Bowing Lively 3: Shuffle Bowing

Video #3 in Technique Video Group 3 provides backup for this article and gives you a nice excuse to practice shuffle bowing so you can use it whenever you like!

Shuffle bowing is a fun way to play reels. It’s common in American traditional fiddling but also in other styles. Some prefer it for reels because it adds variety to playing every eighth note on a separate bow, although if you’ve learned Reel Bowing as described in our earlier article and in the first video of Technique Video Group 3, you know that separate bows on reels can and should have lots of life and variety.

Here’s the basic bowing for shuffle bowing:

This pattern in itself is not uncommon in reels, but when people talk about shuffle bowing they’re usually thinking about using this same bowing when playing all eighth notes, which means the quarter note becomes two eighth notes slurred (played on one bow).

It’s super helpful to get comfortable with the basic bowing above and to do it Continue reading Bowing Lively 3: Shuffle Bowing

Using Our Self-Repeating Phrase Audios

A Unique Feature

One unique feature of fiddle-online is the self-repeating audio for each phrase of a tune. I call it “interactive sheet music.” Fiddle-online went live in 2015, built on ideas such as this one, which I developed as early as 2007. Why is it unique on the internet? I’ve often wondered, but I suspect it’s simply because it takes too much work to provide this service for every tune. One character amiss in the code and it won’t work! In any case, I believe it’s super helpful for learning tunes, and I hope you make full use of it as you go.

Phrases vs Written Music

On fiddle-online, the written music is parsed by phrase, using colorful boxes, with the same color used every time the same phrase appears. This structure of phrases is how we hear and play music, but it’s not how we write it down. Music is written down so that we can easily see the beats and the divisions by measure and by part.

Phrases, however, are more organic. They include pickup notes, and represent the rhythms we feel as our tune goes through a call and response. Often phrase A1 and A2 are like question and answer, followed by another instance of phrase A1 plus the End phrase. It’s like asking the same question (A1) twice but having an initial answer (A2) and then a better, more settled answer (Ending, or A-end).

Using Phrases

Phrases are the building blocks of a tune. Sometimes you can even learn a tune up to tempo from day one, as long as you break it down into manageable pieces — phrases — instead of trying to play too much at a time. Phrases in music are like phrases in English, or more to the point, lyrics in a song. They are what the tune is trying to say. Learning them and putting them together is the language of music. Learning just the notes is like thinking of all the letters that spell the words you are saying. To clarify your understanding of phrases, take a look at the phrases of song lyrics. or write your own lyrics for a tune you are learning!

Using the Phrase Audios

The self-repeating audios are the orange buttons that say, for example, “Play A1” above the A1 phrase. You click there and it will play the A1 phrase slowly enough for you to learn it; it’s the first building block of the tune. Since the audio automatically repeats itself, Continue reading Using Our Self-Repeating Phrase Audios

“When Should I…” (#2) — Get Help Learning Fiddle

(Note: This series of “When Should I…” articles, each with seven tips for you, began with #1 in May about equipment, and will continue now — enjoy!)

7 ideas on getting help with your learning

Are you wondering when you should…
1. Try private lessons?
2. Take a class?
3. Take a workshop?
4. Use online materials?
5. Find a new teacher?
6. Try a new learning style?
7. Find new tunes for yourself?

When should I…

1 …try private lessons?

Short answer: if you feel a) inspired to move quicker in your learning, or b) routine frustration without understanding why or how to progress.

A good teacher provides perspective on how you can best prioritize your energies. Some learners, for example, may focus entirely on Continue reading “When Should I…” (#2) — Get Help Learning Fiddle

Natural Ornaments

When we listen to music played or sung, ornaments are everywhere, but we barely notice. Stop and listen to a singer on the radio. Nobody sings without a slide or grace note note here and there, going into or out of a note.

That’s because ornamentation is part and parcel of the language. The use of these musical decorations varies depending on the dialect (the fiddle style), but it fits right in effortlessly, at least when you’re listening to it. In fact, most people hardly pay any mind to ornaments until we actually try to play them. Then we wonder how it’s done, and if we’re looking at it on paper, we struggle with making those grace notes sound like the ones we’ve heard.

Grace notes are not only integral to musical language, they’re also built into the way we speak. If we write lyrics to a tune, each note could be a syllable. But the grace notes, triplets, and slides are the consonants. Let’s take a look at some examples of this.

