Essential Fiddle Skills 

This year I want to go on a journey with you exploring the essential skills that make a true musician.

  Not the glitzy technical ones, not even the ones we are sold to be important in music school , but the ones that truly make a LIFE LONG musician ,and also a very employable one.  My hope is that his series will help you dive deeper into your relationship with yourself as musician, exploring what is beyond the notes on the page, but also using developing practical and enjoyable skills. We will use a series of practical exercise, and play along lesson to assist, and of course, some really great tunes!

First up - Playing with a Drummer

Why start here? Honestly, this is one of the skills that is so essential to being a musician of any kind but I find lacking in the string community.  I have seen countless great players - technical prodigies even-  that crash and burn when asked to play a simple groove with a drummer.  The silliest part is, this skill is actually super fun to develop and practice. Haven’t you always wanted to practice grooving instead of doing scales and repetitive exercises in a vacuum of of musicality?  This might just change the way you practice … almost everything. 

So let’s dive in.

Why it matters so much

The skill of being able to play with a drummer is going to change the way you approach your instrument.  As we dive deeper into fiddling,  we come to think of our roll as string players as more and more rhythmic instead of melodic.  The Fiddle is so connected to dance, and drive, and we need learn how to put that rhythmic integrity into our bow arm. How to literally feel it in your finger tips. 

What happens when it doesn’t work/Common pitfalls

Have you even seen a performance where the violinist just seem..off? The churning groove is lost.  The band moves on and the string player is left behind, or rushes ahead to keep up. This doesn’t work when we change our mindset to thinking as rhythmic players- serving the groove. Instead, think of a performance where you have seen a fiddler who has is feeling the beat so intensely in their fingertips, it makes you want to dance.  This is what we are aiming for. 

The common pitfalls seem to be one of three things - overplaying, not subdividing and and “taking time.” 

You know you are overplaying if your bow arm is getting tired trying to keep up. You are using too much bow, and falling behind.  Less bow is the answer. Try of yourself like you are the drummer - simple, efficient  and feeling all the parts of the beat in your fingertips. 

Not subdividing, is harder to catch, because you won’t know what you are missing until you do it. Have you every felt lost in a groove? Like, “I don’t know where the beat it?” It can feel confusing, like you are swimming in space.  You must get into it and truly hear every part of what is happening.  Can you hear the smallest subdivision in your body somewhere? Try picturing (or watching) your drummer, understand all the different rhythms they are playing and how you part locks in to that. When it clicks, you will never go back. 

We all enjoying taking time for a musical moment, but this needs to be planned when playing with a band and drummer. And honestly, few and far between in most styles.  We want to playing in service of the groove, and the melody must lock into it.  Of course rules are made to be broken, but I highly suggest playing into the groove first and then if you truly feel like it adds to the music, adding a planned moment of rubato later. 

What can I practice right now?

Besides being essential to your musicianship, and fun to practice, I can tell you now that learning this skill will land you gigs.  Every single job I have had relied on being able to play with a live drummer. AND  as a result , if you can truly instill that feeling of all the parts of the beat in your fingertips, it will change the way you playing everything - even solo violin. 

So try this, next time you practice, don’t turn on a metronome - instead find a dummer on YouTube to play with - play straight 8th notes with them until you are locked in. You are feeling all the parts of what they are doing. Can you play quarters along with the kick? 16th notes?  One you can switch between seamlessly with the beat at your fingertips, try playing your scale. 

Where can I learn more? 

This month in Fiddle Club we are using the a special exercise I created to practice grooving.  CLICK HERE to play along with me and practice. 

Fiddler Club Members will also get downloads of these drum groove tracks as various tempos to use for all kinds of other practice - Scales, etudes, creating new grooves, comping, or even for a fun way practicing tunes instead of using a metronome. 

 We will also learn the tune The Otter’s Nest  - a lovely tune from the west of Ireland, to focus on groove. The tutorial + practice tracks goes live later in the month, but you can listen to the teaser here.