Hi Quincy - Nice topic. As for me I'm such a lousy fiddler I wouldn't dare try to give any tips that might corrupt someone else. I do have a question though about using left hand positioning to improved intonation. I always considered intonation to be strictily an ear/sound thing rather than anything to do with body or hand positioning. Maybe I'm all wet on this and someone can correct me.

I'm in complete agreement with you though on the difficulty in developing a solid rhythm/shuffle going in most of the tunes I (try to) play.

Since I started messing with the banjo about a year ago I've found this is a lot easier to do with that instrument. Oddly enough, this seem to help when I trying playing the same tune on the fiddle.

Thanks Anja, this is a positive uplifting topic and also educational!

I think one of my strengths is the ability to “catch” somebody’s groove, rhythm, mood and back it up and fit in, and pick the right moments to be creative. One of my pet peeves is people who join in and trample on other people’s music…dragging or speeding tempo, playing too loud, altering the rhythm, etc. The musicians that I admire are intent Listeners…you will see them sitting out listening, and any visitor might assume they are a beginner…until they do join in, and then they kind of uplift the whole sound and make musical magic,

So I guess my fiddling (and any music) tip is: Listen! :-)

In the words of Bob Dylan "Know the tune well, before you play it"...Or similar.

("I'll know my song well, before I start singing" ... which always brings to my mind Patti Smith's forgetting of the lyrics to that song - Hard Rain - when she was performing it at a Nobel Prize celebration for Dylan ... !)

Cheers Scratch

NCnotes touched on an vital point. Timing. Let's assume someone will eventually hear/listen to your playing, timing is important. IOW, Don't cop out and say, I only play alone.
I try to always play along with something. A loop. A simple drumbeat. A recorded tune or song. I hated metronomes, so I try to find something more interesting. Eventually, if I do play without, but it's interesting, since I do play along to something, anything, my timing has improved. There's really nothing as important I could come up with. Intonation however is important too.

Ain't no cop out when you have to pay attention to the dynamics in a 1/8th note triplet at 120 bpm, solo or otherwise.

Tone is a thing that I focus on. I don’t usually a problem with timing. Sometimes the intonation is a bit wonky until I get my fingers to co-ordinate with my ear. This big beast of a fiddle that I play has cello strings getting the bow speed and pressure right is tricky on those big fat strings especially down low on a lively Em reel.

I get that... I think i will never get an Irish tone as long as i have a hole in my English ar*se.

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

I get that... I think i will never get an Irish tone as long as i have a hole in my English ar*se.

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Maybe that's the whole reason why it's  hard, because I have a hole in my Australian ar*se. 

Anja, any tips have to appropriate for the skill level if the reciepient. A tip on vibrato for a new player is like giving a tip on surgical knots to a 1st yr med student. Its been so long since I was a newbie, I don't even remember any sage tips! I do remember ( and it working somewhat) that it helped thinking of each 'fret' as being 1 finger wide ( which really depends on your hand size and of course they get smaller as you go up the neck - the spaces, not your fingers!).

Maybe use a metronome? You'd be surprised how many players (and not just fiddlers) with a poor sense of timing and tempo. Soloists who can pull off a break and then slow down or can't hold a steady beat! Playing along with a good recording can help too. You think you have a tune down cold and then try to play along with it and suddenly you ain't where they are. SO thats a 'tip'.

Chopping a tune into smaller and smaller segments and practicing those until they are fluid and smooth (and steady), but thats common practice Works well for difficult sections and transitions from A to B parts.

For shuffles, I've already posted a trick that helped me learn these - a lit cigarette held between pinky and ring finger on the bow hand in a dark room lets the motion of the hand (and bow) become easier to track and understand the pattern needed for shuffles. You make C's and figure 8's and all sorts of figures and it should help!

Discussed many times on this board is using an open adjacent string played along with a noted one (open string partial double stop) to check intonation. Very useful and can be done on the fly with a bit of practice.

Visualizing the tune on the fingerboard can help ( i still use this on occasion) and doing it a few notes in advance of where you are really helps!

And always compliment the bass player, because they are a sensitive lot and who wants to look for new bass players, right?

These are wise words wrench13:-)))

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Originally posted by martyjoe

Tone is a thing that I focus on. I don’t usually a problem with timing. Sometimes the intonation is a bit wonky until I get my fingers to co-ordinate with my ear. This big beast of a fiddle that I play has cello strings getting the bow speed and pressure right is tricky on those big fat strings especially down low on a lively Em reel.

