Why are fiddle tunes so important? [Archive]

cooper4205

Oct-08-2006, 9:55pm

Strange1

Oct-08-2006, 10:16pm

I had never heard that. However, Most of the tunes I play are fiddle tunes as I learned how to play the mando from playing with a fiddle in the band.

Jack

fretmasher

Oct-08-2006, 10:38pm

I can think of a couple of reasons. (Please someone with more experience expand or correct this!)

1. Its tuned the same.

2. A fiddle gives you a constant stream of music. Its not a lot of disconnected notes like a picked instrument. If you can make your music flow like a fiddle's, then you've really got something.

bradeinhorn

Oct-08-2006, 10:59pm

fiddle tunes are a common language in bluegrass/oldtime music. besides putting you on common ground with others you play with, these tunes contain standard licks and runs that you can utilize during improvisation. Also, they force you to learn tunes in different keys which can be helpful as well. For example, the tune Rebecca really opened up my playing in B.

Here are some good ones I like to play:

Cherokee Shuffle
Big Sciota
Rebecca
Red Haired Boy
Whiskey Before Breakfast
Big Mon
Old Dangerfield
Road to Columbus
Old Joe Clark
Clinch Mtn Backstep
Temperance Reel
St. Annes Reel
Fisher's Hornpipe
Billy in the Lowground
Armadillo Breakdown
Blackberry Blossom
Pike County Breakdown
Snowflake Reel
Angeline the Baker (Angelina Baker)
Salt Creek
Big Sandy River
Devil's Dream
Bill Cheatham
Lonesome Fiddle Blues
Arkansas Traveler

Peter Hackman

Oct-09-2006, 5:37am

i was reading something on mandozine about how to develop and improve as a player (i think the tips were from jethro burns) and it said to learn at least 60 fiddle tunes. is it a very important part of developing as a player? if so, why is that?

also what are some good rules of thumb when it comes to playing fiddle tunes? and what are some that every picker needs to know? thanks alot hope it hasn't been covered too much before
Lots of motion, lack of rests makes phrasing and accenting
important. They are often mainly composed of the two most basic
melodic patterns, scales and arpeggios, studying the balance between the
two is a good exercise in form. Creating variations on them
is a good exercise in finding the true identity of a tune -
how much can you do with it without losing it completely
(E.g., Beaumont Rag has LOTS of room for variation,
High Level much less).

Some particularly good ones:
Brilliancy, A (but most people play it WRONG!)
Sailor's Hornpipe, B flat
High Level Hornpipe, also B flat
Rutland's Reel, am and C
Jerusalem Ridge, am
Devil's Dream, A
Beaumont Rag, F
Arkansas Traveller, D.

AlanN

Oct-09-2006, 6:01am

Brilliancy, A (but most people play it WRONG!)

I play it the Sam Bush way.

Fiddle tunes teach you keys and the neck. Plus they sound good.

gnelson651

Oct-09-2006, 7:19am

Fiddle tunes are the basis for old-time, celtic and bluegrass.

Fiddle tunes are made up of primarily continuous eighth notes and are a good excercise for picking up-down-up-down. As stated before, fiddle tunes use melodic devices such as double stops, arpeggios, passing tones, and scale variations.

So the advise is both sound and practical for any mandolin player, regardless of what genre of music you decide to play. Plus they are alot of fun to play and recognized by everyone. Fiddle music is dance music and is played around the world.

Adding to the list of songs (ones I like to play)

Liberty
Kesh Jeg
Cuckoos Nest
Soldiers Joy
Swallow Tail Jig
Pig Ankle Rag
Red Wing
Milk Cow Blues
Dill Pickle Rag
Morrisons Jig
Masons Apon
Over the Waterfall
Smash the Windows
Turkey in the Straw
Woodchoppers Reel
Ragtime Annie
Ashokan Farewell
Golden Slippers
Faded Love
Bile'Em Cabbage Down
Down Yonder
Eighth of January
Ook Pik Waltz
Westphaila Waltz

Tom C

Oct-09-2006, 7:54am

Because you get used to playing in certain keys. If you know how to play 25 tunes in "A". You get a darn good feeling for new tunes or improvising in "A". Same with other keys.

PaulD

Oct-09-2006, 8:55am

I love fiddle tunes, and I'm not a musicologist, but I wonder if it depends on what style music you want to play. If you're after Bluegrass and Old-Timey you're going to want a good repertoire of fiddle tunes and techniques. According to Mike Compton, Bill Monroe was essentially trying to mimic the sound and sustain of the fiddle (simplified version of the story) with his technique. There are also a lot more books and teachers that can help you develop your mando style through BG tunes than other styles and there are probably thousands of tunes written out for the fiddle. For BG/O-T/Irish I agree with what's been said above.

