The evolution of Greasy String... I  am still just improvising for the B part but yesterday I recorded this one and hurray I do not look sloppy anymore LOL although I look pretty angry  when I am serious : -D This one is going public on my channel. The tune is going in the right direction, but a long and hard way it is!
https://youtu.be/YeSfXVhvymk

I've been on a shelf lately.. nothing excited me fiddle/wise.. THEN, I found out the name of one of the tunes that Eileen Ivers plays ahead of Star of Munster...which I JUST found out is Tripping Down the Stairs.. I'm on a roll learning the tune and then I'll try to play along with Eileen...
So.. Trippin Down the Stairs... Is what I'll be playing for the next week.. Not too difficult but the BOWING ( yep, bowing) is what it is all about...
Even on Star of Munster, I learned a lot slowing her down..

Here are the tunes.. Of course I'll be able to sound Just Like Her..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot4F2VOJJKQ

Lee your posts make me smile :-))) She uses some interesting technique I do not know the name of. Haha. I only have one desire: to keep finding ME on fiddle, and I feel like I am making good progress doing so. That keeps me going at least. Come one light that fire!

Edit: my biggest desire is to play fiddle with my own sense for rhythm while doing some crazy footwork as percussion. If I could only keep it up for more than just these 40 seconds :-D:

https://youtube.com/shorts/t03He73BECo?feature=shared

My recipe: some serious John Specker attitude mixed with the first few confused notes of Yew Piney Mountain together with some crazy look a like  Canadian footwork as percussion flavour and that together with the syncopated spirit of Dwight Dlller- oh yes! -  and all the sparkles coming from this hell of a place. 

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Originally posted by Quincy

Lee your posts make me smile :-))) She uses some interesting technique I do not know the name of. Haha. I only have one desire: to keep finding ME on fiddle, and I feel like I am making good progress doing so. That keeps me going at least. Come one light that fire!

Edit: my biggest desire is to play fiddle with my own sense for rhythm while doing some crazy footwork as percussion. If I could only keep it up for more than just these 40 seconds :-D:

https://youtube.com/shorts/t03He73BECo?feature=shared

My recipe: some serious John Specker attitude mixed with the first few confused notes of Yew Piney Mountain together with some crazy look a like  Canadian footwork as percussion flavour and that together with the syncopated spirit of Dwight Dlller- oh yes! -  and all the sparkles coming from this hell of a place. 

That is really great Anja.. good timing, good drones, good sound overall.. You have actually become a fiddler right in front of our eyes..!!!

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I play "Star of Muster" but not with her variations or ease 

Just learned “Ah Surely” (reel), popular at the session…

I thought it was a weird name? Cool story about it on the session.org:

“Ah Surely is a very old Sligo reel, played first by a great Sligo flute player by the name of Willie Snee who lived in the hills of Darroon outside Ballymote. Nobody know how Willie Snee had so many tunes stored up in his head… One Sunday there was a great gathering of flute players, the PReston Brothers and many more. They decided to have a contest amongst them to find out how many tunes each of them had. The contest went on all day, but in the end Willie Snee won out, playing [this tune]. In admitting defeat, all of them said in tribute ‘Ah Surely Willie, Ah Surely’ and that is how this old reel got its name.”

Anyway it’s a great ole reel and yea I can play it now, but could spend 20 more years and never be done learning it, if ya know what I mean…

And yes, that Eileen Ivers is something else!!

NCnotes - I meant to ask if you've looked for any of the other CDs from the Cork University festivals on Spotify. The one originally titled "Dear Old Erin's Isle" features top Irish-American players, including Eileen Ivers, Liz Carroll, Kevin Burke,and others.

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

That is really great Anja.. good timing, good drones, good sound overall.. You have actually become a fiddler right in front of our eyes..!!!

