BEST OF: How to play in tune (The Kilmovee)

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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 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 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. There's two different issues there. It's a little easier to fix issues that are happening just with your hand. There's three parts of your hand. There's just where your hand is on the fingerboard. Then there's getting your finger spacing and finger placement correct. 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 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. Then it sounded fine. Make sure your hand's 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 tune 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 every time you play a three, you're blocking your fingers down your two, just automatically going to that high two spot, oh, you're going to 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 bass line, is very helpful in developing the instinct to put your two in the right place. And that connects to the third level of tuning, even once your hand's in the right place and you're getting your fingers 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 accompaniment I didn't mean 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 that'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 to react to what you're hearing. So those are things you can work on. Stop being sliding your thumb back and forth on the neck, swinging your elbow back and forth. Make sure your arm is unlocked, shaking your hand out, trying 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 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. Dermot was born and raised in the town Derry Tavrain 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 years of his life. He passed away at the age of 48. 

This tune I 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. Hey, thanks for listening. You can head over to fiddlestudio.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. 

Cross Tuning (All's Quiet)

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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 All's Quiet from the album Broke the Floor by Meg Wobus and Charley Beller. 

Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we're going to be talking about cross tuning, finishing up my podcast recording here. There's a lot of Tuesdays in October I've been trying to do an interview kind of once a month, so we'll probably be hearing that. Next week will be my interview with Casey Murray, a cellist who plays fiddle and a fabulous musician with the band Corner House, and then we'll be doing some new topics for November. 

There are a lot of things to talk about with the fiddle, but my kids kind of tease me that my eventually I'll just be writing about like the third finger, the fourth finger, the second finger, because I'll just run out of things to say. If you have an idea for a podcast, something you'd like to hear about, please let me know. That would be great. 

We're going to be talking about cross tuning and this is a topic that I know some things about and I'll share that with you and I want you know if you don't know anything about cross tuning it'll probably be helpful, but I am in no way an expert on cross tuning. I really didn't even start cross tuning my own fiddle until, like the last six months, got inspired to learn about that and get more into it. So in classical music we usually don't change the tuning, it's just set G, D, A, E and because I grew up in the New England tradition and a lot of those fiddling traditions that they use piano and piano is a very traditional instrument for New England fiddling the piano can play pretty easily in most keys so the fiddlers don't change the tuning because they might want to play. 

I mean there's New England tunes in B flat and F and all kinds of fun keys that a guitar player at an Irish session may decline to play a tune in B flat, but a piano player it's probably not too bad. They can do it no problem. So I didn't grow up cross tuning. It is used, I guess, very occasionally in Irish or Scottish. I saw some examples online. 

But really the place where people are most often changing the tuning of the strings of their fiddle and then playing fiddle like that with strings that are tuned to a different set of notes is in old time and the different tunings have different names. You can go and look up the Wikipedia article on cross tuning. It gives you a little bit of an indication. There's one called Cajun tuning Sawmill, I've heard of that. Some of them are named after like what, the, what the letters spell out. 

So if you tune your fiddle G, d, a and then the top string D, so you've tuned your E down a whole step to D, what people call that G-dad. There's a tuning called Dead Man's Tuning. Yeah, cross tuning, cross A, that A-E-A-E tuning. That's the one I've used the most. Calico tuning with the C-sharp. I don't know any tunes that use calico tuning. 

So there are a lot of different ways you can tune a fiddle. I mean there's no law saying that the bottom note of a fiddle has to be G. You just turn that peg, turn it up to A and you've cross tuned your fiddle. So that's what cross tuning is. It's tuning one or more strings on your fiddle to a different note. 

When you hear someone playing with a lot of double stops and drones and a lot of close harmonies, often a kind of lonesome sound, it sounds thick, like there's a lot of strings and intervals that you're not usually used to hearing on fiddle. They've cross tuned their fiddle and it's a beautiful way to incorporate drones into old-time tunes and it's a very unique sound. There's a lot of tunes that you really can't get to sound complete without cross tuning. 

Or you listen to how someone plays it and I'm thinking like well, I could hold my fingers and do all these complicated double stops to try to recreate that, or I could just tune my E down to a D and then I'm going to have that D drone across the top of the of the tune. So if you can't get it to sound right with your drones, you might need to cross tune. It's common enough for old-time that if you hear an old-time fiddler at a performance at like a dance or a concert, they may actually have multiple fiddles there. 

So they'll have a fiddle that's already been tuned up into A A-E-A-E so that they because when you change the tension of the strings tune it to a different note, it's gonna kind of make the other strings on the fiddle go off a little and the fiddle's gonna have a hard time settling into that new tuning quickly. So that's why people will have multiple fiddles for performing tunes in different tunings In a jam. 

