Irish Session Etiquette (Pat Mahon's Jig)

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 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 Pat Mahon's 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 Irish session etiquette. Jam etiquette you could say, but it's called a session. But first, I have a couple of quick announcements. I've been planning these podcasts all day, and it's quite a chore. It takes me much longer to plan a podcast than to actually record it. But my day was really brightened by Randy Wade, who posted some very kind words on Fiddle Hangout, a fun site, if you haven't seen it, about my podcast. Thank you, Randy. 

Also, my Kickstarter has begun. I'll try to keep this brief. The last time I recorded an album was 2007. My 17 year old was one. And she threw up on the couch at the music studio, on the music producers couch. Yeah. So that was Contranella, and Charley and I are going back to the same place. Wilburland Studios, no one's gonna throw up on the couch, to record an album in August. Our Kickstarter has just launched. It will be open just for July of 2023. If you can contribute some money, or contribute just by sharing the information for the Kickstarter, I would really appreciate that. It's a lot involved in making an album. So we're trying to raise some money to pay for that. 

Let's move on. Okay. Session etiquette. Oh, this is a big topic. If you Google it, there are some great articles. I especially liked the one from McNeela instruments, pretty comprehensive, and they had a whole section for Bodhan. 

If you're feeling intimidated about the possibility of breaking some unspoken rule at an Irish session, I'll just tell you, the very first Irish session I ever went to, I did not grow up going to them. I had been to jams, mostly people playing in kitchens or backyards, more New England music. 

My first Irish session was in Rochester, I was probably 20. And I went it was a big Coltas session and a community center. I did basically everything wrong. I jumped into lead a tune being a newcomer not having introduced myself. The tune was Mari's Wedding, which is Scottish. And I just played it by itself didn't go into anything. So yeah, basically broke all the rules. 

So I will tell you what I wish that 20 year old Meg had known back then. Irish sessions, usually in bars or pubs, sometimes in community spaces, you can look for them on Facebook, or on the session.com. That's usually where I look. And we're going to talk about joining the session, first time stuff playing along, leading a set, because that's a whole kettle of fish. And a little bit about becoming a regular. 

So joining the session, these are like tips for your very first time going to an Irish session, or your first couple of times. Irish sessions are for Irish music, played on traditional instruments by people who are studying Irish music. So if you are an aspiring jazz trombonist, I wouldn't take that instrument and that energy to an Irish session. It's not that you can't play Irish music, but you would want to learn on a traditional instrument and learn Irish music and then go to an Irish session. 

For a melody player. For a beginning session, like a session that's listed as a learning session, probably want to know at least 10 Irish tunes. For an intermediate session, I would say at least 50. For an advanced session. You're not gonna like this. 100 to 500 tunes. I might be at like 200 right now. I still have a long way to go. 

If you're going to play rhythm like piano or guitar, you want to be pretty advanced. This is not four chords in a capo old time guitar. Yeah, I play guitar and piano and and I can't really keep up at an Irish session yet on those instruments. 

So what do you do you get there you have your, your instrument, presumably, I would buy a drink. It's always good to patronize the bar that's hosting the session. That's important. You want to stand and listen, if they're playing a set, wait for them to finish, or like wait for a break in the conversation. Introduce yourself doesn't have to be long. Say your name. And ask if you can join. Yes, it's a little awkward, but gets easier with practice. 

If you're planning to record the whole session on your phone, I would just ask it's so common now you almost don't need to ask but I would just is it okay, if I record some of this, ask that then. And then before you sit in a seat, ask if the seat is free, because people get up and get down. Kind of a lot to do right at the beginning there. 

Once you are in your seat, get your instrument out, tune up, have a tuner have one of those little micro tuners. So you make sure you're in tune. You don't want your first impression to be a flat E string, then you're ready to go. 

So playing along. Playing with other people is a skill separate from just playing the fiddle or just playing a tune. If you haven't done it a lot, you'll need to practice it probably not at the session, I would find some family or friends and try just playing tunes with them. Either. They're playing melody or they're playing accompaniment, to get used to playing other people. If you don't have experience with that. If you can join in and play. Just make sure you're not playing too loud on the fiddle less of a problem than on the pipes. Sorry, if you're a pipes player. 

For tunes you don't know. This is a rule I break a lot. So do what I say not what I do. For tunes you don't know. Don't play. Just put your fiddle down. Look alive. Listen, drink your beer. I am really bad about this because I do noodle along well. I'll listen through an entire part of a tune really carefully. And then I will start playing. I will say with maybe less modesty than I should have that learning tunes on the spot is one of my strengths as a musician so but for most people, it's not a noodling situation. It's not like an old time jam. I wouldn't noodle.

If you don't know it, listen, record it on your phone. And then it's great to ask when they stop, what was that tune to go home and work on it, look it up on the session. Learn it that way. The other thing to keep in mind, I guess just as a fiddler or melody instrument is you're just playing the melody. I wouldn't do any accompanying specially not chops. Do not play chops at an Irish session. You can quote me on that. I wouldn't harmonize or do anything else like that. Just play the melody. If you know it. If you don't record it, go home. Learn it. No clapping along. 

Okay, so you may choose to offer to kind of lead a set. Or they may ask you, a lot of great jam leaders will will kind of go around and especially if you're new or if it seems like you're not playing on a lot, you're not getting a chance to play. They'll say Oh, would you like to lead a set? What tunes do you have for us? I would, if you're planning to do this, lead a set, I would pick out three tunes that go together before you go to the session. I never remember to do this too. I'm always digging in my brain trying to think is that New England or is that Irish? Prepare ahead. It's a great idea. 

