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

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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 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.

Tim Ball and Upstate Crossroads (Apple Brewer's Reel)

Megan:

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 Apple Brewers Reel from Tim Ball's new album, Upstate Crossroads.

Hello, everyone. I hope you're well today I have a special guest. Tim Ball is a fiddler and multi instrumentalist from Ithaca, New York near where I grew up. If you have been to hear traditional music or been to a dance in New York State, you have probably heard Tim Ball play on the fiddle, or the guitar. 

He has played contra dances with Center Street and Tempest, Tunescape. Also has an Irish and Celtic band called Arise and Go. And he even plays at renaissance fairs, very brave, with the bands Empty Hats and Cantiga. 

Tim is also a fiddle teacher. We've taught together in Rochester at Fiddle Camp at the Kanak School. Also taught at some fiddle camps you might have heard of, Pinewoods, and Ashokan. Ashokan, very nice Tim. 

When I read through Tim's bio, he mentioned some albums that he grew up listening to in his parents record collection that I also listened to from my dad. But I love Tim's fiddling. And I wanted to bring that to you today. 

To start off, Tim, welcome to the podcast. 

Tim:

Thanks for having me. It's really fun to talk to you. I'm I'm assuming that's the Fennig's record in in your dad's collections.

Yep, that's a classic Fennig's All Star String Band, Saturday Night in the Provinces. I do not know how many times I've listened to that, goodness. 

Megan:

Well, Tim, just to start off with, how did you get started on the fiddle? Was it your first instrument, violin or fiddle? 

Tim:

It was not. When I was five or so my dad came home from somewhere with two penny whistles and an instruction book. And he kind of he stayed a couple pages ahead of me in the book for a few weeks. And then I just ran with it and played a whole bunch of tunes. 

I recently actually found this book of penny whistle tablature that my dad made for me, way back when. And then and then you can see when I started making it for myself, the the handwriting sort of went downhill, but less like 50 tunes of pennywhistle tablature. And then I'd completely forgotten about that.

But that's how I started. I started playing fiddle in I think summer after third grade, I went to my first lesson and I have no idea how much setup my teacher did at my first lesson. But I remember coming back the next week with one or two of these pennywhistle tunes that I had just sort of decided to figure out on the violin. 

Megan:

You sound like a dream student. Into it already. Wow. first instrument was pennywhistle. That's cool. 

Tim:

I mean, I don't play it anymore. Really. I sort of can but but not really. 

Megan:

Well, Tim, I know that you had a career that involves touring and performing and teaching. And then with the Coronavirus lockdown many of us musicians were really hit hard. Those things couldn't be done in person anymore. But actually, I remember my dad, who lives in Ithaca also talking to me about these lunchtime concerts that you did. Performing. Do you want to say anything about that? You did a lot of them? 

Tim:

Yeah, I did every weekday at lunchtime, 12:30 to one o'clock for 10 weeks, kind of the first to 10 weeks of the pandemic, which seems like three lifetimes ago at the minute. But it was sort of a time in place that I felt like I could give people some form of connection and I don't know, a schedule for their day, or many of us were suddenly lacking. 

Yeah, in terms of like how that affected my broader career. It definitely made a lot of space to think about a solo album. It wasn't the thing that made me do it. The this album was coming on pandemic or not 2019 I'd sort of taken a little bit of a step back from doing all of the driving around and playing contra dances that I had been doing. 

I didn't have a lot of fiddle gigs, Arise and Go, had a new record in 2019. So I was gigging a lot as a guitar player, but I didn't have a lot of fiddle gigs. And I was trying to figure out what was next. And trying to like, I spent a lot of time playing in Contra dance bands, as you know. Yeah. And doing the band thing. 

I really didn't have an answer for what music do I make as a fiddle player when I'm, if it's my vision, driving the bus,.

Megan:

And you came up with upstate New York fiddle, which I think some people listening may not realize that upstate New York has a unique sound. I often tell people that I'm a New England fiddler. And then they'll say, oh, what what part of New England? I'll say, well, upstate New York, and it leads to a very awkward exchange where they argue with me, so just tell me about about that designation about coming to upstate New York fiddling, settling there. 