I may be wrong, but I would think that if you're really after another style, say jazz, you may be better off learning tunes in that style. For jazz you could concentrate on Dawg or Mike Marshall tunes and backup/comping styles, or mimicking Bill Evans or Django Reinhardt. Maybe study theory applied to the mando, alternate chord voicings, etc. That said, I don't think you can ever have too much familiarity with different styles of music and techniques so you can't go wrong learning fiddle tunes; it just adds to your bag of tricks. Some of the fiddle tunes listed above lend themselves to jazz or could be arranged nicely as orchestral pieces anyway.

Paul Doubek

allenhopkins

Oct-09-2006, 9:33am

IMO, fiddle tunes are excellent in getting used to playing melodies. A lot of bluegrass instrumentals are built around banjo licks, and when the mandolin takes its break, it ends up playing fast, repeated licks, sort of like banjo rolls. (Before everyone jumps all over this theory, I do realize there are many exceptions, but think about the last mandolin break you heard to "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," e.g.)

Fiddle tunes have definite melodies; it took development of a specific 5-string banjo style ("melodic" or "Keith style") to make banjo players adept at following fiddle tunes. Mandolinists playing fiddle tunes learn to play all over the neck, to move easily from string to string, and to handle a variety of keys, time signatures and tempos. Plus, looking at the tune lists of other posters, learning fiddle tunes can acquaint you with many genres outside of standard bluegrass: Celtic, swing, jazz etc.

It's possible in bluegrass to get "trapped" by playing a limited repertoire of licks at high speed. Fiddle tunes are a great stretch.

fatt-dad

Oct-09-2006, 10:34am

Fiddle tunes are important 'cause everybody knows them. The best way to learn is to play with other folks and the best way to play with other folks is to know fiddle tunes. It's a chicken and egg thing. . . . .

fatt what-everybody-else-said-too dad

Perry

Oct-09-2006, 11:21am

If you can play fiddle tunes up to speed and in time well then you got something. You achieved the ability to play a rapid endless stream of notes, developed a very good level of left/right hand coordination, stretched your brain to remember lengthy melodies complete with parts and variations and annoyed your friends and family during the entire learning process http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif And finally you've developed a lifelong hobby (warning: highly addictive) that will generate countless hours of happiness.

some general rules of thumb:

practice with a metronome
every down beat starts on a down stroke then alternate
play slowly till you get it down
every once in a while play it too fast (mistakes and all)
practice with a metronome

Paul Kotapish

Oct-09-2006, 1:39pm

Fiddle tunes are fun.

More than that, they are a relatively easy, accessible, and musically satisfying way to learn the first-position fingerboard, learn scales and arpeggios in context, and generally get your fingers moving in a comfortable, familiar way.

It's a virtually endless repertoire, too. There are thousands of tunes out there--ranging from very simple and easy to play to very complex and challenging--with something to suit most every musical appetite. Even jazz heads and classical players usually find themselves attracted to at least a few tunes from the fiddle repertoire.

As you learn a variety of different tunes in a variety of different keys, you will slowly build your personal repertoire of phrases and fingerings, and these can be used as building blocks for improvising and for more readily learning new tunes. Your ears and fingers will begin to synch phrases with physical moves, so that the processing time between hearing a musical idea and being able to execute on the fingerboard will get shorter and shorter.

And fiddle tunes are a universal musical language easily shared among folks of all levels of experience and ability, and the tunes cross national boundaries in a wonderful way, too.

I would argue that the best reason to learn fiddle tunes on the mandolin is because you like the sound of fiddle tunes, and more specifically, you like the sound of them played on the mandolin.

If you don't much care for fiddle tunes, another approach to learning the instrument might make sense.

Have fun.

PK

cooper4205

Oct-09-2006, 11:17pm

thanks for all the replies, lots of good stuff that will come in handy. now i have a long list of songs to pick from!

would it be best to learn the easiest version first and then figure out how to add embelishment myself or learn a harder version of the tune?

Peter Hackman

Oct-09-2006, 11:50pm

It's a good thing not to learn songs in a linear fashion, one note
after the other. Better to proceed from a sketchy version to
fuller detail, (inevitably?) adding your own touches along the way.

About the sketchiest way to start is to find the key and the chords!

If, transcribing from a record, some notes stump you, just go on.
If you can't hear them, maybe they're not THAT important to the
character of the song. Look for the ones that make the most musical sense
to you and don't be surprised if they turn out to be the ''correct'' ones.

