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.