Usually everyone just stops and says, okay, no more G tunes, we're changing to D or we're going to A now, and everyone will stop and adjust their tuning. If you're gonna cross tune on a regular basis, you definitely want to have fine tuners and probably one of those little micro tuner guys you know that you put on the shoulder of your violin so that you can just double check your strings. That's really easy to do and then you've got the fine tuners. So you're not always using the pegs, but you're using these little little bitty screws at the top of the fiddle to get your strings in tune. 

So the, the alternate tuning, the cross tuning that I most familiar with, is is that a tuning a, e, a, e, and the violin or the fiddle sounds completely different. I mean, my violin sounds really different, louder for sure. I mean you'll. You'll hear people say, oh my gosh, the. The jam got so loud after everyone tuned up to a because those bottom strings are tighter now and there's going to be a different resonance coming out of the instrument. 

You've got more overtones, the whole thing is going to be louder and more resonant and kind of kind of amazing sounding. But we, we shouldn't. But along with that amazing sound that you're going to get when you cross tune, it is fingered differently. So so don't panic. I mean, if you've never, ever played a different instrument you've only played fiddle and it's only been G,D A, E it is going to make your brain buzz a little to try to play with a string tuned to a different note. 

But it's not rocket science, you know, it's not like inventing the wheel. If you've tried to pick out a little tune on the ukulele or a little tune on the piano, I mean it's basically like that. To me it feels like playing on a slightly different instrument to play cross tuning, and there often aren't a a ton of notes on those other strings. So you just have to get used to like, yes, the first time you play an F sharp with your one, it's going to feel funny. 

I mean, if you've, if you've done a lot of classical, it's a little bit like playing in second position or something. But you get a feel for it pretty quickly and then it's just a different way of playing that tune. And you know what, if you put the wrong finger down and a different note comes out, it's not the end of the world, it's just fiddling, it's just folk music, not too big of a deal, as with all playing by ear and we talked about this earlier this month you want to be curious, play around with it. 

Cross tuning definitely goes hand in hand with droning. So if you're interested in getting this kind of gorgeous, loud cross tuned fiddle sound, you want to practice your droning too. I have an episode on droning. Episode 15 is called double stops and drones, one of my most popular episodes. I also have a whole course at fiddle studio. If you, if you really want to dig in and practice all different ways of droning and and get a lot of tips for that, you can look up my droning course and learning to drone. 

Be careful when you're tuning. You don't want to break a string. Most, most strings break when you're you're turning the wrong peg, you know. So you want your A to sound different, but you're you're turning the D string. You're like why isn't the A getting higher or lower? But you're turning the wrong peg, and then that you can actually break a string that way. So just be careful anytime you're tuning your violin. You don't want to break your strings, since they're a little pricey, I guess, especially if you get the good ones, but have your fine tuners and your little micro tuner and, yeah, look up some, look up some fun cross tunes. Get your drones happening. Such a such a great sound. 

Our tune for today is a jig from my album. This will be the last tune I'm sharing from my album, broke the floor. You can look for it. Look for it online. It's called broke the floor by Meg Wobus and Charley Beller. It's on my bandcamp, megwobus.bandcamp.com, or just look. You know, look in the description of the podcast. Hopefully I'll stick a link in there. 

I was thinking about Irish sessions when I was writing this tune and trying to maybe write a jig that would fit in a session. That would sound a little bit Irish or at least not too contradancy. I'm not sure I achieved that. It does have the key switch at the beginning of the B part which is I mean, frankly it's a very New England, french, Canadian thing. I can't completely shake that. You know, when you're raised in it and steeped in it, I always have that, those New England habits, that they creep in, even when I'm trying to write an Irish tune. So key change in the B parts a little little northern sounding but it's a little bit like an Irish jig. We'll see. I kind of like that. This tune is mostly just a scale. You know you can do a lot with a scale. It's kind of that D-scale and then I just skipped a note, so we'll hear it now. It's a jig. It's called All's Quiet.

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?

Playing Backup on Fiddle (Tatter Jack Walsh)

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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 Tatter Jack Walsh from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today I'm going to be talking about playing backup on the fiddle. So a lot of what we talk about when we talk about playing backup involves knowing chords. So knowing about the music theory of chords, or sometimes you'll hear people call it rhythm. They'll say rhythm guitar, or playing rhythm on the piano. And they don't actually mean the rhythm, like the drums, they mean playing the chords, the backup notes that go with the melody, being able to play rhythm on an instrument, sort of.

