece of wood is in tune, okay, so sometimes, because it's wood, it gets stuck when it gets really humid. This year at Nordic Fiddles and Feet, several players were having problems with sticky keys, where the key would just stay in and wouldn't come back out, which means you're perpetually playing a note you don't want to play. Okay, and yeah, you don't have to worry about where you put your finger because you just press the key, but the wood can shift, whether it's a sharp or flat, over time and can be just slightly off. Yeah, yeah. So it is a lot of tuning, but once you get it, it does take for a while.
Meg Wobus Beller:
So the music that you play on this instrument, the Nyckelharpa, do you play mostly traditional Scandinavian tunes. I know that you also write. I mean, you're a composer, so you do also write for Nyckelharpa.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, I mostly perform traditional music. I perform mostly Swedish music composed for Nyckelharpa or things that work really nicely on Nyckelharpa, and then I also play some music from Norway and Denmark and Finland. It's pretty unusual to play, I think from my experience, Finnish music on nyckelharpa because it's nyckelharpa has become Swedish national instrument, okay, and therefore mostly Swedish music is played on it, just because it's been designated in that way historically. Because, again, my Fulbright wasn't Nordic folk music and I did a lot of research into this and read some books that have been published on this. Nyckelharpa, or some version of a key fiddle, was found all over Europe in medieval times and there is one that was found in historical Finland before it was Finland.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Okay. Another thing that I was wondering about is I know you are going back to. You were in Finland before, but now you're going back to Sweden, so I was wondering if you could tell us about the project that you're embarking on there.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, so I'm kind of doing a continuation of my Fulbright project. Originally for my Fulbright research project, I wanted to make Nordic music more accessible to people because a lot of it's in a foreign language, the repertoire isn't translated and to find the repertoire you need to kind of speak that language. So I was hoping to create an English language just basically summary of, like an introduction to the music. Okay, but not just like a tune book. A lot of those exist already where it's a certain number of tunes and you can just read through them. Yeah, but I wanted to really break down like the history and the folklore and culture behind these things without having to dig through so much info, because that's what I've had to do the entire time of Nordic music is there's a lot of websites out there that you can dig through thousands of tunes, but it's a lot to take in and get into. I did the Finnish part of this in Finland and I hope to do the Swedish part of this in Sweden. Basically, I want to put together a book that's an introduction to Finnish and Swedish music and how those two things relate. I feel like Finnish music is a very mysterious thing to a lot of people and hasn't been as popular.
Meg Wobus Beller:
That sounds really great. I just finished my Kickstarter, thank goodness. That was quite an experience and you have one that's just launching right now and it's open until August 20th. Can you just say where to find the Kickstarter and what that's for?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
My Kickstarter is going to be to help fund my book that I'm writing Tales and Tunes. It'll have folklore and illustrations by another folk musician who's a ballad singer and has done her own ballad books before. Also music from Finland and Sweden, including some of my work I did during Fulbright.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Kickstarter is a really great way to get personalized merch from the project. It's usually the only way you can get the signed CD or book. Do you have? What are some of the rewards that you're offering?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
I'm offering custom artwork. You can get a print of artwork along with a book. Of course, you can pre-order the book as well. You can get stickers I've designed, including a fiddle and a nyckelharpa. It's hard to find nyckelharpa stickers. That's why I made one. Also, of course, you can be mentioned as a supporter of it, but mostly you can get a first hot off the press copy of it, basically.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Check out Alyssa's website and contribute to the Kickstarter. That's very exciting.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
You go to Kickstarter and look up Tales and Tunes, you can find it right there.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Tales and Tunes. Alyssa, can you tell us if we're? I know we're going to hear later on the podcast tune that we'll talk about before we play it, but can you tell us where to find your music? I think you have a couple EPs out, Is that right? Where to find you online? Where can people go?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
My website is just alissafiddle.com. Easy, yeah, easy. It has links to everything I do on the very first page. We have. Nordic music and the violin playing and teaching. That I do, and then also my composition, which I've done, orchestral commissions and such. But also you can find our music on Spotify. I think it's also cross posted on YouTube. I have two EPs. The first one is called Chickary and that's all original music. Yeah. And this one that we're going to hear an excerpt from is some traditional Finnish music that I found hadn't been recorded before. It's just transcripts and people just play it but hasn't been like officially recorded as far as I know. And then for original Nyckelharpa compositions, three of them inspired by living in Finland different times of year, or just very specific Finnish words.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Okay, so they can go to Bandcamp.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Bandcamp or Spotify. Yeah, it is also on Bandcamp. Yeah, Spotify, you can look up just Postcards and then my name, Alissa, and you'll usually find it.
