Teaching Tips

“Jamming” in Some Fiddling

In recent years, flourishing of workshops, in-services, and new publications have emerged to assist string teachers in understanding fiddling both for their own enjoyment and to share with their students. An ever-increasing number of pedagogues are availing themselves of these opportunities and have initiated fiddling in their curricula. While these musicians are enjoying their experiences, many of them still feel inadequately prepared to pass fiddling on to their charges and have myriad questions about how traditional fiddlers function. These instructors want to learn more than tunes and individual techniques of fiddling. They want to experience the “feel,” and what fiddlers refer to as the “groove” of fiddling.

Most of us are not in a situation, however, to abandon our present performing, teaching, and family involvement to become fiddlers. Nonetheless, paths can be taken to expand your fiddling enlightenment while maintaining reasonable frameworks of time and energy.

Private Fiddling Lessons

Although the first notion of a classically trained musician, private lessons are probably the least productive and most expensive way for a neophyte fiddler to work at mastering this genre of playing. Learning tunes and techniques in the isolated venue of a studio does not convey the true essence of fiddling, which is more about socializing than performing perfection. However, once you have a collection of tunes and practical fiddling experience, taking a few private lessons with a master is one way to address specific issues, accumulate more complex fiddling technique challenges, and receive the individual attention that can introduce finesse to your playing.

Listen, Listen, Listen! and Learn

Any fiddler will tell you that the greatest tool—and always the first step—to internalizing tunes, sound, style, ornaments, harmonic progressions, and ensemble is to listen to live and recorded performances. The concerts, jams, and dances that may be found posted in newspapers can generally ensure a minimal quality of performance for you to absorb. Almost any recording carried by a retailer will be worth purchasing. Sometimes you can even listen to these disks at the store, or ask a clerk or another customer browsing the fiddle tune area for a recording suggestion. Ask other fiddlers whom you know to lend or recommend recordings to you. You may try taking CDs out of the library, although they are often more commercial folk music than true American fiddling. At first, you want to listen to a wide range of fiddling genres, playing styles, and artists until you find the ones that you want to emulate.

Putting on a fiddling CD while you take a walk or drive the car is a good way to fit a daily quota of fiddle listening into busy life. Keep rotating CDs you play until you find the genres, artists, and tunes that you are drawn back to again and again. When you find a tune that you would like to learn, focus your attention on it until you can sing the whole piece. The next time you can, whisk out your instrument and you may be pleasantly surprised to see how much of that song you already can play. You already have begun to learn like a fiddler.

Learning fiddle tunes by playing along with recordings is another good way to practice learning the fiddler's way. Using a transcriber, which will slow down the tunes and still maintain the correct pitch, also allows you to maintain the sound, ornaments, variations, and the sense of playing in a band while you learn your part. By putting on headphones and a practice mute, you can “sit in” to play the same tune with the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, or the contemporary National Bluegrass Band.

For the musician still more comfortable learning new tunes from manuscript, many books of fiddle tunes come with a CD. You will find significant overlap in the repertoire offered by these volumes, so you can be assured that these are the same selections you will hear at concerts, dances, jams, and on commercial recordings. Listen to the CD until you can sing the tune you want to learn, and then read the “lead sheet” while you play along with the recording, either at the recorded speed or with the aid of the transcriber. Without even trying to memorize the music, you soon will not need your book anymore.

Discovering Folk Festivals

One of the greatest eye-openers for many classically oriented musicians is the multitude of people who are actively pursuing performing and dancing to folk music of all kinds. You will find adults of all ages and walks of life and whole families deeply engaged in musical organizations and events that you may not even have known existed. When I attended my first folk music and dance festival, I was dazzled by the busloads of singers, dancers in beautiful costumes representing many ethnic cultures, and musicians playing instruments I'd never seen. All day and night are opportunities for dancing and performing, scores of classes to attend, and kiosks selling the recordings, printed music, instruments, and costumes used by these music lovers. I always have a marvelous time at these exciting events and come home with new and deeper knowledge and understanding of folk music and fiddling than I had before.

“Jamming” in Some Fiddling

Jams are social gatherings, but they are also a means of group practice and a venue for fiddlers to try out new tunes and improvisations and just “strut their stuff.” Impromptu jams can be found anywhere there are two or more folk musicians. At festivals and music camps, they will be tucked into even the tiniest spaces at all hours. Organized jams have a leader and may focus around a particular genre (like Irish jams) or other commonality, like playing speed (Sally's Slow Jam, in New Haven, versus the Glastonbury, Connecticut, “Intermediate” Jam).

These groups meet regularly, from once a week to once a month, and usually have a core membership; but the beautiful feeling of unconditional acceptance is always in full force at jams. Not only may anyone join any jam, but participating players will go out of their way to smile and nod at instrumentalists who wander over to the outskirts of their group. It is almost impolite not to join in by playing at least long bass notes or chunks, when appropriate to the piece. Etiquette also requires that new arrivals and less experienced players remain in an outside ring before they are welcomed into the center circle.