It's okay if it's just you know, Kesh jig and a couple other jigs doesn't have to be fancy, far out tunes. You could go from A Tune in D to G to like A modal. Or you could go from E minor to D to G you can look on the session and just pull they have sets there. You know this tune is usually played with these tunes. Just take one of those or take a sets straight from an album. 

Irish players are so into albums if you go to a lot of sessions you'll hear them talk. It's like some kind of album geography game where you're like, oh, this tune was on that album. And then but he also played it on this album, they can go on like that a little bit.

For your set, you know, the hardest part is the transition, going from one tune to the next to play each tune three times. And then in the middle of the last be part, you do the hup. So it sounds like this HUP, and then you transition to the next tune. If you're not used to shouting while you play fiddle, that's okay. You can try other kinds of ways of indicating but practice that that's the way that experienced Irish players indicate that they're changing tunes. And if you hear someone else, you know, go HUP. That means that's what's about to happen. 

If you just can't remember the tune you were going to try to go into, you can take a couple beats to try to bring it up. But if you really can't remember it, you know, just put your instrument down, try to look sheepish. It's okay, it happens to everyone. It's happened to me. I've seen it happen with inexperienced musicians and with experienced musicians. So it's nothing to worry about. It does happen.

In terms of becoming a regular and feeling like you're part of the gym and accepted at the jam. There isn't a way to do that on your first couple times, you really have to keep coming consistently. If you go to a a session, and you see five people or 10 people, those folks have probably been coming dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. And during that time, they've seen a lot of people kind of come and go try it and then leave. So the only evidence that you're gonna stay and become part of the session is if you keep coming and you stay, you become part of this session. 

So it honestly doesn't make as big a difference if you're beginner and advanced. If you just keep coming. We have some folks who are like totally part of the session and are arthouse session, who are beginners and don't even play or even bring their instruments but everyone knows them because they come a lot and they chat. They listen they ask what tune it was the part of the session. Try it out. 

I drink Guinness if they have it, I like to drink in us at the Irish session. 

Our tune for today is Pat Mahon's doesn't call Dermott Grogan's, another flute player. I think it's a traditional tune. But those flute players played it so people often call the tune after them. Taken from a session at Fergie's Pub in Philadelphia. 

We were up in Philadelphia for a family wedding was my first time at that session. Had a great time. The parking was a little tricky. Very nice. Pub. Guinness was great. The musicians drink for free. Hmm. Now you'll all go. 

Session was being led by Darren Kelly on guitar also his son was there Eamon Kelly on bouzouki and Brian Boice was playing accordion. They sounded great. I had a really good time. I I'd love to go back to that session there was a mandolin player. And as we left there, a banjo player came in.

This tune, Pat Mahon's was from a set that Brian led the accordion player. Pat Mahon's was a flute player from Sligo. He was well known in that area and on the flute he sang and played the flute. He was known for busking. Being a great street performer people knew him by his leather cap and his beard. He also played for fleadhs. 

He passed away last year and 2022 I was looking at some of the remembrances the people were writing and a lot of people remember hearing him in pubs, hearing him play on the street. They said he was a lovely man that he used to play music for the Skreen Show. 

There's no word on specifically where this tune is. It doesn't seem like Pat wrote it, but played it a lot. In fact, I found him on YouTube playing this tune. And it was lovely. Yeah. We enjoyed it at the jam, right? Charley's a flute player. Well, we're gonna play it on fiddle now for you. Ready?

How to get better without playing (Give Me Your Hand)

Sheet music for the waltz Give Me Your Hand as played in Baltimore. Hear the tune and discussion on the Fiddle Studio podcast on Apple Music or on Spotify! Support Megan's work on the Fiddle Studio Podcast and Blog.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to talk about how to get better at the fiddle without playing. It might be a little silly. 

The reason I think it's not silly is that I have taught for so many years, and I've worked with a lot of students who had good intentions, and they actually really enjoyed practicing and playing. But there was something that made it hard for them, there was an obstacle in their path. And once they solve that, they were able to get better so much faster. 

With my dad, we talk about this stuff in the car, on the way to gigs, we're on the phone, we're always talking about what we're practicing, or I'm telling him about my students. He helped me with this list. I think I put it in fiddle book one, but here's how I've been thinking about it lately. 

There are three areas I want to talk about. One is mechanical, one is environmental, and one is mental. These are areas where you can do things that will make you better at the fiddle, that don't involve playing the fiddle. 

I mean, we all know that the best way to get really good at the fiddle is just to play the fiddle a lot. I'm assuming you're on board with me with that. But here's some other tips. 

We'll start with mechanical, you want to have working equipment, it does make a very big difference to have working equipment, I have taught people playing VSOs violin shaped objects where the strings don't tune up, the boat doesn't tighten. It, it's nearly impossible to have any kind of enjoyable learning experience without good working equipment for the fiddle. 

You wanted to have newish strings cleaned off, you know, if you remember to clean them off reasonable action so it doesn't hurt your fingers to play. If the strings seem weirdly far from the fingerboard. Maybe go into a shop have them take a look at your bridge, see if they could lower the action a little bit. 

And easy to tune. This is probably the biggest one so pegs or screws, whatever is on that fiddle to help you tune you want them to turn easily and stick easily. And you want a tuner that's very easy and accessible. Even just one of those little micro tuners leave it on all the time. Or a tuner that you can clip on, you know like a little guitar tuner. 

But you want it to be easy to tune because it's just gonna sound a lot better. If you can pick up your fiddle, get it all tuned up and get started right away. Speaking of getting started right away. 

Second area for getting better without playing is environmental. And the question I often ask students, when we start to dive into the topic of practicing, is where is your fiddle at home? And where's your stuff that you use to practice? Is it in the case under the bed? Or is it hanging on the wall? 

I mean, we have we have my kids fiddles on the wall just to cut down on that hole, get the case out and zip it all the steps. I don't hang my fiddle on the wall because I don't really trust my family around it. 