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I love that wonkiness when it's done consistent, gives a very special effect!!

I can’t even imagine playing a lively Em reel on cello strings, I have trouble even on my G string! You guys are funny … I guess I will always have trouble with my American ar*se!

I hear more each time I listen.

Summoning thunder. Tip? G Dorian

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Originally posted by RichJ

Since I started messing with the banjo about a year ago I've found this is a lot easier to do with that instrument. Oddly enough, this seem to help when I trying playing the same tune on the fiddle.

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Yes, I find that playing a tune on mandolin helps with fiddle -- and vice-versa.  They are musical cousins.

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Originally posted by RichJ

Hi Quincy - Nice topic. As for me I'm such a lousy fiddler I wouldn't dare try to give any tips that might corrupt someone else. I do have a question though about using left hand positioning to improved intonation. I always considered intonation to be strictily an ear/sound thing rather than anything to do with body or hand positioning. Maybe I'm all wet on this and someone can correct me.

I'm in complete agreement with you though on the difficulty in developing a solid rhythm/shuffle going in most of the tunes I (try to) play.

Since I started messing with the banjo about a year ago I've found this is a lot easier to do with that instrument. Oddly enough, this seem to help when I trying playing the same tune on the fiddle.

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I'm not afraid to corrupt anyone - I just know for sure my violin teacher during the first year succeeded in giving me a solid basis on this. I'm thus pretty sure intonation has a lot to do with the left hand technique also!!!

True fiddlers are just all way too modest!!!  And shame on you for calling yourself a lousy fiddler! Last thing I heard from you was serious good stuff, but you don't post often here anymore.

But hey, I'm an aspiring fiddler, maybe I can still learn not to cheer too much for myself. Haha just kidding. It's just me I guess, for some reason I never lost that childish kind of enthousiasm ; whenever I find something new and exciting it gives me a major boost. I live for that feeling. It's desire. 

I think the first desire I would feel at a good fiddle gathering would be not to play even, but to learn how  to dance to the music on a nice piece of wood. 

Richj - I agree with Anja. Playing in tune has everything to do with body and hand positioning, in conjunction with listening. First you have to learn where the correct notes are, either by ear (checking against adjacent open strings, scale intervals, etc.) Or today I guess people find electronic tuners helpful for this, but I learned before that, as did countless others. Then you practice over and over, using scales, intervals and tunes, until it becomes ingrained. Every time I pick up a fiddle I run through a few scales and chords in the desired key just to tune back in (or maybe the tuning or strings are just a little different). But when you're actually playing you don't have time to make little adjustments - you just have to learn where to put your fingers by focused practice.

I guess I agree really do agree with Anja and Doug regarding finger/hand/body position and intonation. It's just I don't every really think about this when I pick up a fiddle and try to play something. I've been at this now for about 13 years and just don't think about how I hold a fiddle anymore the way I did when first starting.
But what I really mean here is sorta like how some people think putting pieces of tape on a fiddle when they first start is helpful in developing correct intonation. I never could agreed with that either. Intonation for me is always an ear first and body second thing. You know what's right when you hear it and your body sort of adjusts to make it happen.

I think both perspectives are based in truth, with a couple distinctions.

The ear is absolutely essential to learning to play well. If you put noise-cancelling headphones on a player, intonation will go straight out the window. When I was attending the acoustics workshop at Oberlin, I recall the concertmaster of an orchestra making a claim that good violinists had developed such extensive muscle memory that they could still play well even without the ability to hear themselves. That notion was pretty quickly challenged, as it was pointed out that this theory had been tested and disproven amply. So it’s clear that the ear plays a vital role in determining pitch, and one must develop the musical ear in order to progress beyond a rudimentary level of proficiency.

However, learning the proper posture and finger placement for the instrument is an essential part of developing accuracy. You may have a great ear, but if you don’t know how to use the hands well, you won’t be able to produce a good tone or play with accuracy. You might be able to slide into pitch, but it won’t be quick enough if you aren’t starting from a good place. Great players have motion economized so that they make the most of each finger movement, and this allows for micro-adjustments as they’re playing. Heifetz famously discussed how his fame and reputation for accuracy really boiled down to his ability to adjust pitch as he was playing before audiences could perceive any poor intonation. If he’d been playing with a “pancake wrist” or with the left fingers far away from the fingerboard, he wouldn’t have had the time he needed to adjust pitch, even though he could hear well enough to identify the discrepancies.