Continue reading Natural Ornaments

Finding the Beat, part 2

In “Finding the Beat, Part 1” we talked about how to figure out where the beats are, how many are in a measure, by feel and on paper. Here we’re going to take a look at something more at the heart of the music. The beat is, as its name suggests, the heartbeat of the music. It is what creates the voice, the timing, the meaning. The notes are like letters in a line of text. Because of the beat we can actually hear those letters as words, phrases, ideas.

Where exactly is the beat to be found? Is it just a metronome chirp? If not, where and what is it?

Like the heartbeat in a person, the beat in music is really a pulse, not a hit. Our hearts don’t go “boom, boom, boom” like a metronome. Hearts go “ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom,” like the pickups in music that lead into each beat.

Beats are not merely a mathematical calculation. (Do not tell this to metronomes or to any MIDI audio files because it would destroy their world!) What makes music human is that our timing is responsive, just like our heart.

Studies about the human heart have shown Continue reading Finding the Beat, part 2

Finding the Beat, part 1

The heartbeat of music is, you guessed it, the beat. Learners often focus on trying to play or memorize the notes of a tune and sometimes make the mistake of taking the beat for granted. It’s a mistake because the beat holds all those notes together and turns them into music.

How do you find the beat? Below, we’ll take a look at how to figure out where the beat is in a tune, whether 1) by feel or 2) on paper, with illustrations.

(Intermediate and advanced players may also find the next article thought provoking. The beat is anything but a click on a metronome. Where is it located, exactly, and how can we make the most of it? This is something we’ll take a look at.)

1. Where is the beat, by feel

It is very common that a learner may focus so much on playing the notes of a tune in sequence that they don’t think about which notes are the beat notes, and may get confused as to how to find them.

Continue reading Finding the Beat, part 1

Making Harmonies

In most jam sessions people play tunes together in unison, just for the joy of playing the tunes. Sometimes, for special moments, variety, or in performance, musicians like to add a touch of harmony to fill out the melody. Below are some tips on making harmonies, and at the end, I will give you an example of a harmony part I’ve written that incorporates many of these suggestions.

1. No need to play harmony notes everywhere. Sometimes the nicest effect is to surprise the listener with a nice harmony on a long note, an ending, or a high point of a tune. Very often harmonies are saved for the repeat of a tune, so that listeners get to hear what the tune sounds like before the decorations are added. You can use the ideas below to make a full harmony or just to add bits of harmony in key places. Continue reading Making Harmonies

Changing Strings

Like tuning, changing strings is a necessary evil! Let’s talk about what to aim for and what to watch out for, as you change strings. We’ll start with the 7 Ideas to Keep in Mind, talk about How to Change Strings, and then go into the Whys & Wherefores for those interested.

7 Ideas to Keep in Mind

1. Change only one string at a time – the bridge can actually fall down if you take all the strings off at once*. Of course, if you break a string, you may only need to replace that one. Try not to let strings go longer than a year before changing them — you may not notice them losing their vigor but you certainly will notice how nice they sound when you change them!

2. Roll the strings neatly onto the correct pegs, with one layer of string**. The more neatly the string is rolled on, the more likely you’ll have enough space to Continue reading Changing Strings

Musical Memory — more to it than you might think!

There is a kind of musical memory that everyone can learn and improve, and it’s not about how many tunes you know.

A good musician, while teaching a lesson or engaged in a rehearsal, can listen to an entire set of tunes, and yet keep in mind which parts were solid and where improvements can be made, noting ideas to heighten the impact of a phrase, smooth out a transition, fix a note mistake, change a bowing to bolster sound or timing, adjust a distracting ornament, and so on. A good lesson or rehearsal will include the chance to outline and work on all these points of improvement. And it’s only possible with a good musical memory.

Challenge yourself to not only play a tune or part of a tune, Continue reading Musical Memory — more to it than you might think!

Guest Treasures

Without much fanfare, fiddle-online makes available performances and teaching 24/7 of some of the top contemporary fiddlers. As with everything at the site, it’s available a-la-carte and at a very low cost (80% of which goes to the guest artist, so an excellent cause!). See below for info about cost and logging in, etc.*

Below are some descriptions and links to more info about guest workshops by great players with varying styles of expertise: Scottish, Cape Breton, Irish, Quebecois, Old-timey, gypsy jazz and klezmer.

For the list and links, click Continue! —

Continue reading Guest Treasures