Meg Wobus Beller:
So I encourage people go listen to it on Spotify. But you know that musicians don't make a lot of money from Spotify. So if you want to pay a fair price for your music and make sure that the musician gets paid for the effort that went into this, this is like the writer's strike going on right now. You can go to most musicians will post on Bandcamp and you can pay for the digital album or even order CDs or merch. Do you have merch?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
I do have some stickers. Yes, I do have some merch. I've designed some stickers, including a Nyckelharp one.
Meg Wobus Beller:
This is how we all support ourselves. Now, when you are in Finland and I know you were researching the music and were you also in school there what was happening?
Alyssa Rodriguez: 17:11
I was enrolled as a graduate exchange student at Sibelius Academy, which is the big music school in Helsinki, Finland. They have a folk department that's really well recognized around the world and I was specifically in the Finnish Folk Music Department and I had the pleasure of taking some really unique classes, including playing for dancers a whole course on just the concept of playing for dancers. It was also in a way, a repertoire class, which was really cool, and that's how I discovered Polska från Tenala, which is just a common we call it jam tune. It just comes up with jam sessions. Ok, it's a great melody that is just really catchy and really easy to dance the polska to.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Yeah, so this is this is our tune for today. It's called Can you say the name one more time?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yeah, Polska från Tenala.
Meg Wobus Beller:
and we've never done a Polska before it's. It's a type of dance tune like a reel or a waltz, is that right?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
It's a kind of dance.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Yeah, my dad and I used to play, sometimes at the break at a contra dance. We'd play a Polska and he usually plays piano, but we would play in the middle of the circle with two fiddles, because somebody told us that it was played with two fiddles. So the couples are dancing in a circle around you. It's a two couple dance and a little bit like a waltz. It's three four time. Is it always three four time?
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Yes, it's always three, four time, but I always describe it as a reel, with a beat chopped off, because usually it feels like three steady beats or just emphasize on one and three, which is a little different than a waltz, which would be like one, two, three. One would be the emphasized one, but a Polska is like one, two, three. Oh, one, two, three.
Meg Wobus Beller:
OK, oh, that's very helpful, thank you. This tune is a traditional tune and you said it's done it at jams. People also dance to it.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, you can also dance to it. This kind of Polska is more of a walking Polska. You're going to take steps throughout, which is why I can step to every beat.
Meg Wobus Beller:
And the recording that we're going to hear that's on your EP was done in Finland.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
It was done in Finland with a cantala player, which is Finland's national instrument. It's a zither that you pluck with your fingers and it has. It's kind of like if you turn to piano sideways and play the inside of it. Really, yeah, hopefully that provides a good visual return, like a baby grand sideways and then, like, pluck the inside. That that's basically a cantala, obviously not so big because the strings would be too large, but that's basically what it looks like. It sounds kind of like harp, but a little different.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Okay, I loved this recording the play between the parts that are syncopated and then when you just hit the beat exactly, you can tell that you play for dancers. I guess you took a whole course in dancing and you play for dances, but it just felt so good and so danceable. I really enjoyed it. I listened to it a couple of times in a row. Alyssa, I'm so glad that we had a chance to do this. Sorry, I'm not going to see you before you go to Sweden, but hopefully when you get back you'll have a lot of great stories.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
I'm sure I will, and some more tunes.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Yeah, absolutely. I can't wait for the book you can find again. Alyssa's website is alissafiddle.com and you can look her up on Spotify and on Bandcamp and we'll keep track of your projects. Thank you so much.
Alyssa Rodriguez:
Thanks for having me on here.
Meg Wobus Beller:
Thank you for listening. You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudio.com, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.
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