How to get really good at the fiddle (Hob Dye)

Listen to the Fiddle Studio Podcast on Apple 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 Hob Dye from a jam at the Peabody Heights Brewery in Baltimore, Maryland.

But before I start, if you are enjoying the podcast, can I just ask that you go ahead and leave a rating or review? That would be great. While I'm recording this, this is actually the second time I've recorded this podcast because the first time I forgot to turn my mic on, I'm recording this in January and have a few ratings on Apple podcasts. 

But I don't have any reviews. So maybe you could be the first one. That would be amazing. I like this topic, how do you get really good at something because of course, I'm a teacher. And I think about this all the time. 

There is like a beginner vibe or energy, where people are really in a hurry to get very, very good at something, I'll often sit a really excited beginner down. And I will make an analogy about chess. 

So here's my chess analogy. How can you get really good at chess, like get a really high rating. And the scenario I like to spin is that a person makes a plan that every day, they're going to have coffee with their friends in the morning, and play chess, or play a couple games of chess, then go to work or whatever. 

So that's kind of the lifestyle part is designing your lifestyle, so that there's something that cues you to do it every day, and you kind of stack those minutes, stack those hours. But the other part of getting your chest rating really high is an evaluative part, like get that word right away to evaluate your playing, and figure out how to make it better. 

If that same person who was playing chess every morning over coffee, also would every night before bed, look back through the game and kind of see what Stockfish had to say about it. And maybe once a week, play through an old game of theirs and think about what they might have done differently. 

Well, that's going to make a big difference, too. And I think you get there, you get I don't know if you win a tournament, you get pretty good at chess, for fiddling, if you've got that desire to get really good. 

You want to think about your lifestyle, and how to plan to play fiddle every day, stack those minutes, stack those hours. And you want to plan for a way to evaluate what you're doing, whether it's getting feedback from someone else, being able to take that feedback. 

I mean, be careful that you aren't thinking so hard about evaluating what you're doing that you can get lost in the weeds with the thinking and the overanalyzing and I've had students really worried about all the different kinds of rosin they could be using. And they're like, what about this kind of what about that kind? 

And I might say something to them, like, instead of worrying about the rosin, what if you try to sink into the string and really get a good connection between your horsehair and your string? Try to get a sound that way not try to find the rosin that's going to, you know, get you your perfect sound. Someone could take that advice, or more often, they're just like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about the rosin? 

You don't want to be the Yeah, yeah, yeah, person. If you get feedback from a professional from a teacher, want to write that down, make a note and have a way to go back and look at it and think about it. 

I have a weightlifting coach right now. And everything she says, I write down, basically she comes over and says you needed to

push your knees out. She says that a lot about my squat. I write it down. Even if though I've written down, push your knees out six times, I'm still doing it well enough. And then I always look it over before my next set. 

This is really how you're going to make progress. Being able to take that feedback and apply it. My husband is kind of an expert at this. He's only been playing Irish flute a couple of years, but he's very good. But he played a reel for me, and he had this concern that it wasn't super rhythmic, very solid all the way through. 

And he was telling me what he thought could make it more rhythmic. And I gave him some other advice. I said, Well, actually, you know, I'm looking at him with my teacher eyes and my teacher ears. 

And I said, Well, I you know, I think you should prioritize playing with other people at least four hours a week and you know, metronome rhythms and I kind of went through the advice I would have given him if he were a fiddler coming to me saying, you know, my reel is kind of uneven. 

How do I, how do I make it really rhythmically solid. He started doing the stuff that I said, and then a couple of weeks later, it's like, his reel sounded better. It doesn't sound like a hard thing. But I think it can be I think, I think it can be, you want to get really good. 

Think about that chess player they meet they play games every morning, every night before they go to bed. They look over the game. You got to find a way to make that happen for you're fiddling. 

Our tune today is a it's a rag. I haven't done a rag yet. This is a rag called Hob Dye. It's in G major that we play at the old time jam here in Baltimore. And it was one of many tunes collected by the blind Fiddler Kenny Hall. It was in his, he has a book, Kenny Hall's music book from Mel Bay. 

