Playing fiddle for a dance (Grieg's Pipes)

Sheet music for Grieg's Pipes 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 Grieg's Pipes 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 fiddle for a dance. I just played for a dance. I guess it was last weekend. That was a contra dance down in Glen Echo, which is an old amusement park outside of DC. And I had a great time there I played with my husband played mostly guitar, and Ken Kolodner, played on fiddle and hammer dulcimer. And Rachel Edie played Rachel kind of brought everything so it was fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, all the things. We had a great time. 

I have been playing for dances for a long time. I guess it's going on. I guess it's going on 30 years now. And I want to talk about two parts of playing for dancers. One is what tunes work well for dancers, in terms of the fiddle tunes that you're picking, if you're going to play for a dance. And I'll talk a little bit about what it's like to play live for dancers. 

But let's start with the tunes. When I first started playing for dances, I was a teenager and I knew some fiddle tunes. So basically, I just played the tunes I knew I didn't think at all about how the tunes worked for dancing. I didn't really dance then. So it would have been hard for me to understand. For a few years, I wouldn't have been able to say anything to you about this topic. 

There was something that happened that opened my eyes to this whole world of thinking about dance tunes, and matching them to dancing and thinking about how well they work for dancing. And that was there was a great caller and fiddler. A dance caller is somebody who teaches and leads dancing at square dance or a contra dance. His name was David Smuckler in Syracuse. And he used to do a workshop on chestnuts which were the old, very traditional New England dances. 

So David did these cracking chestnuts workshops to try to basically help callers who're teaching mostly modern dances. Learn some of the original dances like Chorus Jig, Petronella, which is the tune that my band Contranella is named after my dad and I would play for the workshop. We were the kind of the house band for that my dad played piano, I played fiddle. So we had a very traditional and New England sound. And I knew all the New England tunes because I had grown up with them. 

Being around all of those callers, I started to hear a lot more opinions about what tunes worked for dances, and what dances and what tunes were good for dancing and what tunes were not good for dancing. And it basically opened my eyes to a whole world of getting into the weeds with dance tunes, because these were folks who thought about it all the time. So that was kind of what got me into thinking about what makes a good dance tune. 

If you're starting from square one, the tune needs to be well square, it has to have 32 bars, because most dances are exactly 32 bars long. And the tune has to match the dance. Very important in terms of once you've got all squared tunes, what makes a tune good for dancing. 

I imagine the melody of some of these fiddle tunes and the shape of the melody. If you have kind of what's known as a march-y tune with a lot of longer notes. And maybe if you pictured the notes or the shape of the melody, it would be very boxy. Something like on the road to Boston. Dun dun did it um bom bom bom bom. done done that um, bom bom. It's got arpeggios. It's got repeated notes. If you kind of drew it out as a line, it would be flat lines and boxes, stairs. It makes these shapes around the beat that are very easy to step to. 

If you have a tune with a lot of notes, like an especially maybe an Irish tune, where the notes go up and down on all over the place. And if you were looking at kind of a line drawing of the shape of the melody, it would be little wiggles up in squiggles down and big jumps. Even just in your in your head, if you try to picture dancing on top of that, it's harder for the dancers to dance to a tune they can't hum. 

So that's the danger of picking really complicated Irish reels for dancing. It's not to say you can't pick reels that have a lot of notes because a tune like Growling and Grumbling, French Canadian, it has a lot of notes, but in the A part, it's a very repetitive pattern. So it sort of makes a danceable shaped by the data, data, data, data, data, data, data, data, that data that data, data data. 

I'm building these little melodic blocks that you can step into, I don't know, I'm kind of a visual person, sometimes. This is just the picture in my head. When I'm looking at a tune listening to a tune thinking about if it's going to be good for dances. Yeah, if it helps you, New England tunes tend to work really well, because they are very boxy. They're sometimes called dorky, but they have a lot of arpeggios, repeated notes, kind of broad rhythms, broad strokes.

They have fallen out of style a little bit, people like something a little more exciting, a little more driving, to dance to a little more modern sounding, I like to pick something pretty straightforward to dance to, especially for the first tune of a set. So when they start the dance, all of the dance moves being called out are unfamiliar to the dancers. So that's the most important time to play music that's really easy to step to guides the dancers through the beat, and shows them where to stop. So you don't want something really syncopated to start with, or something very nodi, where it's hard to find the beat, or it's you know, three against for the beats off placed. 

For the first tune in the set, you want it to be very straightforward. For the end of the set, I like to pick something and this has less to do with the rhythm of the tune. But you look for a tune that sounds very epic, very ending, soaring. These big a major tunes, tunes even like, here's a Keith Murphy tune called Epic Real. When you hear us tune that has a really epic sound, and maybe the chord structure, you can put in a lot of minor subs, then that's a nice tune to end the set with. 