But the guitars on the wall, the ukuleles on the wall. If you fiddle is not too expensive. Consider just getting one of those wall hangers and leaving it out there so you can grab it. And it's that easy. I've also had students who just leave their case open on a desk or a piano or if you don't have little kids or a pet that's going to get into it. You can just leave it open so you can pick it up. 

If you have five or 10 minutes and play a little it can make a difference. In addition to having your fiddle accessible, any music or books that you're studying from, you want those to be easy. 

I have at times thought, Oh, I really want to practice that piece. And I start digging into my I mean I have a really big sheet music collection from teaching Suzuki and classical. I mean, I would teach from twinkle all the way up to Mendelssohn concerto, so I have a gazillion books and music and even though I gave a lot of it away, I still have so much.

So I could just I could get lost in there searching for some specific thing I want to practice. So you want to have your books pulled out, it's part of the reason I made my fiddle books is just so that it would be really easy for my students to open up and have the version of the tune that I teach. And for beginners have it with the fingerings. Right there. Easy, easy. 

That's kind of about your environment. The mental side, or the aural, the hearing and listening and remembering side. This is a big part of becoming a musician on any instrument is having the music in your head knowing the music really well.

You can learn a tune, it's kind of two parts of it. One is knowing the tune really well, just in your head that you can hum it. The other is knowing how to play it on an instrument, the playing it on the instrument part well, that's you got to play to do that. 

But the learning it in your head part you can do by just listening to it, folks, listen to the tunes you're learning. Find a recording of them. If you're learning my tunes, it's the whole reason that I put out recordings on Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube. 

And I try to, any tune that I'm teaching really in any capacity, whether I'm doing it on the podcast, or teaching it at a workshop or teaching it to students, or online, I try to make sure there's a really easy to access recording. So you want to have your playlist, get your tunes on there. And you know, listen to the style of fiddling they inspires you. 

When you first start listening to really great Fiddler's and you don't fiddle a lot yet, you'll you'll be hearing the tune the outline of the melody. And the more you listen, the more you'll start to pick up on the ways that the player is interpreting the tune the ornaments, they're using the way they're bowing. It takes a little while to get used to hearing that and hearing those details. 

I was just listening to a Liz Carroll album that I grew up listening to on, you know, my parents LP collection. And I was listening to the way she slides her one up into the note and I realized she doesn't always get to the note. And I've heard her do this for so long. And I slide in my Irish slide my one up into the note. But it never sounded exactly like Liz Carroll. 

And I think that you know, whatever, 35 years later, I finally figured out why. Because she's not, she's sliding up, and she's not always getting all the way to the note. It's a really beautiful way to make kind of a blue note and Irish music. It was great. 

So now I can try it. I've been trying it doesn't sound exactly like Lewis Carroll, but I don't think it's ever going to. 

So those are three ways to get better without playing. Check your equipment, check your environment, and work on your mental, you're listening. 

Let's move on to the tune for today. This is a waltz called Give Me Your Hand. It's from a session an Irish session at the Art House bar in Baltimore. We did play this waltz at this session. Full disclosure, it's because I asked to play it. I wanted to work on this wall. So I was kind of planting it there to pull it for the podcast. 

It has an Irish name. Charlie coached me on how to say it. Let me give it a go here. Tabhair dom do Lámh. I don't know why an M and an H together make a V. I have not studied Irish but my husband is a linguist and he did. 

This is a traditional waltz that's played at weddings. Give me your hand. I guess the joke about it is that the wall to play divorces is Give Me Your House.

You can look this tune up on the internet. The big question is who wrote it. Seems like it wasn't O'Carolan. You'll see it attributed to the blind Irish harpist O'Carolan. sSeems like it was a different blind Irish harpist who wrote it by the name of Rory Dall. Unfortunately, there are two Rory Dalls. 

So I was in the weeds a little bit trying to figure out what the origin of this waltz was. We think that it was Rory Dall O'Kane and not Rory Dall Morrison. They didn't live at the same time. O'Kane died before Morrison was born. 

And O'Kane, Rory Dall O'Kane wrote melodies and Morrison mostly didn't write melodies instead wrote lyrics was a poet and then set them to melodies. So we think this was Rory Dall O'Kane. 

Francis O'Neill certainly thought that and wrote this story about O'Kane being very proud player a very high status and conscious of his status that he had moved to Scotland was traveling in Scotland and went to a castle. 

When he was there, the lady of the castle commanded him to play the harp seeing him with his harp, in kind of a low status way and he was so insulted. He refused to play and he packed up his harp and he left and when she heard who he was and realized who he was, she was overcome and reached out to him to try to reconcile. 

He ended up writing this tune for her. Coming back together. Tabhair dom do Lámh, Give Me Your Hand. This is our wedding waltz that we're going to play. This was actually not the waltz at our wedding that was Evergreen, but this is a beautiful wedding waltz here we go.

Thanks for listening, you can find the sheet music for this tune at fiddle studio.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.

How to Handle Stage Fright (Maudabawn Chapel)

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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 Maudabawn Chapel from a session at the Arthouse bar in Baltimore.

Today, I'm going to be talking about feeling nervous, and dealing with nerves. This is a topic I have worked on a lot, as a Suzuki teacher, my students, the kids at least, played a recital every December, and a recital every May, and they got nervous. So I had a lot of experience coaching kids through nervousness, here are some of the ways I would try to help them. I hope this could be helpful for you. I use these tips for myself. And I think it's good because I'm not naturally...I get nervous I, I get nervous about a lot of things. We'll talk about that. 

I usually start with the frog story. So this is to illustrate that nervousness is a feeling that comes from how you're thinking about something. I always tell kids, I say, I was on a hike with my own children, and we saw a frog. And one of my kids was thinking in their head. I love frogs, then I'll ask the kids, how do you think they felt I was like, oh, excited, happy, like so excited to see a frog. 