Understanding chords and how they work is very, very useful. For playing backup, I'm going to talk about the different ways that I play backup for singers and for other instruments. But initially, if you don't have experience with chords, learning that learning about chords, either on the fiddle the music theory of chords on the fiddle, or on an instrument like piano or guitar, so that you know, you know, if somebody wrote out on a page, it's a G chord, and then an F chord, and then a C chord. Or even if they told you, you know, it's one and then two, and five, having an understanding of what that means and what those notes are, will make playing backup much easier. 

Can you play backup, if you don't know music theory, you don't know chords at all? You totally can. If you listen to what you're playing, and you can hear if it lines up and sounds good. With the other musicians, then you're playing backup, it is a little harder, it's a little more confusing to play for me to play backup with music that's completely unfamiliar. If I don't have any idea if somebody can't tell me the chords, or I don't have them written down, and I'm just constantly listening for what they are, and trying to adjust what I'm doing to that you have to, there's a lot more things you have to do at once. 

So knowing the chords, being able to read them off a chord chart, that's going to make it easier. Let's back up and talk about backup. So there's kind of two ways that you might end up playing backup, one would be behind a singer. And I'll talk about that first. And the other one would be behind other instruments, you might play in a band where you do both. In terms of playing for singers, this would be if you play in a band, country or bluegrass band. I actually haven't ever played in a in a band like that I've sat in a lot with bands. 

Also the kind of playing you might do at a group singing event or campfire singing, where people are singing, but there's some instruments, and you might play along with their singing. And then you might have the opportunity to play a solo like between verses. This also goes for services for services at church or synagogue. And I do a lot of that. 

As I said before, having the chords written out. It's one less thing to think about. And it can be very useful because it gives you a little roadmap for what groups of notes are going to sound good to choose from. And at first, you know, when I first started reading off chord charts, which would just be the melody maybe the words and the notes written up for the melody and then above it, the A minor than E minor, back and forth and it tells you were in the song, the chords change. 

And I would have to be thinking like oh, it's an an A minor chord, what's in an E minor chord. But as I practice those, you know, those arpeggios, and I got better at knowing right away because there aren't that many different chords, especially in you know, fiddle tunes where it's just, there are only a few common keys. So I got much faster at just from reading the chord symbol, kind of immediately knowing what notes would sound good with that. 

So the playing that you do with a singer, you're often playing an introduction to the song so it could be just the melody of the song sometimes the very opening of the song and then the singer starts again with the opening. Sometimes you play the end end of the song, and then the singer starts from the beginning, those both work as introductions, some people will play a lick or, you know, a little groove to get the song going before the singer comes in. 

And then a lot of times, the first thing I do, when playing with a singer is a stop. The very first verse, the very first chorus, is a time for the audience to really focus on the singer on the words and the melody, and getting a sense of what the song is about, following along, getting used to the melody. And I often don't play any fills or if I do, it's very, very minimal at the beginning. 

That's pretty common, a lot of times in a band, people will will actually direct me and say, don't, don't play at all, on the first verse, the first chorus come in after that. So when you do come in, what do you come in doing? Well, we're normally not playing the melody of the song, along with the singer, I would be playing some very minimal things that don't cover up. While the singer is kind of singing through notes that are moving, that might be something like long tones, and fits a G chord, just a G, I might just play the chords if there isn't a bass player, or if there is a bass player, I'll be picking other notes from the chords not playing the root. 

If I'm comfortable, I can put in some passing notes between the chords, put in some rhythm that kind of matches up with the song. And the other thing you'll be doing is playing fills. So a lot of times in a song, there'll be a sentence and then kind of a musical phrase. And then the last note will be long, or it'll stop and they'll be a little bit of a few beats before the next phrase starts. And that's where you normally hear musician put in a little doodle doo doo doo doo doo.

Something they'll put in a fill to fill up that space. You know, if you listen to some bluegrass, if you listen to some country, you'll hear the fiddle, doing the fills in the fills are just kind of an up or a down a little lick that stays within the chord of that spot. And sometimes has kind of a relationship to the melody that the singer was just singing. But it's mostly just to bridge, you know, bridge over to the next phrase that they're gonna sing. So you've got very minimal playing while they're singing. And then you can put in the little fills in between the phrases. 

And then there's the solo. And the solo is basically a long film that would go either over the entire verse, Through the chords of the verse, or the entire chorus, or sometimes both. Solos are a time of, of kind of uncertainty, I would say, in music. And so to do a great job on a solo, you know, you have to really be in communication before it starts. 

Sometimes, the singer might say fiddle, okay, now it's really clear you're taking a solo, or people from the band are looking at you in a way that you understand you should take a solo or you're looking at them in a way that indicates I'm going to take the solo, or you might even say, I'm going to take a solo. And they're understanding that so you want it to be very clear. And another way you can make it clear is by jumping into the solo quickly playing that last little fill into the solo in a way that kind of shows you here a go, it's me, now it's my turn, I'm gonna take a solo and and then ending your solo appropriately at the appropriate time. 

