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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

Link to Weekly Articles & Search Box Tips

You might enjoy Ed’s weekly articles about music & learning fiddle on Substack.com. If you subscribe (free), you’ll get them by email each Wednesday.

There are over 150 articles here on this blog. You can browse them (below left, or tap the 3 lines if on phone) by category or by month, or you can search for what interests you. Below are a few keywords to help you search!

Feel free to add your comments at the end of any article. (Our real-time spam filter blocks fake entries, so that comments from real people can appear right away.)

Continue reading Link to Weekly Articles & Search Box Tips

Renewing Your Online Materials

When you sign up a workshop, tune group, technique video group, etc., on fiddle-online, a link to your materials or workshop will immediately appear in the green box on your personal home page (that’s where you are taken when you log in) — the green box marked “My Current Links and expiration dates.”

On some materials you’ll see a box near the top which is marked “I’d like extra time” which provides a link that will extend your expiration date by the amount of time and for the number of credits indicated.

A few days before your materials are due to expire, you’ll get an email reminder. When they do expire, the link to those materials will automatically move from the green “My Current Links” box to the pink marked “My Expired Links.”

If you’d like to continue using those materials, or at any time, would like to revisit them, just click the link in the pink box, and you’ll go straight to the page again. It will be renewed for you at 1/3 off the original price, and the link will now appear again in the green box, with the new expiration date.

By the way, when it says the item expires on a particular date, this will happen at midnight UK time, since that’s where the expiration is calculated. So it will happen at different times for you depending on your time zone.

If you’d like to hang onto some materials without renewing, you can always print out the tunes before the materials expire, and if you right-click the audio (or control-click on a Mac), you can save the playalong to work with as a reminder later. The actual online page is worth renewing, of course, in order to see and wrok with the videos and to use the audio by phrase if you haven’t got a good grip yet on the tune!

All about “credits”

Let’s talk about “credits”, the currency of fiddle-online — what they are, why we use them, how you get them, and things you can do with them.

What Are Fiddle-online Credits?

Basically 1 credit = $1, and you can purchase exactly as many credits as you want or need, between $1 and $999. But credits don’t always cost $1 each because you can get bonus credits for subscribing, and 2 or 4 free credits just for joining. Subscribers can get 25 credits for $20, or even 50 credits for $40.

Why Credits?

The nice thing about credits is that on this site, where everything is a-la-carte, you can spend as little as 2 credits on a tune video without taking out your credit card for a transaction. Credits also make it easy to adjust your account if there is some kind of error by yourself or the site (rare as these are!), rather than involving your bank in a refund and repurchase.

There are also a few things you can do with credits that would be pretty difficult or impossible with direct payments. One is that you can donate credits to others via the Credit Sharing Center, or use some yourself from the Center if you can’t afford something or want to try something out. You can also use credits in the Credits Store to purchase lessons, t-shirts and Finger Finders. And you can donate extra credits back to fiddle-online, and receive occasional info on how things are going “behind the scenes.”

How Do You Get Credits?

You get some credits for just joining, and can purchase any number you wish by visiting the “My Account/Credits” page. On that page Continue reading All about “credits”

Fine Tuners, and direct concert/workshop signup

New to fiddle-online? Click “Continue reading –>” and scroll down to learn more about an easy way to sign up for your first guest online concert/workshop!

First, let’s talk a bit about fine tuners. Nearly everyone uses fine tuners, the little knobs on the tailpiece of the violin that you turn to slightly tune up or down.

Some plastic tuners come with tuners on every string while some players use one only on the E string. Why is this?

The strings exert upwards of 40 lbs per square inch of pressure on the bridge and the upper plate of the violin, and much of this comes from the E string. Usually made of steel, the E is the tightest string, and is the most difficult one to tune by peg. It also doesn’t go out of tune much. For these reasons, most people like to use the fine tuner for this string.

The lower strings Continue reading Fine Tuners, and direct concert/workshop signup

Password Tips

We are cybercreatures who have learned to protect our electronic space the same as we lock our houses or cars or bikes. We remember or write down our passwords, and make them weird enough not to be guessed by a robot. Sometimes we even gratuitously change them in order to foil the secret police.