250sc

Oct-10-2006, 5:30am

cooper4205,

"would it be best to learn the easiest version first and then figure out how to add embelishment myself or learn a harder version of the tune?"

I think that is the way to go. The nice thing is that as you progress as a musician you will play these songs differently. If you keep striving to come up with fresh ideas you can play these songs for the rest of your life and constantly learn something new through them.

Now get to work. ;-)

Perry

Oct-10-2006, 5:32am

The Steve Kaufman Four Hour Bluegrass Workout has some simple versions. Also the latest Butch DVD has some good fiddle tune repertoire in there (many of the tunes mentioned above).

Here's the links:

http://www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg....odType= (http://www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg/prodpg.asp?prodID=1232&prodType=)

http://www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg....odType= (http://www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg/prodpg.asp?prodID=374&prodType=)

AlanN

Oct-10-2006, 5:40am

When you become proficient enough to 'play what you want to hear', even the modification of 1 note can change the thing to a large degree. Herschel Sizemore wrote a fine little tune called Lee's Reel. In it, he plays a G# on the E string. Alan Bibey recorded the same tune and plays a G note instead. Same tune, different artist, different sound. Way cool.

Soupy1957

Oct-10-2006, 6:49am

It would seem, (at least in my experience at our monthly Jams here in Connecticut), that "Fiddle tunes" are equally as intermixed in what is being played in the different rooms and by the different musicians, with the rest of the Bluegrass tunes being played.
-Soupy1957

fiddlinfool

Oct-10-2006, 8:18am

You might want to pick up a copy of the "mandolin picker's fakebook". Hundreds of tunes in TAB. Personally - I really like the book.

Paul Kotapish

Oct-10-2006, 10:46am

Cooper,

One thing to bear in mind when learning fiddle tunes is that unless the tune was recently composed, there are probably many different versions of the melody floating around out there. There isn't necessarily a correct or "right" version. As you get into the repertoire, you will find folks suggesting a certain "setting" of a tune as transcribed from the playing of a specific fiddler. Common tunes can have dozens of different settings, and the details of the melody, phrasing, and rhythm will vary wildly depending on the tradition from which the fiddler comes.

For example, the same basic tune will sound really different if it is played in the North Carolina Round Peak style with cross tuning (alternate, open tuning with drone strings) and a short-bow style with lots of syncopation than if it is played in western fiddle-contest style with standard tuning, smooth bowing, and lots of melodic variations.

This can make learning tunes confusing at times and a bit challenging, but it also provides lots of opportunities for opening up your ears and learning about the ways that different approaches can shape different kinds of music from the same kernal of melody.

And as Alan mentioned above, different players will interpret even a newly composed piece differently.

Tighthead

Oct-11-2006, 11:58am

My mandolin teacher says that fiddle tunes are a good way to practice scales, and more fun to boot. I love 'em.

jmcgann

Oct-11-2006, 2:02pm

"Developing Melodic Variations on Fiddle Tunes Book/CD set". (http://www.johnmcgann.com/books.html)

This book takes 11 common jam session fiddle tunes and gives you 5 versions- the 1st one very very simple, to show the bare bones of the melody. Each subsequent version "fleshes out" the basic melody in a different way. The versions are stacked up so you can compare bar-by-bar how the tunes are altered. There is a very short section on theory to help explain where the note choices come from.

The idea is to teach you how to craft your OWN variations on tunes, rather than being in the embarrasing position of only knowing "book X version" at a jam, where every other picker's solo is also the "book X" version! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif

JeffD

Oct-11-2006, 5:49pm

You know its like that old joke about the government - I went to Washington to find the government, I saw the Capitol, I saw the White House, but I couldn't find the government.

For a long time I considered I couldn't really play the mandolin - I could only play a fixed number of tunes on the mandolin. Then one day everything came together, something clicked, and I found myself playing the mandolin. I can't tell you when that happened, but perhaps it was after I had learned my 60th fiddle tune.

gnelson651

Oct-11-2006, 7:04pm

rhetoric

Oct-15-2006, 9:00am

OK, if this is true (I maybe know 10) then somebody needs to make a CD set with "60 Fiddle Tunes for Learners" so I can learn them.

DON'T... #
...Fill it up w/ lessons and tips and whatnot -- just the tunes.
...Play such fancy versions that I can't make out the basic melody.
...Record the tunes w/ an 8 piece bluegrass band (just a rhythm guitar and mandolin on melody. #MAYBE a bass). I want to actually hear the lead.
...Waste time w/ slow and fast versions. #Play medium and I can slow or speed the tempo w/ a computer program.
...Spend big dollars getting Thile or Dawg or somebody's mug on the cover to drive up the price.