So you want your timing of your solo, to be good and finished cleanly to leave a spot for the next person to jump into their solo or for the song to start back up again. Now, if we switch gears to talking about playing behind instruments, a lot of it is the same. But instead of a singer, another instrument would be playing the melody. So you can just not play. That's always an option. You don't always have to think of things to play, you can stop and it can be a nice change in texture, to not have that very, you know the fiddle sound, especially when you're just doing long tones after long tones after long tones. It really fills the space so then if you drop out, there's a change in the texture and it sounds good. 

Long tones are great behind other instruments with put in your passing notes. For fiddling in a lot of times we do the shuffles, people will do chops, if you're familiar with that. I think that harmonizing I do harmonize with singers, but even more so with have other instrumentalists playing a harmony. 

When I, when I was first learning harmonies I, I would either learn a set harmony almost like learning a tune to go with a melody. Or I would have someone else play the melody very, very slowly so that I could work out each note. And I might even write it down for myself, I know that I read chord charts, I'm generally just the easiest way for me to harmonize. If I know the tune well, or I, I'm reading it off the page, and I've got the chords there. I'm just taking notes from the chords that are near the melody, you know, I'm either above the melody or below the melody, and I'm kind of picking the notes from the chords that follow along with the melody. 

And it should sound good. I mean, that's what a harmony is. The one other thing you can do, if you it's a little bit more, I would say showing off and just harmonizing but I think of a desk can as a little different from harmonizing, it might not follow the exact rhythmic structure of the melody. But it would normally be up higher than the melody maybe even, you know, higher than that sort of big, long, broad notes above soaring. People like to hear this little soar above. Yeah, maybe for slower stuff. It's not really something you do on a fiddle tune when it's specifically another fiddle. Yeah, I it's different playing with another fiddle. I tend to harmonize when I can or give them some rhythm. I might not fill as much with a fiddle. 

If you want to check out some solos. If you want to hear some fiddle solos. I just was at a house concert the other night and I heard Noah VanNordstrand play with his band, the Faux Pas with some other amazing musicians, but Noah was playing fiddle. And he does little solos that are unique. They're astonishing in their technical ability. I said to my husband afterwards that's like Mendelssohn concerto level stuff that he's doing there was so fun for me to hear because I've known Noah for a really long time actually since before he played the fiddle. And now he was doing some of the most astonishing work taking a solo on the fiddle that I've that I've seen, and I've heard a lot of fiddle solo so yeah, look them up, go and see them if you can the faux pas or, or look them up online and watch note. Take some solos, blow my mind. 

Okay, let's talk about our tune. A tune today is Tatter Jack Walsh, a very well known popular Irish jig. And Tatter is like Father, like the priest. Although it's not clear to me that it was actually about a priest. This is what I found about this tune. Tatter Jack Walsh was John McWalter, son of Walter Walsh, lived in Castle hollow, and was a poet and he was married to this was back in like 1630. They really keep records in Ireland, I tell you, he was married to Johanna Strong or Johanna Strange, who was a member of an old Irish family and although John McWalter was not Irish he took on and was the quote I saw was more Irish than the Irishman. I'm not really sure what that meant. 

But he became a very well known poet and very distinguished and was known as Tatter Jack Walsh. The funny thing about this tune is that, I guess it's people put words to it because I kept finding songs to the tune of Tatter Jack Walsh. There's a song called The Woman who Robbed me the Price of My Pig. Another song, the Dean's Pamphlet, which was all about different kinds of fabric for some reason, and another song called King Lear. So you can look up a lot of different songs or you can just play the tune as a dance tune with no words, which is what we're going to do. Okay, here we go.

Up and Down bows on the fiddle (The Coming of Spring)

Sheet music for The Coming of Spring by Paddy O'Brien. Hear the tune and discussion on the Fiddle Studio Podcast on Apple Music or 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 Coming of Spring by Paddy O'Brien from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about up and down bows. This is an insider topic if there ever was one, but I like to overthink things I like to get in the weeds. I'm that kind of fiddle teacher. So let's talk about up bows and down bows, it's going to be great. 

This is a discussion more for beginners, it's a very common beginner question. If you're not a beginner, well, there may be an opportunity for you to help explain this to beginners, at some point, I hope this can be helpful with that. 

What is an up bow and a down bow. Um, the E string. It's exactly what it sounds like. You're playing on the E string and you're playing an up bow, the bow is normally going up, the tip is getting closer to the ceiling or the sky. And if you're playing a down bow, the frog is getting closer to the floor, your bow is going down. 