And you can hear Kenny Hall play this on slippery Hill website, I think a recording back from 1974 with Jim Ringer on the guitar. And he said he learned it from Clara Desmond, and she said it was named after a Texas bootlegger who composed it. That's not clear at all. Most people just think it's referring to hob, hobbing, which is a machine term. 

To find out more about that I went to the Wikipedia article about hobs. It's funny, the article came with a warning label basically saying the words in this article are too technical to understand. Could somebody please simplify it for the Layperson. 

What I could get as a person who is not involved in machine learning machining, the machine trade was that hobbing is a process of cutting into a material to create gears. And just to finish up here, I'm going to read you a common list of hobs. So here's some hobs for you: 

• The roller chain sprocket hob
• The worm wheel hob
• The spline hob
• The chamfer hob
• The spur and helical gear hob
• The straight side spline hob
• The involute spline hob 
• The servation hob 
• And the semi topping gear hob.

So those are a bunch of hobs. This tune is called Hob Dye. I don't know why it's an A major chord in the B part but that's how we play it in Baltimore. So that's how Charley and I are gonna play for you now. Enjoy. 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 mic a fiddle (Jefferson City)

Sheet music for Jefferson City by Bill Katon. 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.

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 Jefferson City by Bill Katon from a session at the R House in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to talk about amplifying a fiddle, putting a microphone on a fiddle or amplifying it in some way. This does mean I'll be talking about things that I don't fully understand. 

But because I get this question a lot, I wanted to go ahead and let you know what I know. And what I could figure out researching this topic. And what I use because I what I use works pretty well for me. 

I guess the main issue with amplifying the sound of a violin is the screech factor. I pulled this quote from Recording Magazine with a discussion from recording engineers about the issue of trying to get a good violin sound through a microphone. 

They said "the top plate is tuned to a complex set of resonances, which beam out sound in all directions, producing the radiation pattern from hell." I guess that means the violin is difficult to record. 

Let's talk about the studio and then I'll talk about miking the violin for live performance. So in the studio, if you can, making it six feet away, is nice. That's that's how I get the best sound for my violin is it it has to be a little further away. Because the bow noise the kind of grit, the sounds of the bow scraping on the string are pretty loud. 

But as you get a few feet away and a few more feet away, the bow noise is less and the sound of the violin is more you can do that in the studio, you can get like a small diaphragm condenser microphone, put it six feet away, you can get a nice sound. 

However, that's kind of if you're layering a track one instrument at a time. And using a click track, a lot of folk music and traditional dance music bands like to record together that's how we recorded our album with Contranella. 

So we all played at the same time, then you have to make the instruments much closer try to cut down on bleed. In that situation, you would be putting a microphone maybe 8 to 10 inches from the violin and do what you can to try to cut down on the bow scraping noise.

It does require that the player hold still in one spot. Because if it's only eight inches away, if you're moving around, the sound is going to come in and out get louder and softer. So if you can't hold still, then you need to mic directly on the instrument something that can clip on. 

And for live performances. Most people will use a clip on if they have it and it's for that reason so you can move around also can cut down on issues of feedback because you can point it directly at the instrument so it's just picking up that sound. Not getting a lot of extra noise in there. 

They do make these violins specific microphones that clamp onto the instrument. I haven't used one but uh you know, check them out online. They seem pretty good with their little clamp. 

I've also seen people use the pickup on the bridge, that's pretty common, the Piezo pickup. If you do go with that the pickup right on the bridge there, you probably want to use a preamp right there on a chair right next to you by your feet. 

I use a little microphone that's designed for woodwinds it's a minus and old Audio Technica they used to make the little clip on flute mics and they would make them with a little preamp box. I love that box because I can turn the microphone off right there in my pocket or on my hip to tune and then turn it back on. It does mean I have to remember to turn my mic on myself. 

I don't think Audio Technica still makes it with the preamps so that you don't need phantom power but you can get I think you can get one look for the trumpet mic from Superlux. They make one that's pretty similar to what I use. Those are some options for performing really small little condenser mics that you clip onto the instrument in some way, most people's choice. 