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I feel honoured seriously :-))) I still think sometimes about the day Bruno and I met some of you true fiddlers on video , that was so nice of you people...I can recall all of those present  :-)) I still haven't found my peers here haha. BUT something tells me more than once:  forget about that banjo player or guitar player... you need a percussionist! Maybe if busking I one day just might meet a good match :D

Edit : found this that comes close to my idea how it COULD sound together, fiddle and percussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyiihXx0m_0

Again Sourwood Mountain, playing together on the old fiddle with Dwight Diller. Must have MasterCard, I'll arrange one , I need his fiddle album! The winding of the A and E string came loose, I used spare strings to fix it but now these windings seem to wear out fast as well, probably because I am just not sure if I picked the right strings of different brands I forgot the name of.
It comes to me that no matter what kind of weird put together set of strings you put on this thing, the sound is always amazing. I am so glad the luthier will have a look at it tomorrow, besides the bridge check up it is screaming for a brand new set of strings. I am so in love with this fiddle, what I could not do with it first now seems like piece of cake. I feel this might be the one giving me a lift to the next level.

Catch the rhytm.
Still Sourwood Mountain here ..I am playing the old thing till the luthier can solve it ;-)

Added a couple little notes to Soldiers Joy again. I like listening to many versions and I'm discovering subtle things I miss when learning a tune. One of my things I'm not good at yet, or don't know how, and that's improvising. In bluegrass, you kind of stick to the melody for the first time through, next time, mix it up, then kind of circle back around. In OT, it's usually hanging around the melody for the most part.

Yep it seems like there are always more little things to learn about a tune...!
It's neverending, but in a good fun kinda way :-)
I used to like making up stuff, but with the Irish/Celtic I've had to stick close to the tune too. Preferably so close that we are all playing the same setting (not easy!)

Over here, learning a set from video with Andrew Finn MaGill ( local fiddler, I've met him :-) he's great and he organizes Swannanoa Gathering). I play along with them at 75% speed LOL. He's using a five-string fiddle, that's how he can play West Clare Reel down so low, love it!   ( Reels: Ah Surely / West Clare Reel )

 

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Originally posted by ChickenMan

I play "Star of Muster" but not with her variations or ease 

 

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I'm sure you observed her slack bow hair...!!

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Originally posted by Erockin

Added a couple little notes to Soldiers Joy again. I like listening to many versions and I'm discovering subtle things I miss when learning a tune. One of my things I'm not good at yet, or don't know how, and that's improvising. In bluegrass, you kind of stick to the melody for the first time through, next time, mix it up, then kind of circle back around. In OT, it's usually hanging around the melody for the most part.

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Yep.. they mix it up and OT Normally doesn't.. and that Normality is starting to drive me nuts!!  After having played for 5 decades I get bored quickly when playing OT tunes the same over and over..It is a challenge to do variations that aren't so bold as to mess up a jam.....  

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

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Originally posted by Erockin

Added a couple little notes to Soldiers Joy again. I like listening to many versions and I'm discovering subtle things I miss when learning a tune. One of my things I'm not good at yet, or don't know how, and that's improvising. In bluegrass, you kind of stick to the melody for the first time through, next time, mix it up, then kind of circle back around. In OT, it's usually hanging around the melody for the most part.

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Yep.. they mix it up and OT Normally doesn't.. and that Normality is starting to drive me nuts!!  After having played for 5 decades I get bored quickly when playing OT tunes the same over and over..It is a challenge to do variations that aren't so bold as to mess up a jam.....  

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I haven't been able to mix it up yet. I gotta have it first in order to mix it...lol

Three tunes are on my rotation today.
1. American Hornpipe - goodness, what a good tune! (See Ryan's or Cole's)
2. Peace River Breakdown - a great tune from the Don Messer anthology.
3. Montague Processional - oh my!! What a gorgeous tune in the style of a Swedish walking tune.

American Hornpipe and Peace River will challenge you noting and bowing techniques. James Bryan did a recording in the 80s on his First of May album. There is a clip on YouTube. But, beware! He tunes down a half-step. My favorite Peace River recording is of Don Messer. It's also on YouTube. Montague Processional is on Jay Ungar/Molly Mason's Lover's Waltz album. There's also a clip on YouTube that is highly arranged.

One category of tunes I've been working is old chestnuts that I never really mastered. For example, I played The Irish Washerwoman (occasionally) for many years, but the bowing on the B part is not trivial and I was always kind of sloppy. I've cleaned it up a lot.

