Listening skills – fiddle-online blog

Jazz fiddle on fiddle-online

The violin was an important jazz instrument among both black and white players, especially in the first half of the 20th century. The European Roma took to it and many became virtuoso jazz musicians, including the great guitarist Django Reinhardt, best known as fiddler Stephane Grappelli’s other half in the Hot Club of France.

We’re very fortunate on fiddle-online to have a detailed concert/workshop on this style of music, still called “gypsy jazz,” by one of the great exponents, Tim Kliphuis, who teaches at the conservatory of music in Amsterdam. In his online concert/workshop, he not only plays some of this great music, but also tells how he got to know and work with the Roma and gained their respect for his playing. The learning part of the workshop is very detailed, including a simple jazz tune, plus jazz riffs to practice, and a sample solo to work on. Click here for audio and details. (Note, because of the extensive detail and length of this workshop, the cost is 8 credits instead of 6. Keep in mind that as with all fiddle-online workshops, 80% goes to the artist.)

On the other side of the Atlantic, in the U.S., various styles of jazz were being developed. One of the great American jazz fiddlers was Joe Venuti, who had an adventurous, heartfelt, sometimes spare, sometimes raucous sound. Our guest Paul Anastasio took lessons with Joe Venuti back in the day, and shares with us some of his style of swing jazz fiddle, including a performance of various tunes, and the teaching of the standard “Avalon,” featuring both the basic tune and a solo improv-style version Paul composed for people to learn and develop riffs and variations. Click here for more details and signup — scroll down to Paul’s second offering for the jazz fiddle selection.

Whether it’s new to you or you’re an expert, there’s a lot to learn from these concert/workshops. Even if jazz is not your thing, try it! It expands your technical and musical abilities when you stretch toward the horizons of what jazz fiddle has to offer!

Playing Chords with 1 finger!

Did you know you can play chords to most fiddle tunes just using no more than one finger?

On the fiddle, chords are generally played as doublestops — two strings played at a time. But chords are usually made up of three notes. Doublestops on the fiddle cover two out of three of those notes — any two out of three. This allows some leeway in playing chords. It also allows for some ambiguity, because two notes can be part of more than one chord.

For example, major chords have 3 notes — the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale. A D chord is made up of the D, F# and A. (D minor is simply D, F, A, because it’s the third note of the scale that determines whether it’s major or minor.)

To play a doublestop D chord means playing two of those three notes. Could be D and F#, F# and A, or D and A. The easiest of these is simply to play Continue reading Playing Chords with 1 finger!

Lift vs Lilt

Ethnomusologist Peter Cooke wrote an important book about the research he did throughout the 1970s in Shetland, called The Fiddle Traditions of the Shetland Isles. One interesting point he makes is what we’ll talk about here — the difference between “lift” and “lilt” in fiddle playing.

Listeners and dancers enjoy music only if it has lift, and they can only be charmed by it if it has lilt. Neither of these is dependent on perfect sound or intonation.

Lift

Lift is the easier quality to define. It is based on having a good beat. Traditional dance bands make sure they have lift, if they want anybody to dance, and if they want people to stay on the dance floor to the end of the program. Having played for, and danced at, many social dances to traditional music, I have noticed that if a band has a good beat, or groove, in their ensemble, everybody enjoys the dance. If their beat is a little sketchy or inconsistent, dancers mysteriously start finding themselves too tired to finish the evening.

Some bands overdo the beat, using strong bass, drums, and in some cases, I’ve heard an accordion or two squeeze hard on every single beat to the point where I feel like they’re hitting me over the head! This works for a crowd of dancers in a noisy hall, but it is not necessary. If musicians place the beat where it belongs, every time, because they feel it in their bones, their music will have a clear and strong beat, even in quieter sections. This allows a band, or a duo or a solo player, to have strong lift but still be expressive, with varying dynamics according to the feel of the music. These expressive qualities are obliterated by bands that hit you over the head with the beat, but if people are there to focus on their dance figures, they will likely have a wonderful time anyway. Of course, there are whole styles of music that are all about hitting you with a throbbing over-the-top beat, regardless of any attempt at a melody or lyrics, so it obviously works for many people!

