Here are some tips for you about Fido (fiddle-online), including some “hidden” bits as well as a few basics worth keeping in mind.
Privacy
As far as your internet privacy goes, there is only one person (myself, Ed Pearlman) who designs, publishes and runs this site, so if you send a message or fill out a form, it doesn’t go anywhere else; there are no employees or third-party companies involved. When you send info about your interests, for example, not much happens with the information — for new people I try to look at their interests and recommend places on the site that can help them.
There is also privacy in the live workshops — when you learn specific things from the teacher, mikes are muted so that you hear the teacher to play along with, but nobody else hears you unless you choose to play a phrase or two for the class in order to get some comments. This allows people of all levels to take class because nobody can compare folk to each other; everyone is focused on improving their own playing.
Two Different Home Pages – Site and Personal
The site home page shows 4 choices – Workshops, Articles, Technique, and Sheet Music. Click on Workshops to view info about upcoming live workshops as well as info about materials available to you from past workshops. Articles takes you to this blog. Techniques takes you to info about 5 video groups of 10 videos each, a treasury of learning options to be used at your own pace for improving ergonomics, bowing, fingering, note patterns, ornamentation. Sheet Music gives you a listing of Tune Groups with 12 tune in each, for you to learn from (many tunes are also available from past workshop materials).
The site home page also has a green button for joining, sort of a registration form. Anonymous lurkers and freeloaders are not appreciated here, it’s more of a small international community of learners. The red button is for logging on, once you’ve joined. This takes you to your own personal home page, which gives you direct links to any resources you are currently subscribed to, shows their expiration date, tells you how many credits you have, offers an online pitchpipe for tuning, and explains the menu items at the top of each page. There’s also a link there to Continue reading Hidden Tips