So you want to kind of look at the rhythmic setup, the shape of the melody, and then the personality of the tune. When you're putting sets together that's putting sets together, I could do a whole podcast on that. But the quick and dirty way to put that together is just to go either up one step or go up a fourth, you always kind of want to be rising energy towards the end of the dance, the dancers get to know the tune better and better. 

Sometimes the leader will stop calling up the moves, the dancers know it well. And you want to keep the energy up so that they can, as they know the moves more, it becomes more comfortable in their bodies, they can just let loose and let that rising energy of the band carry them through the end of the dance. While you're playing for a dance. Let's see, what do I want to say about this, the dance moves that are mostly walking like a star to the left star to the right, a dosey. doe down and back even a swing tend to work in note ear tunes or no to your parts of tunes. 

What I like to do if a tune is not nobody in an area with, you know, a star and then the star back with lots of walking. I'll just add notes and make that nobody because they're walking and the notes kind of carry them around. There are dance moves that are more rhythmic things like the balance where you're going step by step, step by step. And so there are tunes that actually have that rhythm in them. 

If you can pick the tune, or you can modify the tune on the fly to match the step, something like a bounce and swing or even the forward and back then that can feel really great for the dancers. I love to do that. Basically when I'm playing for dancers, I'm watching them. I can tell if my tempo was working. Because if they're kind of finishing a move and then waiting to start the next move because that means I'm I'm going too slowly. And if they're rushing and they're late for their moves, I'm going too fast. So try I had to make my tempo match them so that their figures start and end at the right time. And then they're in the groove. 

When you see them letting loose and doing some fancier stuff and getting a little more flamboyant, really enjoying themselves, that's usually my cue. They're comfortable, they know this dance, well, they're enjoying the music. And that's when I'll tend to let loose a little more and start to improvise more or build a big time through the tune over a drone or do something exciting and kind of attention grabbing, I can match their feel in that way. 

It is a long time playing for dance, 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes. So bring back up. Try to have another melody player if you can. 

Our tune today is a set of Greg's pipes or Griec's pipes. It's a reel, a traditional Irish real that we played at the Art House bar. This is a session in Baltimore on Wednesday nights. The session is run by Richard Osban. He is a local Irish musician. He's a really nice guy and plays kind of everything. I mean, plays guitar really well plays fiddle, Irish guitar, old time fiddle, plays banjo. He was telling me about some tunes he was learning on the accordion. So one of these people, please everything and has really committed to putting together a session every Wednesday, which is a big commitment, and I really appreciate it because it means I get to play Irish music on Wednesday nights. It's a really nice, lovely session. 

This tune is a three part real. Apparently in County Clare. It's called Connelly's, but mostly known by Greg's pipes or Craig's pipes. We did the three part version. Apparently, Conal O'Grada recorded a five part version of this reel. So some people play a five part version. 

The three part version was recorded by the Flanagan brothers in New York. If you don't know about the Flanagan brothers, they were three brothers in New York. They had grown up in Ireland and then moved with their parents, I think in the in the teens like 19 teens. And then when they were older, they all played their instruments very well. 

There was a big Irish Dancehall scene in the 20s. And even in the 30s in New York, and they were very popular, very energetic, very sought after. For that scene. It was Joe Flanagan on the accordion. Mike, Mike was on mandolin. Later tenor banjo, and Lou Flanagan was on guitar, I think at first was playing banjo accompaniment and then switched to guitar. I've heard that that the guitar wasn't that common as an accompaniment instrument in Irish music before that. So Lou Flanagan was part of a more modern sound.

 The two brothers played accordion and tenor banjo melody in unison and then Lou would accompany them on the guitar. Sounds like what you would hear all the time these days. But at the time that was that was less common. Not sure if there's a composer on this, it's often just mark traditional. 

Yeah, it was printed by O'Neill and O'Neill said that Joshua Campbell had composed this reel and printed it in the year 1779 People have found have found it printed before that, unfortunately, doesn't seem like O'Neill had gotten to the bottom of that mystery and I did not either. We have really enjoyed working on this tune. G major real for you. Ready? Here we go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening, you can find the sheet music for this tune at fiddle studio.com. You can also find my books and courses for learning the fiddle and get more information about becoming a member of Fiddle Studio. I'll be back next Tuesday with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.

Why do fiddle tunes look different on the page? (Dinny O'Brien's)

Sheet music for Dinny O'Brien's by Paddy O'Brien as played in Baltimore. Hear the tune and discussion on the Fiddle Studio podcast on Apple Music or on Spotify! Support Megan's work on the Fiddle Studio Podcast and Blog.

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddle. I'm Megan Beller. And today I'll be bringing you a setting of Dinny O'Brien's 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 what to make of fiddle sheet music. Because when you look at fiddle tunes written out on the page, they look very different on the page, from what you hear, there's a lot that's not written down. That may be old news to you. But I'm going to talk about how we got there and kind of what to do about it. 