I was surprised for my teaching videos how well just having a lapel mic worked. I'm clipping it onto my shirt collar. Because I wanted to have a clear vocal talking sound. Then it also picks up the violin. And because it's under the violin, because it's done on my shirt color, doesn't really get a lot of the bow noise. 

It's not like a really nuanced fiddle sound, but I think it works fine for teaching video. I wouldn't record my album that way. The lapel mic is not it's not terrible. I was surprised at how well it worked. 

Our tune for today is Jefferson City. This is a reel or breakdown in G from the old time jam. I found some music for this and some information about this tune on a site from Pete showman. 

If you go to showman.org there's a I believe West Coast musician who transcribes a lot is his website. It looked just like my dad's there's a certain style of website that was maybe popularized in the late 90s, early aughts. My father John Wobus has such a website and when I was looking at Pete Showman's website, I was like, Ooh, this looks just like my dad's. 

Anyway, I thought his website was great, and I enjoyed looking through his transcriptions. I transcribed it the way we played it at the jam. 

This tune is associated with or maybe written by Bill Katon Fiddler out of Missouri, African American fiddler. He was born in 1865, birthplace and parents unknown. Also some confusion about how to spell his name, I guess he was listed in the census with Caton with a C. But I read that he preferred it with a K. And he would spell it that way. 

Yeah, there's a book or an article written by Missouri Fiddler Howard Marshall that talks a little bit about Bill Katon and his career in his fiddling and I guess he traveled all over Central Missouri playing he would play for dances. 

He also played on the radio, which I don't know from what Howard said, it sounded like part of the reason he could play on the radio was because you couldn't see him so he may not have been allowed to play as an African American fiddler, but nobody could see who he was. He played on the radio stations and so he was well known through that. 

And he played this tune Jefferson City named after Jefferson City, Missouri. Okay.

Pete Showman's website: http://www.showman.org/

When should you change your strings? (Shenandoah Falls)

Sheet music for Shenandoah Falls. 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.

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 Shenandoah Falls from a session at the R House in Baltimore, Maryland.

Hello, everyone, I hope you're well. Today I'm going to talk about strings, violin strings, fiddle strings, how much do strings matter? 

I was chiming in to a discussion about this, because man had an old fiddle that he found, was dusting off and fixing up getting ready to play. I love that, by the way. And his friend told him on Yeah, those strings are fine. You don't need new ones. 

You know, he posted about this on Facebook, and then everyone was chiming in No, no, no, you need new strings. Yeah, I agree with them. The strings are old, get some new ones. I'm not sure what your friend was thinking. 

So strings. Look, the string companies say that their strings last around 300 hours. So that could be playing about a year at an hour nearly every day. I mean, imagine if you're professional and you're playing six hours a day. 

I don't change my strings every three months or even every six months, I change them about once a year unless they're looking a little ragged. If your string is unraveling, anything sharp coming off of it, even if it's not unraveling, if it's not staying in tune well. 

So if you play a note and listen to it ring, and as it rings, the note kind of drops flat a little bit. That's a sign that you need to replace your strings. A lot of times people say if their fiddle isn't tuning up in perfect fifths, that's a sign. And the reason that's happening is because as the notes are ringing, they're kind of dropping down.

The strings will also get kind of dull, like you'll have to really press harder to get a sound, they won't be as responsive, it's good to keep a fairly new strings on if you really don't play a lot every two years is probably fine. 

But other than that, pick a time of year, whether it's the new year or in the fall, when you're gonna get your little tune up and put some new strings on. 

If you're changing strings, you want to go one by one. Don't take them all off. Oh dear, the bridges not glued on my friends. go one by one and just be meticulous about what string you're taking off what string you're putting on, make sure to replace a D string with a D string with the correct peg winding in the correct direction. 

Use a YouTube video, but also pay attention to what you're doing. Which way is this peg winding? What string is this, and which peg Am I turning to tune it up? That's where things can go wrong. Breaking strings if you put the wrong string in the wrong place, or you're tuning the wrong peg, trying to get the string to be in tune. That's where you can break a brand new string, which is a little bit of a shame. 