The core players sit close to each other and each musician, in turn, chooses a piece in which to lead the group. The tune will be repeated several times, sometimes beginning slowly so that everyone can learn the tune and speeding up with repetitions. Sometimes players in the inner circle take turns playing the melody while the group supports their improvisation. Generally, every player of each circle will be invited to take a turn at the solo (with no penalty for declining to do so), and sometimes they will go around for a second or even third round of soloing. At some Irish jams, tunes are played at a fast performance speed several times through. Attending jams is a good way to meet other musicians and to learn tunes, licks, techniques, and creative harmony progressions. You can find regular jams in your area by talking to “jammers” at festivals and camps, by asking dance musicians, and by looking in your local newspaper.

“Sitting in” at Dances

Many professional dance bands will allow “sit-ins” for at least a few of their dances each season. Sitting in is more stressful than jamming because paying dancers on the floor are not interested in providing a learning venue for musicians. But playing a tune many times over, at dance speed, with the feel and sound of many dancers bounding on the wood floor in front of you is the best way to really understand the roots and development of fiddling. Having a professional band as a safety net, should you stumble or get tired and slow down, is also an excellent intermediary step between jamming and becoming a more experienced fiddler.

The sit-ins usually perch themselves apart from the hired musicians but clustered near enough to the band so that they can hear and see the “goings-on.” This close-up view allows the extra players to see how the band members communicate and interact at their business. Do not sit any closer to the professional group than any of the other sit-ins do, and you might want to even stay at the outskirts of this secondary group on your first visit. If you don't know the tune, it is quite acceptable not to play or to play a bass line or chunks. Always be careful not to play louder than any of the other sit-ins or so loudly that you would interfere with the dancers’ ability to hear the hired band. It is courteous to pay the dancers’ entrance fee, and if there is not a large crowd at the beginning of a dance, support the hired band by dancing until the hall fills up. During a break, be sure to thank the leader of the professional group that allowed you to learn from them.

Learning to Face the Music

Dancing is another important component of learning to fiddle, and almost every fiddler will encourage you to take a few turns around the hall. (“Face the music” is a dance call telling the dancers to turn toward the top of the hall, where the band is located.) You may find that a binary dance form is a more intricate organization of themes than you may have realized. You will also more fully understand fiddle tune construction. The time signatures, tempos, and melodies of gigs, reels, breakdowns, mazurkas, hambos, schottishes, and waltzes all express the steps of each dance. Even the way you begin and end a tune is reflective of the dance you are accompanying. The tunes are repeated at least as many times as there are couples in a set, so that every couple dances all the positions on the floor, and so that dancers can meet many of the other people in their line. The speed of the dance is generally exhilarating, but you learn how much can be conveyed between individuals with only a few seconds of eye contact.

Fiddle Camps

Fiddle camps are the easiest way to learn about fiddling. Many wonderful camps dotted all over the country are usually situated in beautiful parks or conservatories on lakes or rivers, with swimming, various kinds of boating, hiking, biking, diverse sporting activities, area sight-seeing, and, of course, a lot of music and dancing. Almost all of these camps intentionally provide an inexpensive family vacation, as well as discounts for family members not attending camp classes and activities provided for their enjoyment.

Most camps provide a plethora of five or six hours of official workshops each day, which include playing in a band and lessons in various musical genres on a variety of instruments, from absolute beginners to advanced players. Sometimes there are instruments available for campers who make a spur-of-the-moment decision to try their hand at a new instrument, too! Nightly concerts and dances are performed by the staff and campers. Before, in between, and after posted activities, there is usually a dizzying array of impromptu and organized special classes and jams.

You will be surrounded by people that live and breathe dancing and music. You will see more natural and independently developed talent than you can imagine. You will be overjoyed to see how healthily music lives in our society. You will laugh a lot. You may even be moved to tears. You will find lifelong friends and come to understand why so many people at each camp come back every year. Most important for your fiddling education is that, for a sustained period of time, you will be totally immersed in the world of fiddling.

Beginning last summer (2004), Ashokan Fiddle and Dance Camp began offering continuing education units and graduate credit through the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York's Ashokan Field Campus in Olivebridge. Created and hosted by the well-known composers and recording artists Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, and administered by Ashokan.org, each week-long session of this well-run, family-oriented camp offers an annually rotating staff of widely recognized professional folk musicians and dancers of various genres. Campers applying for credit take a daily class with a university instructor and have minimum camp participation requirements, as well. Like many fiddle camps, there are usually more musicians hoping to attend than there are openings at the camp, so you will want to register early to avoid being put on a waiting list.

Dozens of fiddle camps may be found all over the country. For a list of resources, see page 88.

There is a reason that folk music and fiddling has enjoyed such a healthy survival through hundreds of years, in scores of cultures, and with billions of people: it is the music of the people. It is inclusive of and fun for all playing abilities and tastes. It is the basis upon which the genius of classical music has developed. To understand it from the inside out is to have respect for its very real musical value.