Your password on fiddle-online is easily changed by you, and you should know it is securely hashed, meaning that the site tears it apart and processes it into an unrecognizable, long string of characters that cannot be reconstructed by any computer because bits of the original have been removed. When you log in, your password is torn apart the same way so the system can compare and match up the remaining debris! On my end, by the way, your password is blank, so I can’t see it either, but I have an “autologin” feature that, if necessary, allows me to send you a temporary code that will log you in automatically (though I still can’t see it).

Lose your password? It happens. Just click the red Log In button as usual but then click “forgot password” — here’s what happens. You’ll be sent an email with a new password. If you don’t see this email, check your spam folder, and if it’s there, be sure to unspam it so that future emails from fiddle-online can get to you. Very important — click the activate button in the email, and use that password to log in. Do not click “forgot password” more than once — you can’t mix and match passwords if you get more than one email with a new password.

Want to change your password? Log in to your home page, or click the green “My homepage” button at the top left of most pages. From there, click on “My Accounts/Credits” at the top right corner of your home page. This takes you to the page where you usually purchase credits, but check out the blue box at right, where it shows your available credits. Underneath your username is a blue link marked “Change password, username, or email.” It should be self-explanatory from there.

Fiddle or Violin?

Before reading our article, check out this week’s tip on how better to use fiddle-online!

#1. Do you find some of the playalong tracks to be too fast? Every page on fiddle-online with interactive sheet music also includes a listening track and a playalong track. The listening track gives you a feel for the tune. The playalong track is moderately paced to help you start playing through the tune, once you’ve learned some phrases.

But what if the playalong track seems too fast? In that case, focus on the orange buttons — the self-repeating audio for each unique phrase in the tune. These are always slow and manageable. Once you feel you have control of one of these phrases, or several of them, you can try to sew them together by using the playalong track. Even if it’s too fast at that moment, you can still get a lot out of trying to play the phrase you know at the place where it belongs. For example if you learn phrase A1, then play at least the beginning of it with the playalong track, listen as A2 is played, then jump in again when A1 comes back (usually it’s the third phrase as well). Keep track of the beat notes to give yourself a hold of the phrase rather than just try to string all the individual notes together. You can do it! And it’s very rewarding.

Fiddle or Violin?

It’s an age-old question — what’s the difference between a fiddle and a violin? The answer involves a little history and some cultural context.

Some research shows that bowed instruments were invented in Turkey and that the original fiddles were brought to western Europe by returning Crusaders. The Arab rabab and rebec apparently developed in Europe into the fithele (fiddle), in China into the erhu, and can be traced to other similar instruments elsewhere.

In the 14th century, viols appeared in Europe, and in the 16th century the modern violin was invented in Italy. Its sound was so good that it quickly took over from the fiddle where that old instrument was being played. In fact, the violins made by Amati back then have never really been improved upon.
Local music from many European cultures is still called fiddle music because of the old instrument, the fiddle, though the violin is the official name of the instrument. Classical music refers only to the violin, though many players familiarly speak of their fiddles. In many circles, whether folk or classical, the two words are both used.

Both words, the fiddle and the violin, may have a Latin root — Vitula was the Roman goddess of joy and victory.

The bottom line is that there’s no difference between a violin and a fiddle. But if you walk into a violin shop, you might be treated differently if you say you play fiddle rather than violin. It depends on the knowledge of the people who work there, but it’s not uncommon for shops to assume that fiddlers need flatter bridges and cheaper steel strings, because of their presumptions about what fiddle music is. For some fiddlers, that may work, but generally, we all want the best sound we can get, from decent strings and properly set up instruments.

Those who would like to explore the “local music from different cultures,” which is what fiddle music really is, may like to read our article, “What’s in a fiddle style?” If you’re a classical violinist interested in learning fiddle, you may find some interesting points to help you with the transition in our article, “Fiddle for the Classically Trained.”