If you're not on the E string, it's a little more of a side to side motion. So it's not super intuitive which way is up or down. But it's always the same. If you're going towards the tip that's a down bow. If you're going towards the frog, that's an up bow on any string, E string, A string, any of them towards the tip down towards the frog up. 

It is pretty widespread to play down on the downbeat. And it's not just because they have the same name down down. Start near the frog and the frog is a heavier part of the bow and makes basically the bow near the frog is heavier and will make of heavier sound down bows on the downbeat. Give the beat that heavy sound with the beginning of the note being louder, fuller.

The up bow has a lighter start to it because you're starting from just that part of the bow weighs less. And it's a little further away from your point of control. So it's going to be a little lighter. So I have a personal take on this, which is that down bows are a little more intuitive. If you think about the difference between hammering down on a nail or like trying to hammer up to hammer a nail into the ceiling. I just think we're more practiced with that downward motion. 

And so that might be another reason that downvotes tend to be a little stronger, a little more in control. And they're generally being played on the downbeat. Because a lot of music is organized that the downbeat is the important strong beat. So if you think about starting down on a downbeat, Old Joe Clark da da dum bum bum ba starts on the downbeat, you'd start on a down bow.

With a tune like the march Meeting of the Waters, it has a pickup note kind of a pre note before the downbeat dun da dum bump. So the pickup would be up bow so that you're playing down bow on the downbeat. 

Now, this all goes out the window when we start talking about shuffles and backbeat, emphasizing the two and the four. When I'm playing reels, and I'm hitting that two and four hard. I'm adding in slurs and it's just what you would expect. I'm using my down bow on those beats because I want to have those be heavier, louder, bring them out more. 

So slurring up, up bow, and the less important notes but on the two and the four the back beats and playing a down bow to kind of bring it out heavy, spit it out. Some people do it backwards from that there's not a wrong way to do your own personal bowing that you're comfortable with. Not in fiddling.

Now for classical music. The bowing is basically part of the composition so there's a right and wrong way to do it. And classical violin players do worry a lot of About if their bows are in sync, you know, like, the way dancers would try to make their legs or their arms and sink them in the orchestra, they want all your bows to be in sync.

With Fiddler's it's all can almost be a problem if it's too in sync because you lose some of the variety, the improvised feel. It can look good, but I don't know. Personal opinion. I don't think it's really fiddling if the bowing is exactly the same all the time, never changing. 

I improvise my bowings, there's a lot of bowings, I do the same or the same patterns. But if I'm playing a tune more than once, I don't want to use the same bowings because I want to bring out different rhythmic aspects of the tune, make it smoother, make it bouncier.

I mean the outcome of that is that I wouldn't worry too much about getting the bowing exactly right. Or if you're bowing tends to be a little different from other people's what you're comfortable with. Because for fiddling, there's not really a wrong way to do it. Don't worry about it too much. But you know, down on the downbeat.

Our tune today is another Paddy O'Brien tune. This is the jig Coming of Spring and appropriate tune to be playing in March. It is from a session at the Arthouse bar in Baltimore. This is a three part jig. I love these three part jigs actually, Paddy, I guess, played this tune with another jig called Black Lough. 

And Seana Davey and Stephen Doherty played it on the Esdee sessions. You can look that up and Liosa Murphy also plays it on her album Skylark. So pretty well known Patty O'Brien tune. There are so many great Paddy O'Brien tunes, you can you know, if you want a collection of them for yourself, you can look up Eileen O'Brien Paddy's daughter get a collection of tunes composed by Paddy O'Brien. 

So there was a player on the session writing about this tune and using it for a certain Irish ornament. They called it smearing. This is kind of sliding up into a note. You hear it a lot in Old Time. Certainly bluegrass is certainly here in klezmer, which is another style that I play. But it's not always as well known, especially in an Irish jig. 

It has a has kind of a lonesome sound. I think it has a lonesome sound in Old Time, or an Irish. So some of these high notes, all these quarter notes, the high G's in the in the third part, you can slide up into them. And if you want to experiment, you can try sliding and not quite getting to them. That's that Liz Carroll technique I've been experimenting with. 

But this is the Coming of Spring. And yeah, I'm learning all these and learning all these accordion tunes to get to know them all. You ready? Okay.

Learning to improvise (Fly in the Porter)

Sheet music for Fly in the Porter by Paddy O'Brien as played in Baltimore. Hear the tune and discussion on the Fiddle Studio podcast on Apple Music or 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 Fly in the Porter by Paddy O'Brien from a session at the Arthouse Bar in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about getting started with improvising. I love to improvise. I improvise a lot. But I never did any improvising growing up. I'm thinking back and trying to remember if I made up my own music, or just played music that my teacher or my dad gave me that I heard No, I never did. I didn't do any improvising. 