I think players should never at any point stop thinking about posture and technique—these are critical to success, and bad habits can form easily if not kept in check. One of the most important things conservatories teach is how to assess one’s form. Teachers work on the mechanics with players, sometimes retraining them in seemingly basic technique, in order to assure a solid foundation, then they set them up with the tools to maintain that foundation over time through careful self-examination. Similarly, one should never stop exercising the musical ear. A player can accomplish these things without attending a conservatory, but only if attention to the fundamentals is diligent enough.

Thanks for those stories Rich, I especially enjoyed hearing about the experiment of blocking the ears of experienced players and having their intonation "go out the window". There are so many ways people go about "playing" an instrument composed of wood, sheep guts (orignally) and horse hair. For some it becomes an obsession, regardless of genre, with everying done to achieve perfection. But for most of us I think it's more of an object we use for indiviual expression. Sure, most of us do all we can to start off trying to become the best we can be, but we eventually learn we'll never be anything exceptional and settle for getting the most we can out of just playing the thing for our own enjoyment.

I may have drifted off Anja's original topic here and I realize I've have been pretty quite lately regarding my FHO postings. I picked up the fiddle shortly after retiing when I was 72. In another couple months I'll be 86. I knew from the start I'd never be any good and guess what... it's one of my few predictions that were absolutely right! But I sure have had lots of fun it the process and still continue to do so.

BTW, a lot of what little I do know about fiddling came from the great bunch of folks I've made contact with over the years here on FHO.

About drifting away from the topic ... Well wrench pointed out already that fiddle tips should be  tailormade for the receiver, it's pointless to explain level expert technique to someone who is just new. Same like training a dog , unless everyone is putting eggs under your bum by constantly revealing  powerful knowledge or maybe when you are being drilled to only train your dog and focus on nothing else , you will never reach the dog's full potential as a beginning dog trainer. I know my second rottweiler had the ability to do anything trick wise and regarding heelwork and obedience, but it was the first dog I tried to train and she just new lots of tricks but I was not able to combine that with heelwork because I did not have the right level of knowledge regarding clicker training and heelwork.

Anyway : my point : I thought my topic was a good idea at first , but I must say I'm now with wrench on this one.

Thank you Rich from The Violin Beautiful to explain about how teachers set up  players for success. That was a very interesting read, (as always!).  

I'm  also with Richj: I thank pretty much everything I know so far to the existence of FHO.  Thank god I landed here, it brought me a lot closer to the kind of music I wished to play on a violin, because the first time I fell in love with the sound of old time fiddling I didn't even had the slightest idea that this genre was called old time fiddle and that there exist a lot of different fiddle styles.  I only had one thought back then  : "This is it! Exactly this I want to be able to do with a violin."  I was so convinced that I took the step to take classes and rent a decent instrument . I remember well initially literally everyone thought  'Oh that's just Anja again with one of her crazy whimsical projects, this too will soon pass' 

I could prove them all wrong hehe. Love all of you!!!

No, no, no, Anja, you are not getting away without explaining what the phrase " unless everyone is putting eggs under your bum ' is supposed to mean! This is some Belgian colloquialism? My China staff is always pulling those out on me - "Calamity comes from the mouth." and the like.

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Originally posted by wrench13

No, no, no, Anja, you are not getting away without explaining what the phrase " unless everyone is putting eggs under your bum ' is supposed to mean! This is some Belgian colloquialism? My China staff is always pulling those out on me - "Calamity comes from the mouth." and the like.

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Hehe sorry that was pure laziness to just translate it in a literal way , it is indeed an informal saying certainly in this province. When we say that it usuallly means that the ones who get the eggs under their bums are being spoiled rotten,  in the sense  that something that normally requires some effort from the person himself is just being offered on a golden plate.

For example:

Trainee: I just finished the preparation of the listening exam for the third grade English class. 

Teacher : Yes,  I saw you added a vocabulary list and opted for multiple choice. I know that class of brats well, i wouldn't put any eggs under their bums! 

I must say Calamity comes from the mouth is  about the coolest wise advice in English I heard so far. Very nice one.