Do...
...feature the lead so I can hear it.
...play through w/ all instruments so I can learn it and practice my chop chords.
...leave a rhythm only break so I can play lead by myself.
...preface each song w/ a verbal introduction, "This is 'Red Haired Boy' in the key of A." #I don't want to have to look at a booklet or some such everytime I'm wondering what the tune title is.
...play the tunes in the standard keys as much as is possible. #I don't want to have to relearn "Red Haired Boy" in the key of Gflat.
...do send a percentage of your profits to me for this brilliant idea (and "60 MORE Fiddle Tunes for Learners" and "Fiddle Tunes For Learners -- The Fancy Versions" and etc.)

I'm thinking one of you guys could knock this off in a weekend on your digital recorder. #If something exactly like this already exists, well there you go.

cooper4205

Oct-18-2006, 9:50am

thanks for all the replies, i have now started to make an earnest attempt in learning them. at first they didn't really appeal to me, but i have been really getting into them in the last week or two, they are a blast to play. i can tell a little difference in the quality of my playing already (when not playing the fiddle tunes, but the breaks i have worked out for the band i'm in.

rhetoric, that idea for a CD would be awesome, too bad there isn't one like it (or we haven't found it). i did find an awesome book for fiddle tunes, The Mandolin Pickers Fakebook by David Brody. over 250 tunes from every source from old-time to french-canadian and everything in between. it's really worth $25, the songs are not overly complicated, mainly the main melody with some ornamentation. if you don't have it yet, i would strongly suggest it. anyone else use Brody's Fakebook?

dj coffey

Oct-18-2006, 11:51am

A lot of us do. Brody also did the Fiddler's Fakebook - it's in standard notation and has far more than 250 songs.

I hear the Portland Collection is another good source for fiddle tunes and doesn't overlap Brody too much. I don't have that yet, but it's coming...

dougiebe

Oct-18-2006, 2:26pm

Hey rehtoric, I've found the tabledit files form mandozine.com to be a great resource. You have to download the viewer but it's free and there are hundreds of files you can download, also free. Here's a good place to start: http://www.mandozine.com/music/essential/

The free viewer can be found here: http://www.tabledit.com/tefview/index.shtml

The viewer will display tab and/or standard notation as transcribed by the contributor. Some of the transcriptions vary for a single tune so you kinda have to find the one that works best for you. Then you can play a midi file on your computer that accompanies the tab. You can speed up or slow down, mute the melody to play with the accompaniment, etc. It's a little robotic sounding but you get the general idea of how the tune goes and then you can take it from there! You can also print out the tab with lots of print options. I've learned dozens of songs from this resource. You can find almost anything you want if you go through all the zip files. This sounds like it is close to what you are asking for. Hope it helps.

dougiebe

JeffD

Oct-19-2006, 12:25am

A lot of us do. #Brody also did the Fiddler's Fakebook - it's in standard notation and has far more than 250 songs.

I hear the Portland Collection is another good source for fiddle tunes and doesn't overlap Brody too much. #I don't have that yet, but it's coming...
Yes, if you read standard notation, the Fiddlers Fakebook is a wonderful resource. Filled with gems, and contains most of what everyone plays in old timey jam sessions and dances. I am on my second copy - the first self destructed through use (those comb bindings are horrible).

I also use the two Portland books, the blue and the green. Again, they are in standard notation. They are great. The tunes are written out the way you are likely to hear them. And they have a spiral binding, so they won't explode when you open them all the way back.

You can go a long long way with the Fiddlers Fakebook and the two Portland books.

Dave Gumbart

Oct-19-2006, 10:12am

Rhetoric, you may want to check out Steve Kaufman's 4 Hour Bluegrass Workout. 49 Fiddle/Bluegrass tunes and it pretty much matches the description of what you have above. I've worked on many of the tunes, and found the book very helpful (standard notation and tab). Having developed some proficiency in playing some of the tunes, and learning about how the songs are typically structured and the chord patterns, I probably am ready to graduate to something like Mr. McGann's book. Getting those fiddle tunes down does help in taking the next step towards really playing, more than just mimicking the tab. Doesn't always happen, but when the fingers go somewhere new, and it makes sense within the melody of the song, that's exciting! I have one of Brad Laird's books (Master Mandolin Class), and that's been helpful in getting beyond playing the straight melody time and again.

Anyway, it's the journey.

Dave G.