I think this is a real shame. The way kids are educated in music is so different from how they're educated in other creative arts like art, or writing, where it's a balance between looking at what other people have made and created. And then creating your own stuff. I mean, even in language, we don't just say all the things other people say we're constantly making up our own things to say, in art, people make up their own art and in writing, people write their own writing. 

And then somehow in music, it's different. And in the classical world, and in the traditional music world has a lot of imitation. I don't know, maybe that sounds kind of harsh. Well, I started thinking about this a lot when I went to work for Alice Kanack. Alice connect was a Suzuki teacher, and she trained me. She had been teaching in New York. And she was a creative person. I think she had a degree in composition.

But she was she was teaching violin lessons spent some of her time working on improvising. Basically, I think at first it was just a way to make it fun for kids. Teach them musical concepts. You know, there's a lot that improvising can work on that's not specifically creative, like it can help your tuning, it can help your tone. 

But she does tell a story about working with a student who was having a very hard time learning and memorizing classical repertoire. But when she would improvise with him, he was just amazing off the charts, improviser creative creator of music, she began to see that, you know, not everybody was strong, and both that, that there were a lot of kids that weren't being served, because they were just expected to learn and imitate, and not being coached in creating their own music. But because of the way their brains were wired, or, you know, just as a personal thing, they would get a lot more out of the violin, or music, if they were encouraged to and taught how to make their own. 

So we would do a lot of improvising with the kids. And I, I love it. A little group of fiddlers at my kids school, and we started improv games in the fall. And they could not do them at all. There was fear and total lack of rhythm and creative ideas. And oh my gosh, I hope they don't listen to this. But there's been a ton of progress, just playing games with them, getting them into improvising. It's a completely different story. 

Now when we, when we improvise together, they're really on top of it and they make things up, they fit it together rhythmically. They play backup to each other. They play in the right key just instinctively. It's so cool. So that's what improvising can do. Some of the best musicians that I have met. 

You know, I think it's common with jazz musicians that you'll learn that part of their musical upbringing. exploration was a lot of time by themselves kind of making things up that they thought sounded good. But I've met a lot of really incredible classical musicians who also describe that. I mean, Alice Kanack was one of them. 

But my Professor Lynn Blakeslee, she wants just told me off the cuff. Oh, yeah, I used to just, she improvised this thing for me. And I was like, what was that? And she said, I was just making that up. That's how I used to work. up, I would just spend hours making up things that I thought sounded beautiful on the violin. I don't think that was a coincidence that she got so good at violin that she was a professor at Eastman. 

Here's one of the things I got from learning to improvise. I just learned a lot more about how to create the kind of music that I really enjoy. And love is learning that certain chord progressions, certain kinds of melodies, were the ones that I really responded to, you know that there was a recipe for it. 

It's like knowing your favorite movie director, you don't have to just watch random movies, and hope that one of them really speaks to you, you know that if you watch this particular person's movie, that it's probably going to be made in a way that you really like. So when you dabble in music, and you're creating with it, and you're experimenting with it, you get to know what you like. I think it's really good. Not even really talking about playing over chord changes. That's a different thing. It's great to do that. 

I'm just talking about being creative with music. If you get out your fiddle, and you feel a little silly, and you're like, where do I start? How do I try to make something up? A lot of kids will start with making up riffs making up just a little pattern that repeats that they liked the sound of my oldest child used to do that all the time, just pick up the violin, pick up a little riff a little repeating melody, played a few times. Play around with that. 

I play a game called questions and answers. And you can even play this with yourself or with somebody else. One person plays a few notes. Bom bom, bom, bom, bom. And the other person makes up a little answer bom bom, bom, bom, bom. And you can go back and forth. And I'll play that a call it questions and answers with adults and with kids, just musically going back and forth. And eventually, as we get to longer phrases, and we do more styles, like do it in a jig style in a six, eight rhythm, then I'll have them start making up their own tunes. I mean, an a part is just a question and an answer. And the second half is like the same question with a different answer. It's kind of a way into that. Questions and Answers. 

So try some improvising. It's just exploring. You can close the door. Nobody has to hear. Try it out. 

Our tune for today is a setting of Fly in the Porter. This is a jig from an Irish session at the Arthouse bar in Baltimore, Maryland. It's a jig by Paddy O'Brien. I did another Paddy O'Brien tune. O'Brian was a BC accordion player. Oh, yeah, Paddy had written the tune, Dinny O'Brien's for his father. 

We play a lot of Paddy O'Brien tunes at this session, because there's an accordion player, Billy McComiskey who comes to the session. He lives in Baltimore. He's pretty famous Irish accordion player, and a really nice friendly guy. And pretty often he will come by the session and play and when he does, we play a lot of Yeah, accordion centric Irish tunes. 