Tim:

Right, right. Well, really, I would say, I wanted to make a record of the music that I like to play, and tell a story about it as traditional fiddle music. And basically everybody who talks about traditional fiddle music has this element of place where they come from. I'm from here, so I can't tell Martin Hayes's story of growing up in in Claire, I got to tell my story of being from here. It really is an excuse to play the music that I like to play. Anyway, I play a lot of Irish American music. I play a lot of New England fiddle music, lots of Canadian music. 

This was a thing that I sort of been discovering my voice as a fiddle player didn't really start feel complete until I figured out like some way to play American fiddle tunes. And so on uncovering the fact that I really like bluegrass has been interesting. Sometimes I tell the story on stage. You were there, actually, because this was at the Kanack Fiddle Camp. Yeah. There was one year there where I went up to Andrew VanNorstrand. And I said, Andrew, can you teach me to like bluegrass?

And he said, listen to Kenny Baker and Bobby Hicks. And basically I did and now I like bluegrass. Yeah. All of these places around upstate New York. I've been playing music from from these traditions. And then during that lunchtime livestream series, I started learning some tunes from you know, Hilt Kelly, Mark Hamilton, Bernie MacDonald, and to be able to center it on upstate New York. 

Megan:

How did you how did you learn them? Recordings online? 

Tim:

Yeah, mostly recordings online. I found you know, I dug around and found this 1990s television interview that helped did okay. So I think that was my main source for Apple Brewer's. Jim Kimball from out in Western New York. He spent a lot of time with Mark Hamilton and I think the Mark Hamilton tune I learned it from a recording of Jim that he had done on a podcast interview. 

Okay, and then Hope Grietzer has sent me a bunch of recordings that she made of some of the old timers. So digging through.

Megan:

 Fiddler in from Ithaca.

Tim:

Hope's from little bit south of Ithaca. But yeah, yeah, she lives around here, too. Yeah. 

Megan:

No, you're right. Can I ask you about some of the other tunes? Sure. Because because I play Snowflake Breakdown I learned from David Smuckler up in Syracuse. It's a crazy D major, kind of bluegrassy is it? It's got a B flat, a B flat chord in.

Tim:

It just shows up.

Megan:

Where do you get that one from? 

Tim: 

So that tune was written by a Canadian Fiddler named Wally Traugott. If there are any, like vinyl record nerds out there in this audience. It's the same Wally Traugott who went on to become Capitol Records. I think, like kind of big deal mastering engineer.

Before that he was a Canadian fiddle star. And he wrote this tune. So I think I dug up a recording that he made of it and I listened to like 10 other recordings. Like I do. Probably the two biggest ones for me learning that tune was Bobby Hicks cut it? Yeah, really influential bluegrass fiddle player.

And Shane Cook recorded it, you know, Shane's playing? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, he's this incredible, contemporary Ontario fiddle player. And he's been a huge inspiration in terms of how do I take this music that I play and make it extra awesome. He's He's just amazing, Shane Cook. So yeah, he he recorded snowflake. And I know I lifted some stuff from him.

Megan:

Any other tunes on the album? You have a good story behind them. 

Tim:

This is like picking your favorite child again. There's a lot of great stuff on there. I think I think my I think my number one favorite tune title on the album is the democratic rage porn pipe. 

Megan:

Okay, but is that actually a horn pipe? I mean, do you play it as a real? 

Tim:

I would say yes, it's a horn pipe. It's definitely the thing that New England fiddle players call a horn pipe. It's it's definitely not the thing that Irish fiddle players call hornpipe. Yeah, you have a whole set that includes a bunch of, of tunes called hornpipe. That sound like reels that just to somebody who maybe doesn't know that interesting New England tradition. 

Yeah, they're well, and there's, I think there's at least three completely different grooves that could believably be called a hornpipe by different people. There's that, you know, what I am most familiar with, honestly, is the New England tradition of playing them just like you would play a reel it's just they've got a lot more arpeggios. 

And then there's the Irish tradition of playing, really swung and a little slower with a lot of triplets involved. And I've got one of those hornpipes on, on the record in a different place, you know, and then there's this whole thing of three to hornpipes in English fiddle music, which I know little about other than it exists. Okay. I mean, either. Yeah. Three kinds of hornpipes. At least I don't, I don't think that's an exhaustive list. 