My other kid was thinking in their head. Because they were a little bit misinformed. They had just been studying poison dart frogs, and didn't realize that poison dart frogs don't live in Maryland and won't kill you on the spot. So that kid was actually thinking that frog could kill me. And so they were feeling very scared. 

Here's the frog, not hurting anyone. One person is super excited, the other person is very scared. So it was what they were thinking about it that was affecting how they were feeling. I tell that to kids, just not to say like, it's your own fault for thinking things that are making you nervous. But the nice thing about thinking is, it's a little bit like breathing, we do have some control over it. 

When you think something that gives you a nervous feeling. What I've read is that the actual chemical reaction in your body that gives you I mean, whatever happens if you feel like a little hot, or a little sweaty, flutter in your stomach, whatever those physical reactions are, it's kind of a short, like one to two minute chemical process. And then it's done. But you can keep thinking something over and over again, kind of spinning with it keep, keep recycling it and triggering the process over and over again.

When a kid is doing that, they're just thinking something that's making them nervous. And they they feel like they can't stop. I try to work with them to think something else. But it has to be something that they really believe they can't just think like I'm going to play great. I mean, if they don't believe that, it's not going to be helpful. 

So sometimes in a situation where they're going to perform, and they're feeling really nervous about that, and they're thinking, I'm going to screw up and my family's going to hate me or something like that, and they can't stop thinking about it. I'll try to find something for them to think like, do you feel physically safe? Do you feel like you're going to play in this recital? And things might go wrong, but your body is safe physically? 

If they're able to say like, Yes, I, I acknowledge that this might be hard for me emotionally, but physically, I am safe. There is no danger to me. Then I'll say why don't you try thinking and saying to yourself, I am safe. I am safe. And try to think that instead of Oh, my family's gonna hate me if I mess up. 

Another thing that I'll explain to students who are feeling nervous is that one feeling...if you can notice it in your body, let the feeling be there and not try to fight against it and panic about having the feeling then you avoid it turning into like a whole layer cake of feelings. 

And I tell them the story about me when I went on a college audition and made a mistake in the practice room warming up beforehand. So I had the thought, I'm not sure this is gonna go well. I'm not playing this well. Just feeling nervous. I didn't just let the nervousness be there and try to work to still perform through it. 

I kind of let myself panic over it like, Oh, if I'm nervous, I'm not going to play well, what if my parents are upset, I'm gonna let my teacher down. Like, what if I don't get into college and you know all these other feelings, worry, panic, shame, dread, like, you can just let it spin out of control. 

So, when a kid is feeling nervous, I like to have them identify it. I'm feeling nervous, feel it in their body. And think about the reason like, I'm feeling nervous, because I'm going to perform this piece, and I'm performing this piece because I'm part of this performance, I'm going to share my music, people are going to enjoy it. feeling nervous is part of that. But I'm doing it for a reason that I like, like I do want to perform in this concert. It's not great that it makes me feel nervous, but it'll be worth it. At least I hope, that's always the goal is that it's worth it. 

The quick and dirty way to deal with nervousness that I use is box breathing. I just used it at the dentist this morning. Breathing in, for instance, for a count of four, then you hold for for breathe it out for four, hold for four, and then I'll work up to maybe six or, or even eight, sometimes just a little bit of box breathing will get me through that two minute chemical reaction in my body. Sometimes I need to do it over and over again. 

I played a dance on Wednesday, in a situation that would probably make a lot of people nervous. I felt absolutely no sensation at all actually checked on my body was like, am I feeling nervous. And there was nothing I've played so many dances, I knew whatever happened, I would be fine. I don't know, I wasn't scared. 

But also last week, I did for the very first time I did live streams. I called it like a practice club. I was going to get on YouTube and practice. And people could practice along or just kind of have a practice buddy and talk in the chat a little bit. And I'd never done this before. 

And on Sunday, the first day that I did it, I had several hours of feeling nervous beforehand where it would come in my body kind of flood and I would do some box breathing and just saying to myself, I'm nervous because I'm gonna do this live stream. But I want to do the live stream and it's worth it even if I have to feel nervous. And it would kind of go away after a little while and then it would come back again when I was thinking about it. 

And on Monday, I really only felt it. And even Tuesday for 30 to 60 minutes before I was gonna turn on the webcam and do the live stream. And then I did one this Sunday just yesterday and I didn't feel nervous. I mean it was almost imperceptible. So it's good to remember that. A lot of times you feel nervous because you're just not sure what to expect. And that nervousness goes away very quickly. You just have to do something a couple of times and you know what to expect. You won't feel nervous. 

Oh I have gone on and on about this. Let's do our tune. 

This is a tune called Maudabawn Chapel and it's by Ed Reavy. I have also seen it called the Reefs. Ed Reavy was an Irish Fiddler, born 1898 in County Cavan, in the town Maudabawn. And this tune, Maudabawn Chapel was named for the local church. 

Ed Reavy moved to the US in 1912 and lived outside of Philadelphia, working as a plumber, and also as a musician he recorded in 1927 for the Victor record label. He was a prolific tune composer, more than 100 compositions published and his sons have said that he wrote probably more than 500 tunes. That's a lot of tunes. His most famous fiddle tune is maybe the Hunters House, but this is a very popular one. 

If you look it up on the session, I guess Kevin Burke played it and recorded it a little different from the way that Edie played it when he recorded it. And somebody asked Kevin about it. That must have been a funny email to get why is your aversion different? But he was a good sport about it. And he wrote back and said, you know, different strokes, basically different strokes for different folks. 