So I'm trying to learn them. So I can, I can keep up with that. Billy McComiskey was taught by Sean McGlinn, who played in the East Galway style, and won all Ireland competitions all through the 70s and 80s. 

His sons will come to and they play accordion. And it's funny to see Billy and his sons and they all have kind of similar accordions with a similar strap, and they hold it like at the same angle. So if they're all sitting next to each other, it's like all these strap an angled accordion, and then they play you know the body language of their playing and the rhythm is so similar because they played together for so many years. 

I could just sort of sit there and watch Billy play accordion with his sons all day. Billy is pretty funny if he if he sees me. I'm trying to learn these tunes so I can play with him. If he sees me just sitting and I don't know a tune in. I'm spacing out. I'm not trying to learn it here like pick up his phone and wave it at me because he wants me to record it and go home and learn it. Of course Charley always records the session. 

So this might just be in my head. But I think it can be good manners to take your phone out if it's an unfamiliar tune. And you know, you open voice memo, you put it on the table and you record it. 

It's nice if you're playing a tune. When you're like, Oh, this is a good tune. I'm sounding good on this, but not many people know it, but if they're recording it, you're like, oh, but they really like, they like the way I'm playing it and they want to go home and learn it. So it's kind of a compliment. 

So maybe I'm offending Billy, when I'm doing that. He's like, You need to work on these tunes. So here I am with a podcast working on these tunes, Paddy O'Brien tune, I think there's another Paddy O'Brien tune I'm going to do in March. Also, because they're all pulled from the same accordion Irish session. 

Anyway, if you go look at Fly in the Porter on the Session, there's some discussion about permission, I guess somebody recorded it and called it traditional. This stuff is a little tricky in the folk music world a lot of times, I guess it's because none of us really make a lot of money in folk music. We don't necessarily pay royalties, you know, just informal permission is usually all you need to record somebody's tune. 

Unless it's a real moneymaker. I think. Certainly, Ashokan Farewell was a whole different kettle of fish for Jay Ungar, who I think wanted it to be more like most of folk music where it's just freely distributed for education purposes, or it's nice if somebody asks permission to record it. But you don't necessarily sell that right but he was kind of tied up with a company trying to control the rights to Ashokan Farewell because it was so famous. 

There's so there's a little bit of a back and forth I think the person who recorded it and didn't attribute it, like wrote an apology and posted it on the session. All this stuff. I was reading through it, but we're gonna play Fly in the Porter Yeah, this jig in D.

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.

Switching from classical to fiddle (Stool of Repentance)

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 Stool of Repentance from a workshop with Jenna Moynihan.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to be talking about switching from classical violin to fiddle. Coming over to the dark side. This applies to people who know the basics of violin and read sheet music. If you play some classical violin now, or you played when you were a kid, you were younger. This is my advice for how to get started with fiddling.

If your fingers have really been on strings at all, even if it was viola, cello, I would argue guitar, you have activated that part of your brain, your left hand, the fingers are used to being on strings. Even if you haven't played in a long time ago, it was a different instrument. In my experience, it is still easier for those players who have had their fingers on strings. To pick up the fiddle and learn it. I think it gives you an advantage. 

If you haven't played in a while, just a little tip, it's a good time to reset your technique if you're picking it back up. By reset your technique, I mostly mean identify the ways you are tense. And try to learn to relax. If you're a teacher when you were 10, or you were 15 did not work on relaxing your shoulders, relaxing your arms, relaxing your hands, you're going to have some tension there. That's an old habit. But if you're restarting after a long break, that's an opportunity for you to reset what's happening with your body. Look into technique. Try to identify with the mirror, or just feeling in your body what's going on, where things are tense and get some advice about how to loosen that up. It's a good time to do that. 

Another important component if you're starting fiddle, you should be listening to fiddling. You know if you learn classical, that's kind of one dialect. And if you're switching over to fiddle, whatever style it is, if you want to learn Cajun fiddle, if you're getting into old time fiddle, to different dialect from what you're used to. You should be listening to it a lot to just get the sound of it in your ear. That'll make a difference for you. 

The fiddle sound, so sounding like a fiddler while you're playing a fiddle tune. If you know how to read music, you can sit down and play Soldier's Joy. You can play through a fiddle tune, but it won't sound like fiddling. Where does that sound come from? It comes first from the right arm from your bowing. I wouldn't even worry about doing fancy things with your left hand. See if you can start to learn how to get the different components of fiddle sound with your right arm and then drill them practice them with scales. You play classical violence you know all about scales. 