I finally worked up a version of Bile Them Cabbage Down with three parts (AA BB AA CC) that I can play well and sounds good. Although there are some good recorded versions out there, most of us learn a crappy beginner version and never work out a better one.

I've played Hulls Victory for a long time, but it was always kind of sloppy, in part because it is in F. My intonation is mostly fine, though there are times when two fingers need to be closer to each other than they are on my hand. I have it pretty clean now, though it needs more repetition.

I was working on a number of rags, notably the Dallas Rag and some East Texas Serenaders rags. If you don't dumb it down, the Dallas Rag has a challenging chromatic run. I play it much better than a year or two ago, but it still needs work. A problem I have with some of the East Texas Serenaders' rags / stomps is some of them are  long enough that I get lost. In particular, I can play the Acorn Stomp just fine technically, but I get lost.

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Originally posted by Erockin

Added a couple little notes to Soldiers Joy again. I like listening to many versions and I'm discovering subtle things I miss when learning a tune. 

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I have that too now, each time i listen I figure out new things!

Woke up early, I went to sleep with the discovery I can shuffle in Sourwood Mountain, didn't work out great but some sleep did me well. And there it is!!

Ha! Nice.

I went back to Cripple Creek this morning. I still can't improvise the right notes (as if there are "right ones") haha

Everybody revisiting tunes made me think of something…

I found that tunes is more like a soaking-in process, or making wine…first you reach the point where you can play it along well with others, and I used to think ok, that’s done!

But then you hear somebody play it an interesting way…somebody plays it slowww…or somebody puts a bit of swing in it…and somebody has a cool variation…so the tune keeps “ripening” in there somewhere…

The tunes I first learned, I play so differently now! When they’re “fresh” it’s like they are vanilla, out of the box…but over time they become the accumulation of all the people you’ve played them with…they get a soul…

... maybe I'll name it "aging the tune"... but hopefully not "forgetting the tune" ...LOL!

And….Ramble ramble ramble !! :-)

I say the tunes become more and more "you" or "yours" via the accumulation of your life and musical journey experiences.

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Originally posted by ChickenMan

I say the tunes become more and more "you" or "yours" via the accumulation of your life and musical journey experiences.

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That's it! Learn a tune. Know a tune. Internalize it. Get bored with it. Improvise on it. Then listen to find that I'm not as hot as I thought I was. Back up. Play it again with a bit more maturity. Maturity that spreads to other tunes. 

That's why I play tunes, and not ness. care about the who in what year, and actually put fiddle to bow.

Ernie - Some interesting tunes and seems like a thorough approach. I posted this version of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" some time ago, and listening to it again I realized Joe played three parts. Is that how you play it?
Also, he uses a shuffle more to define phrases than for a repetitious rhythm.

Talking about mixing it up and playing variations, I realized some time ago that many fiddle tunes are elaborations on a simple folk song, like 'Old Joe Clark', 'Soldiers Joy' and 'Cripple Creek'. Rather than work out a set variation for each tune, which would be some feat in memorization, I would decide what the skeleton melody is and its chords and play variations/improvisations on the fly, thus every time I play a tune it will be different and interesting. The other day I did this with 'Cherokee Shuffle' and the skeleton tune that came up was 'Auld Lang Syne'. Maybe this is the case with many fiddle tunes and there is a basic tune for 'Cherokee Shuffle' I dont know.

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Originally posted by DougD

Ernie - Some interesting tunes and seems like a thorough approach. I posted this version of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" some time ago, and listening to it again I realized Joe played three parts. Is that how you play it?
Also, he uses a shuffle more to define phrases than for a repetitious rhythm.

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Doug, I like that recording! I'll have to download it over the holiday. My A and B parts are pretty similar to that recording. I think what I am hearing in that recording is AA BB A'A' BB, where A'A' is a low version of the A part. Whereas what I am playing is AA BB AA B'B', where B'B' is a somewhat higher version of the B part. I should learn that low A part.

I'll try to record what I play over the holiday. I'm almost done working for the year, but not quite and I have some home projects. Thursday and Friday I am renting a dump trailer to haul some gravel and rock. (maintenance for erosion control on dirt road and driveway)