There is another, little-discussed factor in having good lift, especially for voices or instruments like the fiddle, which can Continue reading Lift vs Lilt

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

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

Falling in Love <3

I admit it, I can think of several musicians that I have fallen in love with, though it’s not quite as you might imagine. More than just enjoying their music, I felt all the symptoms of being in love. It was thrilling to be near them when they were playing. I felt the warmth of their music long after hearing it. The odd part is, these particular people were pretty much just acquaintances or casual friends; we didn’t know much about each other outside of the music. Is there such a thing as falling in love with someone’s musical soul?

Has this happened to you? Not just liking a musician or a band or meaningful lyrics, but feeling deeply moved by what you hear? If not, keeping listening, it will come your way if you keep your ears, and your own musical soul, open!

I can only offer a few clues about this phenomenon. One of them comes from a moment that astonished me. Continue reading Falling in Love <3

5 Most Popular fiddle-online posts!

Launched in February 2015, fiddle-online explores ways that the internet can best help learners, players and teachers of the fiddle. About two articles per month have been posted to this blog since then, adding up to over 100!

Here are five of the most popular articles over the past five years.

1. “A Treasury of Techniques, in short video form” — click here
This article outlines the five different Technique Video Groups available on fiddle-online and describes how you can make use of these 62 short videos (about 10 in each group), plus the sampler that allows you to try one video from each of the five groups. These cover physical and ergonomic warmups, games to improve efficiency, expression and control, bowing techniques to bring your tunes to life, finger patterns, and ornamentation.

2. “When Push Comes to Pull … a New Year’s Resolution” — click here
Starting from the research that New Year’s resolutions don’t work unless they remove obstacles to your goals rather than impose wishful demands on yourself, this article focuses primarily on how to remove obstacles from good bowing technique by visualizing properly how your bow arm actually works. Did you know the downbow is a push, and the upbow a pull? Read this one to get a grasp on a way to improve your bowing instantly.

3. “Auld Lang Syne, the song and tune” — click here
Learn a bit of the history of this very popular song written by Robert Burns, who chose a different melody than the one popularly used every New Year’s Eve. To see both melodies, check out the link above, and to see the melody the popular version appears to be based on, read this one!

4. “Medleys 2: Compatible Tunes” — click here
This article gives you six approaches to finding tunes that are compatible with each other in a medley, and then tells you how to break the rules!

5. “Finding Your Style among over 150 tunes!” — click here
Here at fiddle-online there are well over 150 tunes available with videos, interactive sheet music, and more learning materials that were offered in past live online workshops. You have access to them all, and this article allows you to find tunes based on the styles you’re interested in exploring. One article gives an intro to these offerings and gives you links to the Scottish tunes and guests; the next article provides links to tunes of many other styles: Irish, Old-timey, American, Jazz, Scandie, Quebecois, Cape Breton, Klezmer.

Enjoy exploring these articles and the links they provide!

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

Links to Learning Tunes – part 2

Last time we talked about finding the support materials you’re looking for to learn different styles of tunes on fiddle-online.com with a bunch of links to the Scottish tunes you can find here.

This time we’ll provide easy links to find lots of other styles of tunes. When you look at the Past Workshops, you can also check out tunes based on the types and purpose of tunes, such as tunes to help you learn by ear, tunes to help learn ornamentation, a set of tunes teaching higher finger positions, and a group of tunes focused on syncopation.

Below are links for audio and info about learning Irish, Old-timey & other American trad tunes, jazz fiddle, Scandie, Quebecois, Cape Breton, and klezmer tunes!

Don’t forget that the guest workshops include a concert video as well.

Looking for Irish tunes? Check out the following: Continue reading Links to Learning Tunes – part 2