I mean, the drawback to changing your strings frequently is that strings are kind of expensive, even the dominant brand which I usually recommend to beginners or intermediate players. I think their strings are great, very solid, but they will little cost a little maybe $20 A string. 

I spring for more expensive strings for my instrument I use the Obligado strings. I also liked the Pirastro strings. My Fiddle is pretty powerful sound. It's a big fiddle and it has a big sound. And so the Obligado strings are very warm and lovely and a little muted, but it works fine for me because my fiddle is such a banger.

You could definitely extend the lifetime of your strings. If you clean them off once a week with a clean handkerchief, no product on it. Just wipe them down really good. It'll be squeaky until they feel really clean. And that'll help make them sound better in the moment and also help kind of extend the life of them. 

I don't know if 300 is a good estimate. But I would say change them every year. Unless you're really playing all day long. And then yeah, maybe six months. I bet there are professional like orchestra players who change them every six months. 

Let's talk about our tune or tune for today is Shenandoah Falls a reel in a that we played at the Old Time jam at the R House. This is a tune that I associate with Pete Sutherland. A fiddler and musician from Vermont who passed away this winter. 

It was it was a hard passing for the folk music community partly because Pete was a great musician and and also he devoted a lot of time to mentoring younger players. So when you lose someone like that, it's it's hard because so many people have been touched by the work that they did. 

In terms of the tune Shenandoah falls Pete Sutherland said that he learned it from Carol Robinson, who was a fiddler in California. And she said she learned it as an untitled real from a mandolin player named Cookie in college. 

Not sure where this tune came from, but it is thought that Pete gave it the name, Shenandoah Falls and kind of popularized it. 

Pete Sutherland grew up in Vermont, he lived his whole life in Vermont. I guess he started on the piano. His mother was a pianist. And he was the kind of kid who gotten involved in a lot of projects. I guess he made home movies and got his neighbors and his family to act in them. 

Played trombone in high school and then in college, he learned fiddle and banjo and guitar and, and went on to perform a lot also, as I mentioned before mentoring, and producing a lot of records, helping helping bands find their sound and get a really great sounding recording in the studio. 

If you don't have the album, the Clayfoot Strutters, so if you haven't listened to that, I would check that out. That album was kind of the soundtrack of my 20s it's that band Cleveland Strutters. It was Pete Sutherland and Jeremiah McLean and lead Blackwell they played with some other players and boy, talk about great arranging it was just took these fiddle tunes and made them so fun to listen to. 

Yeah, I love that album. Yeah, Pete is not with us anymore. He lived. He lived over a decade, I believe with cancer. We are thinking of him today and we're gonna play this tune Shenandoah Falls for you.

Listening you can find the sheet music for this tune at fiddlestudio.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.

Old-Time style (Little Billy Wilson)

Sheet music for Little Billy Wilson as played in Baltimore. Hear the tune and discussion on the Fiddle Studio podcast on Apple Music or on Spotify!

Hello, everyone, I hope you are well. Today I'm going to talk about Old-Time style. So the things that people do while they're fiddling to make it sound like Old-Time. 

I am from Central New York. I am a Yankee, as I have been called occasionally down here in Maryland. So when I play Old-Time, I do my best to sound authentic. 

And sometimes I think I get it, I was playing in an old time jam the other day. And a woman next to me said, Well, I want to play old time like you. Like, I'll take it.

I do my best to use the elements that I'm aware of that I've been taught that I hear when I listen to old time, use it in my playing, and I've taught it of course to many students. So I'm gonna give you my take on it. But, you know, I'm not from the mountains.

You know, there is a thriving old time scene down here in Maryland. I play old time music mostly at the local jam in the neighborhood right next door to mine, which is led by Brad and Ken Kolodner. They are well known in the fiddle and the old time scene. 

Brad's a great banjo player plays fiddle great, plays a lot of stuff. Ken plays fiddle and hammer dulcimer. They lead these great retreats, look them up and support them. They have built the community down here into a wonderful, thriving community. And I get to benefit from that, because I get to go play a lot of old time and get better at it. Hopefully. 

Here's what to think about when you're thinking about old time style. There are some modifications that you will see more commonly with old time players. The age old question, how is a fiddle different from a violin? I answered this question a lot. And the answer is it's not. 