Kevin's version is specifically on the session if you want to go in there, Kevin said that his version was influenced by the musicians, Martin Burns and Brendan McGlinchey. It's a little bit of a long discussion of this tune on the session but we're gonna kind of play the version that's played around here in Baltimore. Yeah, here we go.

Thanks for listening, you can head over to fiddle studio.com to find sheet music for this tune and more information about becoming a member of fiddle studio. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.

How to play in tune on the fiddle (The Kilmovee)

Find my podcast here on Apple Music or here on Spotify!

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 The Kilmovee Jig from a session at the Art House bar in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today, I'm going to be talking about playing in tune, just a little topic for the fiddle. This is for you, if you have recently taken your tapes off, if you had something on your fingerboard. Or if you notice that you play out of tune, I play out of tune sometimes I don't usually notice when it's happening. But I will sometimes hear recording of myself, even on this podcast. And think, Oh, I was playing out of tune.

I hope that it's comforting to you that for me after playing violin and fiddle for 38 years with a degree in violin performance. And, you know, 20 years of teaching, I still play out of tune. Tuning is connected to what you're hearing and what you're noticing about what you're hearing. And then what's happening with your left hand on the string. So there's two different issues there.

It's a little easier to fix issues that are happening just with your hand. So there's sort of three parts of your hand. There's just where your hand is on the fingerboard. And then there's getting your fingers spacing and finger placement, correct. And finally, there's the micro adjustments. That's the one we're all still having fun with all these years later.

Fixing your hand is easy. I call out to my kids I, I just, one of my kids was just practicing. And I just called out "fix your hand!" because they weren't listening to what was happening on their instrument and their hand was literally just in the wrong place. They don't have tapes on. So they got their hand in the right place that it sounded fine. So make sure your hands in the right place. That's an easy fix. 

Getting the finger spacing, right, this is a second year problem. Oh my goodness, people play their first year, they still have tapes on, they're playing a lot of a major a lot of high twos. And then suddenly, you're in the world of high twos and low twos, and your two needs to move around all the time, it can be a big issue with tuning.

You'll really want to make sure that your fingers are working independently, only one at a time. If you're, every time you play a three, you're blocking your fingers down your to just automatically go into that high to spot. Oh, you're gonna have problems. So you need your fingers to be working independently. 

You need to make sure you understand what you're playing what key you're in. And I would say and this comes a little bit from my music education background, I studied Music Learning Theory in College. Music Learning Theory is really big on hearing the roots and the chords and the patterns. I think knowing the chords, which is basically hearing the chords playing the chords or playing the baseline is very helpful in developing the instinct to put your tool in the right place. 

And that connects to the third level of tuning. Even once your hands in the right place, and you're getting your finger spacing basically right, we all put our fingers slightly in the wrong place sometimes and you're going to have to make micro adjustments. On the hearing side of this, you can work on it by practicing with a drone or in unison with someone or with a compliment. 

I got it in the wrong order, but kind of easiest to get it exactly in tune in unison and then you can go from there to working with a drone and from there to working with accompaniment with like chords. The highest level would be playing with with nothing else and and that's it's tricky to stay in tune like that.

On the other side, out of your head out of your ears and into your hand. You need your hand to be unlocked on the string in order to make those micro adjustments. So if you're gripping the neck if your fingers are really heavy and locked down on the string, you won't be able to react to what you're hearing. 

So those are things you can work on stopping sliding your son back and forth on the neck, swinging your elbow back and forth, make sure your arm is unlocked. shaking your hand out, try not to grip the neck so much, that will actually help your tuning because your fingers will be able to react to what you're hearing. All of this is challenging. 

And I would say possibly the most challenging is just paying attention to what you're playing and what you're hearing around you. I mean, that's when I'm playing out of tune, it's because I wasn't paying attention, I find that my students pay a lot more attention to what they're playing, when they're not looking at music and reading. I mean, it's one less sense that you're using, so you want to have music that you can play without reading it off the sheet. So you're playing it from memory, you're already going to be listening in a different way, listening closer, with a lot more awareness of your tuning. 

This one's maybe not as common, but when I work on improvisation with kids and adults, I find that their tuning improves. I got this from Alice Kanack. When you're making up your music, you're listening to it in a different way. You're not just recreating something that someone's given you. You're listening to it hmm. As it's being created, and you're kind of evaluating whether you like it or not, well, that goes for the tune, but it also goes for the tuning. 

So when my students are improvising, their tuning tends to be a lot better. I'll do a podcast on how I ease people into improvising and composing. I think it's really useful but even if you're just messing around on your fiddle making up some stuff that you think sounds good. You may find that that has a beneficial effect for your tuning and playing in tune. Good luck. It's a big project. 

Moving on. Our tune today is The Kilmovee. This is a jig that was popularized by a player named Dermot Grogan. Dermot Grogan was a flute player and button accordion player from County Mayo in Ireland. And so some people call this tune Dermot Grogan's. But it is I believe, a traditional Irish tune. 

Dermott was born and raised in Kilkenny, in County Mayo and learned whistle and flute from his father who was a musician. He also played the accordion. He was a button accordion player. And as an adult, he moved to England and then in New York and he was very well respected musician. 

Sadly, in the early aughts, he had a very serious cancer diagnosis, but was actually able to move back to Ireland, reconnect with some friends and play music there in the last couple of years of his life and he passed away at the age of 48. 

This tune I've found on the session you can look for it there. I will put my transcription on my website, my blog, and it's also recorded on Brendan Callahan CD Where I Am so you can check it out there. Okay, here we go.

Thanks for listening, you can head over to fiddle studio.com to find sheet music for this tune and more information about becoming a member of Fiddle Studio. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.

The Butterfly

See it here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Utm4g0BG4jA

And if you like fingerings and strings:

Practicing with the Metronome (House of my Own)

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Hello, and 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 House of My Own from an Irish session at the Arthouse bar in Baltimore, Maryland. 

Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today I'm going to be talking about kind of a funny topic, playing with the metronome. Just to introduce you to this idea. If you haven't fiddled with the metronome, maybe you'll be inspired to try it after this episode.

I grew up with a pretty rocky relationship with my metronome. My violin teacher certainly encouraged me to use it, I would mostly ignore it. And then sometimes at the very last minute, before an audition or a lesson, try to get some hard part up to speed as quickly as I could using the metronome the very last minute, but I never used it for my fiddling. 

So I hadn't fiddled with a metronome or ever really just put it on to practice too. And the first time I saw other musicians doing this was when I was in college, and conservatory. And I noticed that some people would practice with a metronome running either in headphones or just on in their practice room. And most of the people doing this word jazz musicians. So I noticed jazz drummers and bass players practicing with a metronome at different speeds. One of the interesting things about this, to me was that all of these players all had very good time. At the time, I thought my time was pretty good, too. 

When I started putting together groups of students to play fiddle tunes together, including jazz musicians and drummers, we didn't always fit together, we were having trouble staying together. So that was the first time that I thought, Well, maybe it's time for me to try this practicing technique. And try out playing the metronome with my fiddling, because I'd only ever used it for classical music mainly as a way to just take a hard part, slow it way down, and then inch it up the metronome, you know, one click by one click going faster and faster. 

I definitely had a moment. I remember what it felt like in the practice room where I thought well is something wrong with the battery is this metronome broken, because my fiddling was not fitting in with the beat. So that was the first time that I realized at the age of 20, 21, that I wasn't playing the fiddle with really, really solid time, I was speeding up and slowing down as I was playing. 

And in order to really learn how to play exactly with the beat, I had to slow down, probably to like 70, 80 beats per minute, playing my fiddle tunes like that with the metronome and get them really tight, and then speed it back up to jam and dance tempo between 105 and 120. I'm really glad I did this, I feel a lot more confident in my time. 

Now I still once in a while, get my metronome out, just to make sure that I'm that I'm keeping the beat, okay. It helped me have a sense of how fast I was playing, and also helped me just lock into the beat. And I used it as a dance musician. If you're playing for beginning dancers, you, you don't want to lock into what they're doing, you have to keep the beat for them. But when you're playing as a dance musician, for experienced dancers, will often wear dance shoes that make some noise on the floor. And they'll be keeping the beat with their feet. 

One of the pleasures of playing for dances is locking into the beat that they're keeping. And of course they're keeping a beat listening to what you're playing. So the music and the sound of the feet on the floor, pull together. It's really a wonderful feeling to be playing. And you start to feel like the music that you're playing and the steps, that they're taking that they're both expressions of the same thing. It's hard to describe.

I highly recommend learning to play with a metronome. Whether you play for dancers or not, it's always good, you might discover some things about your playing. And you might have that moment where you wonder if your metronome was broken happens to all of us. 

Our tune today is a setting of another slip jig from the Irish session at the Arthouse, which is the bar in Baltimore. The full name of this tune is I Have a House of My Own With a Chimney Built on Top of It. And it's a slip jig in E minor. There is some discussion on the session that this might be the longest to name on the session. I Have a House of My Own With a Chimney Built on Top of It. For short, I call it House of My Own. 

It's a tune composed by Junior Crehan who was a fiddler in County Clare. Born in 1908, Crehan started playing Irish music and an early age on the concertina before switching to the fiddle. My understanding is that he studied fiddling with Faddy Casey, also in County Clare at the time. I read an article that he played in the same pub in Cor for for 70 years. That's kind of amazing. 

He wasn't widely recorded, but wrote several tunes that are still played, and beloved in the Irish repertoire. If you go to the session, you can look up Junior Crehan and see the tunes that he wrote. This is a really nice tune. We enjoyed working on it. Here we go.

Why Go to a Fiddle Camp? (Si Bheag Si Mhor)

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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'm bringing you a setting of Sí Bheag Sí Mór from a session at the Bru House in Dublin, Ireland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about Fiddle Camp. I just got home from the fiddle camp that I started way back when I was just out of college in Rochester, New York. It's at the Kanack School of Music. I brought my younger two kids to Fiddle Camp for the very first time. They have some experience with fiddling, but they haven't played a lot in groups. So it's very interesting to watch them. 

They went to camp every day, and they were learning fiddle tunes. From their perspective, they learned some cool tunes, they met some fun people. And that's kind of what they got out of Fiddle Camp. But as a fiddler and a fiddle teacher, I was watching them and wondering what they were going to get out of it. I noticed sort of from an outside perspective, some of the things they were learning that weren't just the fiddle tunes. 

I wanted to share that with you, because a lot of people think about going to a fiddle Camp and wonder what they might get out of it. And if you think you're just going to learn a couple of new tunes, well, you can do that on your own with YouTube. But there are so many more things you can get out of going to a music camp. So here's what I saw. 

The first thing is they were hearing fiddle music all day long. This seems to be expected. Since it's Fiddle Camp, you're hearing a lot of fiddle music, but it's really a lot more fiddle music than they normally hear. Maybe they hear me practice a little bit, they might hear their father play a CD in the car, they might play a tune to themselves, but to be hearing it all day long really gets the sound and the style of fiddling into your ear. 

In hearing these tunes all the time, they were for one thing, learning the tune. Not just learning to play tunes, but they're also memorizing and hearing those tunes that they were learning and a lot of other tunes to that they now have in their memory, whether it's their short term memory, their long term memory. They have so many more tunes that they've been exposed to, and that they've heard a lot. 