You can learn a basic shuffle, you know just Tick ticket Tick ticket and practice it with an accent on the offbeat. One of my colleagues Daphne she calls it Strawberry, strawberry strawberry and she tells the kids punch the berry, strawBERRY, strawBERRY strawBERRY. Work on that shuffling with a heavy accent.

Also work on your swing, Dakka Dakka Dakka Dakka or even kind of accenting the shorter note. You can work on using very small bows, fiddlers, at least when they're playing dance tunes do not use a lot of bow so using less bow. Even things like bite and grit. And you can practice all of these fiddling techniques in your right arm and your bowing with scales or with little ones during warm ups. 

You know, slow it down and use it to rehearse the different parts of fiddle style that you're learning in your bow arm. Also learn some slowing patterns basic jigs slurring Dakka Dakka Dakka Dakka de Yukka to to learn the Georgia shuffle, practice those and scales and then when you're ready to add in some left hand ornaments that will make it sound fiddly. You can do those in skills you can do them in easy fiddle tunes.

One of the workshops I went to they had us put an ornament in. And then they said, okay, now put it on these notes, more notes. Like, Okay, now put on these notes. Now play the tune and do that ornament on every single note, it sounds ridiculous. But I was like this is a great teaching tool, just do the ornament on every note. 

The other aspect of learning to fiddle besides just what's happening with your bow arm, and what's happening with your left hand is learning to play by ear, which is kind of learning to learn by ear, and also play by ear, be comfortable without the music, and play with others match what they're doing. So you're not just internalizing a beat and playing off a sheet, you are having a musical relationship with other people. 

And the way that Bruce Molsky, great Old-Time fiddler talked about this, at the little conference that I went to is that you want to connect what you're hearing, with singing, and then playing. So it's like, in your brain, your ears with your voice, your memory of the tune with your fingers. And you want to listen, sing, play, whatever the best way for you to do that is if you have someone you're learning from by ear, if you can learn in chunks, or learn to sing it, and then work it out yourself on your instrument, you want to start getting the dunes organized in your memory without a visual reference.

Doesn't mean you can't go and play them off the sheet just to check things. I don't think that's a problem at all. In fact, I like it when my students are a little more advanced practice transcriptions of jazz solos of fiddle tunes. In my book three, I put in a bunch of basically transcriptions of my playing. So I put in all the slurs and ornaments that I use. And I think those are useful because you're playing them, experiencing them that way. If you are good at reading music, it's a great way in but I wouldn't just practice transcriptions. 

You also want to develop your ear and your ability to play where you're listening to what you're doing, and you're listening to what other people are doing. You're gonna love it. And the tunes aren't hard, so that's great. 

Our tune today is beginner tune. It's called the Stool of Repentance. It's a Scottish jig in D major that I learned from Jenna Moynahan at a session at Fiddle Hell. Jenna Moynahan is a great Scottish Fiddler in Boston. She has albums, and I think she teaches you can check her out. I first met Jenna in a string shop in Rochester, New York. I was a young teacher, and she was getting ready to go to Berkelee. So she already played the fiddle. She must have been like 17. 

And I happened to be in this string shop. And she was there at the same time trying out bows. And while she was trying out bows she was playing fiddle tunes. And she sounded great. And I said to her, Hey, who are you? Do you live around here? Do you want to come work at my camp? So I just on the spot, hired her to come kind of intern as a teenager, learn and teach at my middle camp in Rochester. And she came back for many, many years. I mean, she wasn't an intern for long.

 She was has been a professional now teaching and playing and now teaching at Fiddle Hell. So I really enjoyed going to Jenna's workshop, watching her teach this tune Stool of Repentance is I guess, a common beginner tune. It was new to me, but my Scottish repertoire is really small. So think I know a march or two that's about it. 

It's an A major, it reminded me a lot of Steamboat Quickstep, which is a beginner tune that I use out of the New England repertoire. So maybe there's a theme. A major jigs with arpeggios good for beginners. You could find it in a William Dixon manuscript from 1734. I don't know how you would find it in that. But that's where I saw it coming out of to very old traditional tune. 

So what is a stool of repentance? I guess it's an actual stool. This was in Scotland. In the Catholic Church, they would have a stool in church up in the front and was the stool of repentance. And you had to sit on it if you were in trouble. If you had done something that church did not agree with, and you'd have to sit up there for length of time or during the service. So then everyone was sort of looking at you shaming you. Maybe the priest would lecture you from the pulpit while you're on the store. It's a surprisingly happy tune forSuch a strange and dark history.

 We have it here for you, Stool of Repentance.

Thanks for listening, you can head over to fiddlestudio.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.

1. How I Got Started Fiddling (Lark on the Strand)

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 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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