I did this workshop when I was in college for for these other classical violinists at Eastman. I've done this workshop a few times for classical players, I like to use the tune Growling and Grumbling, and I give them the sheet music. And then I play it classically. 

And then I start to layer on top of that the different aspects of fiddle technique. So I'll add exons on to and for a little bit of swing, I'll put a bite in shorten up my bow strokes speeded up at drones, add some improv in, it sounds totally different. And when classical players, I take them through this, and they always ask, why don't you write this into the music? Well, why is the music just written out as playing eighth notes when you're doing all this other stuff? 

Well, the first way that I talk about that is that with classical music, sometimes it's sort of imagined in someone's head. And it's written out before, it's played, you know, by a string quartet, or sung by a soprano or whatever, however, it's going to be performed, so sort of written and then performed and interpreted. 

With fiddling, the writing is coming after, I mean, in many cases, years or decades after the tune has been composed or developed, passed down. And then even when the tune is finally written down, it's sometimes written down by players without a lot of classical notation experience. So they're basically writing it down as in like a real book from jazz, where it's just the lead sheet, just the basic melody. And then depending on what style of fiddling you use, there may be different elements that you add to that. 

I mean, sometimes the exact same tune can be played by a Quebecois player in a really energetic almost kind of jerky syncopated style, or played by an Irish player with a lot of ornamentation, or played by an Old-Time player where they simplify the tune down and add a lot of drones and double stops and slides. There isn't really one way to write out how a fiddle tune should sound because it really depends on the player and their interpretation of the tune. 

So that leads me to a little bit of a high horse. I like to argue that learning fiddle learn to play the fiddle learning fiddling isn't about tunes. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's not learning tunes. I know. We spend all this time learning tunes. I spend a lot of time making videos for learning tunes. When I'm playing in lessons with people we're doing a lot of tunes. Tunes, tunes, tunes.

You need some tunes to learn with, like, you need something to apply the style to. But the tunes don't necessarily make it fiddling. It's the style the way you're playing it. Yeah, actually, in Fiddle Camp, we have some fiddle players come in, and they're like, you're just, they have this complaint. If they just see we're teaching lots of tunes to the kids. 

I remember Andrew Van Nordstrand, saying, you know, you're just teaching tunes, you need to be teaching them a style. Well, here's the thing is we're teaching them tunes, but it's completely by ear. So while they're learning the tunes, they're learning the style at the same time. So when you're learning by ear, you get both. 

But if you're learning off the page, you're not getting that style, but not to worry, you can still learn the style. I actually in my little book three I did some transcriptions of my own playing. But you know, that's not a perfect fix, like That's just how I play it. It's to give you an example, you can go through and learn these different aspects of fiddle style, practice them, either on one note or on one string, put them in a scale, put them in an easy, you know, a part or B part, and then stick them in a tune. And that's how I like to do it. 

And I find that once I go through with somebody with a slurring pattern, or getting the muse to accenting do that a few times, they get it and they can start to apply it to tunes that they've learned without that style, either from the page or by ear. 

That is what I will be doing in some of my courses. I'm creating courses. Right now for fiddle studio, there'll be part of a membership. And there'll be a bowing course that's jig, kind of jig slurs and shuffles. There'll be a lot of that fiddle style. And there'll be some other courses that focus on style. If only it could all be written there on the page, then we could get it exactly right. But would that really be as much fun? Probably not. 

The tune today is called Dinny O'Brien's and this is a real in D Mixolydian. It's got the C sharp, it's got the C natural kind of goes back and forth. It's one of those tunes. It was written by Paddy O'Brien. Paddy O'Brien was a very famous accordion player and composer of Irish music. And his father was Dinny  O'Brian was also an Irish musician played accordion, I believe and also fiddle. They lived in Tipperary. 

So Dinny was the dad, Paddy was his son grew up playing, even as a teenager I think, played professionally in Ireland, and his whole life wrote a ton of tunes. He has passed away but his daughter, Eileen O'Brien, has collected many of his tunes. If you're interested in Paddy O'Brien tunes, you can go to Eileen O'Brien fiddle, and she has a collection there that she's pulled together of her dad's tunes you can order it. 

Mick Brown says that this tune was Patty's first composition. I don't know, kind of a complicated tune. One more story about this tune from the late accordion player Jim Coogan, from New York who said that the BC box player accordion speak Joe Madden learned this tune while traveling in a car on his way to done bargain. Were then he won the all Ireland he promptly won the all Ireland to row accordion championship playing this tune. 

So just learn it in a car and you can win all Ireland or something. Okay, I don't think I'll be winning all Ireland with it, but I'm gonna do my best here we go.

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

How to Handle Stage Fright (Maudabawn Chapel)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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, 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.

Behind the Bush in the Garden

 

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Bonnie Kate

 

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