In addition to getting used to all the different fiddle tunes, they've also gotten a lot of experience now with the form, the form of fiddle tunes playing the A part, repeating, playing the B part, repeating. it takes a little while before people are very comfortable with that form. I'll notice that a student doesn't really have the form yet when they'll play a tune, and they'll just play one B part and then stop. And they're not looking at me like "Oh, should I do the repeat?" they just thought the tune was over there. And they don't have a sense of oh, there's something missing here. The tune's not complete until I play the B part. 

Again, just being someplace where you're hearing fiddle tunes all day. And always with the proper form A part, repeat, B part, repeat, you're really getting the form ingrained in you to where you aren't going to just play an A part and forget the repeat. At least not every time, you're gonna get that repeat in there because the tune will sound kind of too short without it. 

Another skill is the skill of jumping in. Jumping in is so important to musicianship. So that's when other people are playing. And then instead of starting with them exactly at the beginning of the tune, like 'one, two, ready, go', and everyone starts, they've already started playing. And then you need to jump in to match what they're doing kind of right in the middle of the fiddle tune. It's very hard to learn when you're all by yourself. You can try with recordings, but it's just not the same as having a lot of experience playing with people who aren't waiting for you. 

So it's not your teacher. I probably do this too much where I stop and wait for a student because I do think it's important for people to have time mentally to think through where they are in the tune. But at a camp, they're just going to keep going and you're going to have to jump in. And then if you fall off, you're gonna have to jump in again, keep getting on that wagon. 

When you're jamming a lot, not just going to a jam on Thursday night, but every day multiple jams. You'll have a lot of exposure to noodling, which is what I call it when you don't know the tune or you only know it a little bit. Have your fiddle up on your shoulder and you're trying to pick out a few notes. And if the tune gets repeated, you get to pick out hopefully a few more notes every time. I encourage people to noodle especially when I'm leading a jam, that's a beginner jam or a slow jam. I'll kind of explain what it is and say it's totally fine to do this. 

If you don't know the tune at all maybe don't play as loud as you can while you're trying to get it. But if you want to quietly noodle along, that's highly encouraged. I love to noodle it jams it definitely depends on how tired I am and how much familiarity I have with the tune. If it's the beginning of the night, I might be noodling along on everything I don't know. By the end of the night, a very notey real comes up, I'm much more likely to just put my fiddle down and drink my beer and enjoy the experience. 

Hearing the chords played, and the steady beat of an accompaniment is also a really big asset for going to a camp, we normally don't play with accompaniment at home. In my fiddle lessons, I try to accompany my students every week, it's not a big part of the lesson. If you go to a camp where there's accompaniment several times a day or throughout the camp, you'll really be hearing the rhythm and the timing of the tunes. How a jig sounds and feels different from a real and how a waltz sounds and feels different from an air that's in four. And you'll get a sense of that because you'll be hearing the accompaniment. 

Also just for playing in tune, hearing the chords behind it or how the notes line up with the key. I find that students play much better in tune when they're hearing the chords. And when they've heard them enough that they internalize the key. They have a sense of the resting tone. They have a sense of the dominant tone in the background of when they're playing they're hearing the tonality, and it's really going to help you play in tune. 

The whole immersion experience, I think is why people find going away to camp to be very moving. When you talk to people about their experiences at Pinewoods or Ashokan. Even the kids who have come to my camp, just a little day fiddling camp for many years. They'll say things like 'this was life changing. It was magical. It was amazing.' I think that really speaks to all of the things you learn just beyond a few new tunes. So go to camp. Plan on it for next year.

Our tune today is from the same Irish session I've been pulling from from, that Bru House session. I have this waltz and two more tunes. So this waltz is called Sí Bheag Sí Mhór. It's a very famous Irish waltz in D. It was composed by the blind Irish harpist Turlough O'Carolan, the years I have are 1672-1738. 

O'Carolan played for many years as a harpist before beginning to compose tunes and ended up composing a whole repertoire of fiddle tunes and dance music in traditional Irish style. The story about Sí Bheag Sí Mhór is that it was his first attempt at composition. His teacher said it's time for you to start making up your own tunes, sent him home. He wrote this waltz, which is a beautiful waltz. The title could be big hill, little hill or even big fairy Hill little fairy Hill. 

Charley and I are going to play it here for you.I hope you enjoy it.

Hey, thanks so much for listening. You can head over to fiddlestudio.com for the sheet music to this and all of the tunes I teach. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.

Starting Fiddle Studio (Flowers of Edinburgh)

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Welcome to the fiddle studio podcast, featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddle. I'm Megan Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of The Flowers of Edinburgh from a session at the Bru House in Dublin.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about my website, Fiddle Studio and how that got started. I've had the Fiddle Studio website since about 2009. I went back to see when the date of the first post was. I was teaching fiddle before that, my first job out of college was as a violin and fiddle teacher at the Kanack School in Rochester, New York. 

Teaching at the Kanack School was fun because the kids were already learning by ear and playing music by ear, this was a Suzuki school. They were also learning to improvise, because Alice Kanack the founder of the school has a wonderful method for teaching children a creative approach to improvising. 

So I went in there and started teaching fiddle tunes to these kids. And they just picked it up really quickly. And for years, when I wanted to send somebody home with a reference to practice at home, I had a binder full of photocopies of fiddle tunes, except that they weren't always the exact version that I played. So I'd be crossing notes out or writing in different numbers above. I had the tape recorder, stick a tape in there, make a recording of me playing the tune and give it to my student as a reference. 

Although as time went on, fewer and fewer people had a way to play a tape. Sometimes they could play it in their car only and eventually no one could play it at all. And I really wanted another way for my students to practice at home to be able to look at the sheet music, listen to the tune and have a reference for that. So that was when I got the fiddle studio domain and I started putting sheet music up on the website and sound files that I collected sometimes at school, at Fiddle Camp, or that I recorded and I used it for many years. 