But the exception to that rule is old time where you may have players who prefer a slightly flatter bridge. So it's easier to drone and play double stops. It's much more common to have four tuning screws, fine tuners at the top of the violin by the bridge. If you're trying to cross tune, change the strings on the violin to line up in a different key. You don't have to do that just with the pegs. Yeah, you can do it with the screws. 

The other thing I'll say is that when you see someone who brought two fiddles to a gig, or a jam, it's usually old time. They have those double cases, you know, like they've got a fiddle in A and a fiddle in G. Wow.

So we'll start with the right arm, the bow arm, and old time style for your bowing is very heavy on accents. On the two and four, that's pretty common in a lot of fiddle styles, and dance music can have a little bit of a swing to it, It doesn't always. 

There are a lot of drones. If you want to play old time work on your droning. Get your drone string below drone string above, get used to droning. Get a feel for what strings to drone in what key. 

In terms of slurs, there, there is a fair amount of slurring. It's not you know, like French Canadian where it's a lot of separate bows and kind of jerky, jerky in a good way. But in old time, you'll find it a little smoother, more slurring. I will use the Georgia shuffle mostly, yeah, for my bowing with old time. 

If we move over to the left hand, there's a particular kind of double stop that you mostly find only an old time and that's sliding into the four. You know, if you play a four on that a string, it's an E, you can play it as a double stop with the open string so that that's a Unison is just two Es at the same time. 

If you slide into it, you get a very crunchy e against an almost E sound. That is a very old time sound. You could play Irish fiddle for years and never use your pinkie, but for old time you want to dust your pinky off, build some strength in it, and start using your pinky. 

Cross tuning can help, maybe you you're using the three against the open string more, but think you're gonna end up using your pinkie, a lot for double stops and old time. I also slide into my one all the time, almost every tune, there's some note that I'm sliding into my one on, if I'm not sliding into it, I might be doing a hammer on just slurring from the note below. 

So those are two very common old time ornaments. And rhythmically depends on the tune. But with a lot of tunes add in an anticipation or two, not all the time. But a lot of tunes I like to throw in an anticipation. So rather than starting a note that starts right on the first beat of the measure, I'll hit it on the fourth beat of the measure before and accent it, it anticipates the note. 

So you've got your double stops, including your pinky, your slides, hammer ons, and anticipations. And if you've got all that happening, and you're droning and you're accenting, you're off beats, I think it's gonna sound pretty old time.

I you know, I made some playlists for my students of old time tunes. So if you go to Megan Beller, or Fiddle Studio, on Spotify, or on YouTube, just check out my playlist and listen to it. Look for those stylistic elements.

Our tune for today is a setting of Little Billy Wilson. This is a reel in a that we played at the old time jam at the R House. 

Looking around for the history of this tune. There were two players that I saw mentioned. One was Uncle Jimmy Thompson, who played it in 1926. He he played mostly at the Grand Ole Opry and he was sounds like a pretty eccentric guy. The Wikipedia article use the word cantankerous and mentioned that he would get into kind of spats with the organizers down there at the Grand Ole Opry, especially about his habit of drinking a jug of whiskey before performing to loosen up his bow arm. 

I mean, if it loosens your bow arm. He also boasted that he could play 1000 fiddle tunes and could fiddle the bugs off a tader vine. Uncle Jimmy Thompson so he played this tune. 

And Eck Robertson also played this Alexander Campbell Robertson. He was a fiddler born 1887 In Arkansas grew up in the South. So that would have been during Reconstruction. His father was a fiddler, I believe a musical he had a musical family and also a Confederate veteran. 

So one of the ways that he got his break in the South was traveling around and apparently playing fiddle for these Confederacy reunion events. When he was a little older, he recorded with his wife played guitar and his kids played the tenor banjo.

 They ended up in New York recording for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929. And I'm told that those were some of the first commercial fiddle country recordings, and he did a Brilliancy medley. I wonder if that's the same brilliancy that I know? In the Brilliancy medley he played, Little Billy Wilson. So now we're gonna play it for you here. Fun little tune.