This turned into like a running discussion during lunchtime live stream between me and the audience. And I looked it up and it's like, hornpipe is a really old word that just mean basically means instrument tune.

Megan:

Yeah, that people will use reel or the way Chorus Jig is, is a reel but it's called Chorus Jig. Yeah, I saw that was on your album too. Yeah, it's great tune. So if people want to hear these awesome tunes, and hear you're fiddling with where can they go to get more information? Hear the music.

Tim:

I have a website, timballmusic.com, Facebook and Instagram are Tim Ball music. It's available on Bandcamp right now. It'll be on streaming and hopefully on Folk Radio in the new year. 

Megan:

That's very exciting. Because the question for musicians these days is always streaming as we don't really get income from streaming so but people could go to your website or go to Bandcamp and find a way to purchase it purchase the can they purchase the physical CD? Ah, you you will be able to purchase the physical CD. 

Tim:

I don't have them in hand. Although I think they are on a UPS truck headed to my house right now. 

Megan:

Okay, great. So check out, was it Tim Ball music.com. Great. 

Our tune today is Apple brewers real tune in D major from Tim's album we're gonna get to hear a little preview. This tune comes from the playing of Hilt Kelly, a fiddler from the Catskills, Delaware County, New York. 

I read a little bit about Hilt that his grandfather played the fiddle, got a fiddle, learn to play it and Hilt later played on that fiddle. But I didn't find a lot of information about Apple Brewer's Reel. So Tim, what can you tell us about this tune? 

Tim:

I think this was kind of one of Hilt's signature tunes, like theme song. Maybe he didn't play this tune for dancing. I don't think um, which I don't know. Seems like a fine dance tune to me. 

Megan:

Yeah. Kind of march like, is it? Is it a march? 

Tim:

Yeah. Is it a reel it's called a reel in the name. It doesn't sound like an Irish reel but whatever. 

Megan:

Yeah, no, it's got a real a real New England or should we say upstate New York sound to it. Yeah. 

Tim:

It's definitely got the vibe. 

Megan:

I love the be part. Great. Well, before we hear it, I just want to say thank you, Tim for coming and telling us all about you and your album, Upstate Crossroads. It's really nice to talk to you today. 

Tim:

Great to talk to you Megan. Thanks for having me. 

Addison Sheet Music

Sound files: Fast Slow

Tim Ball taught this quirky march by Peter Blue at Fiddle Camp 2014. Both are members of the band Tunescape.

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Jessica's Polka Sheet Music

Sound Files: Slow Fast

Our first tune from 2011 Fiddle Camp. Thank you to one of our excellent faculty members, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes for providing the audio. The recording level was a little high.

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Salty Dog Rag Sheet Music

Sound Files: Slow Fast


Salty Dog Rag

Away down yonder in the state of Arkansas
where my great-grandpa met my great-grandma,
they drink apple cider and they get on a jag
and they dance all night to the Salty Dog Rag.
They play an old fiddle like you never heard before.
They play the only tune that they ever did know.
It's a ragtime ditty and the rhythm don't drag,
now here's the way you dance to the Salty Dog Rag:

Chorus:
One foot front, drag it back,
then you start to ball the jack.
You shake and you break and then you sag,
if your partner zigs you're supposed to zag.
Your heart is light, you tap your feet
in rhythm with that ragtime beat.
(Just) pack up your troubles in your old kit bag
and dance all night to the Salty Dog Rag.

Away down South 'neath the old Southern moon
the possum's up a tree and the hounds treed a coon.
They'll hitch up the buggy to a broken down nag
and go out dancing to the Salty Dog Rag.
They tune up the fiddle and they rosin up the bow.
They strike a C chord on the old banjo
and holler hang on 'cause we ain't gonna drag
'cause here's the way you dance
to the Salty Dog Rag.

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Jenny's Gone to Linton Sheet Music

Sound Files: Slow Fast

This is one of the first fiddle tunes I ever learned! Very easy to dance to, it's great for family dances.

Pig Ankle Rag

Pig Ankle Rag

Sound Files: Slow Fast

This is a fun piece to teach and learn, it is mostly patterns that are easy to remember. Good for introducing low one on the E string, don't forget the double stop at the end! Also, note the alternate form: AA Tag BB Tag.

Mari's Wedding

Sound Files: Slow Fast

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