Every time I had a student who was learning a tune that's when I would post it on Fiddle Studio and say go go look it up on the website and practice it there. I would say in later years, I use the website less because I was more likely just to record it on their phone. Okay, get your phone out, press record play the tune for them and have them just take a picture you know if I have the sheet music with me just take a picture of it.

 So that's a little bit about my website Fiddle Studio. Our tune today is from that same Irish session that I went to in Dublin, Ireland at a bar called the Bru House, and this was in June of 2022. They played the Flowers of Edinburgh, played it as a hornpipe. I grew up playing this tune as a New England tune. It's really a Scottish tune but I grew up playing it as a reel but this is a setting of it as a hornpipe. And I've also actually after looking it up, I've see that it's used a lot as a Morris dance tune also, I really liked it as a hornpipe. When we play it will play it a little slow. Try to get that hornpipe sound for you. 

There is a lot of speculation online about what the name might mean. I saw on the Session somebody was talking about the Flowers of Edinburgh being a sarcastic way to refer to the contents of chamber pots being thrown out of the windows onto the streets of Edinburgh. But a lot of tunes are named after the flower of this place or flower of that place. It often would just refer to a beautiful woman who lived there.

So we don't know if it's referring to somebody lovely who lived in Edinburgh or the stench of the city or what else it could be talking about. This is a very old tune. I saw it referenced in John Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances Volume Two out of London 1737. So this tune has been around a lot and it is a Scottish tune, but it was being played in an Irish session. Will wonders never cease. Charley and I are gonna play it here for you.

Thanks so much for listening. You can head over to fiddlestudio.com for the sheet music to this and all of the tunes I teach. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.

How I Got Started Fiddling (Lark on the Strand)

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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'm bringing you a setting of The Lark on the Strand from a session at the Bru House in Dublin, Ireland. Hello, everyone, I hope you're well, having a great day today.

Because it's the very first episode I'm going to talk a little bit about how I got into fiddle and fiddling. I started the violin at a very young age, I was three years old, when I began taking violin lessons and learning the violin. I had a lot of exposure to traditional music through my parents who were folk singers and musicians, and my father especially, John Wobus, plays the piano. And he also plays a lot of other instruments, including the fiddle. So he was very interested in traditional music, and he would teach me fiddle tunes, we would play them together on fiddle and piano, and he also played a lot of records for me.

One of the records we listened to a lot was the Miller brothers because they played on fiddle and piano. So I was exposed to a lot of that New England sound from a very early age. It was Rodney Miller on the fiddle, and his brother, I believe, Randy Miller on the piano, and they sounded really good. When I played with my dad, we really went for that sound, fiddle and piano, very traditional. 

We also listened to a lot of a lot of Liz Carroll, a real Irish sound out of Chicago, and another fiddler from north of the border, French Canadian named Jean Carignon. His bowing is so good. I as a kid, I did not understand how he could be getting that sound. And even later on when I was older, and I had learned classical bow strokes, like sautille, et cetera, I still could not replicate the sound that he got with his bow. He really was amazing. I heard he was a taxi driver. Actually, if you are not familiar with Jean Carignon, you want to hear some amazing French Canadian fiddling do go check him out. 

When I got older, my dad could bring me along to a gig. So he would play with his band for Contra dances. He mostly played piano if I knew a tune or two, I could sit in and play with the band. And I liked doing that. And when I got old enough that I knew enough tunes maybe 12, 13 years old, my dad went ahead and booked a gig for him and me to do on fiddle and piano and that was when we started playing our band was called Contranella. We took the word contra dance and the word Petronella. And we just combined them Contranella. Way back then in the I guess early 90s is when we pick the name and we stuck with it ever since. 

When we we still play we call ourselves Contranella, now my husband sits in. So we started playing dances and playing for dances has been my primary mode of performing on fiddle. I have played occasional concerts, I definitely teach a lot of fiddle. I love jamming and you know playing in kitchens. My first love was always playing for dancers for contra dances. 

So that's a little bit about my background as a fiddler. Our tune for today is from a session at the Bru House in the Fairview neighborhood of Dublin. I went to Ireland in June with my family, my husband and my three kids. We had a great time I will talk about it more on future podcasts. But one of the things that we did was we went to this session that was held we were staying in the neighborhood of Clontarf and just down the road and Fairview they had a weeknight session at a bar called the Bru House. 

They had a wonderful session there that night and one of the tunes they played is the Lark on the Strand. This tune is a jig in G major. You can find people arguing a little bit about the A part which is based around the A is a resting tone. Maybe it's A modal, but the B part is definitely in G major. And for me, I'll just think about it as a G major jig. If I'm wondering where to put it in a set, G major works. You can find the sheet music for this tune at my website, which is called Fiddle Studio, just like the name of the podcast. You can go to fiddle studio.com, I'll go ahead and post the sheet music there. 

When I was looking into this tune, I also saw it under the name of the Stolen Purse. So you might find it there but most people call it the Lark on the Strand. It's a very old tune, it was mentioned in the O'Neill's Irish collection from 1850. So older than that, not a clear composer on this tune. I found a nice recording of it online played by Thomas Keenan on a Paddy Keenan album. He had an early album with some siblings, including Thomas there's a recording on that album of this tune played on the whistle. It's on YouTube check that out and sounded really good.

So, Charley and I are going to play it here for you. I'll be on the fiddle and my husband Charley Beller is playing guitar. Ready. 

Hey, thanks so much for listening you can head over to fiddlestudio.com for the sheet music to this and all of the tunes I teach. I'll be back next time with another tune for you, have a wonderful day.

Behind the Bush in the Garden

 

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Boys of the Town

 

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Bonnie Kate

 

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Bill Harte's Jig

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Bill Harte's Jig sheet music