Improving Your Fiddle Playing

Fiddler’s Lesson #2

By Roy Johnstone

As with everything else in life, your mental attitude makes all the difference and fiddling is no different. There are as many different reasons for playing the fiddle as there are fiddlers. Everyone has their own twist on why they spend hours trying to draw a horsehair bow across the strings. I too, play for many different reasons: to make a living, to enjoy the company of other musicians, to watch with delight when someone gets up and dances, but mostly I play because I love it. Playing the fiddle is part of who I have become. It hasn’t always been like that and at times I still have to remind myself to just appreciate the joy of making music. It’s an ancient pastime and I believe it’s a part of our genetic cultural make-up. For me music is as essential as air to our well being. So why do YOU play the fiddle? Your answer may seem obvious or even different from one day till the next, but whatever your answer, let it guide your practice.

So let’s talk about practice. For many this word conjures up images of forced labour or detention after school. Practice is putting your motivation to play the fiddle “to work, or perhaps I should say “putting it to play”. Both work and play can bring very meaningful rewards. To make your practice time enjoyable, you need to have a good space in which to practice, preferably in a well lit room where you won’t disturb and you won’t be disturbed (if necessary, a mute will help). Have all the stuff you need handy, music stand, tapes and CD’s to play along with, etc. We are creatures of habit so if you can develop a regular routine for practicing all the better.

What to practice is a key question and here a good teacher will be very helpful but a good book on fiddling geared to your level will also be very useful. Here are a few pointers that I’ve picked up along the way to guide my practice. Loosen up before you begin playing, play slowly and listen closely to the sound of each note, stay as relaxed as possible, watch that your bow crosses the strings tangentially (at roughly 90 degress), play double notes to check your intonation (eg. open G string with 3 rd finger on D string), learn your scales and listen closely to other fiddlers. Playing the fiddle can be a lifetime pursuit so don’t expect to play like the masters right away. Enjoy the ride as your playing evolves and improves little by little. Have fun, play with other musicians, and enjoy the experience of playing and practicing!

Till next time keep the bow rosined and the fiddle in tune!!!

* Copyright Roy Johnstone

for bio info and other lessons and musical
samples www.royjohnstone.com

Explore Manchester's Amazing Music Scene

The Manchester music scene is one that has to be experienced to be believed. Built on a foundation of some of the most famous bands in British history, it's no surprise that many people flock to Manchester based solely on the hopes of discovering the best new music. So, if you're a big music fan, it could be worth heading to this enigmatic city on your next holiday. You never know, you could end up finding a whole host of new favourites to boost your current music collection with.

Manchester has a colourful past when it comes to music, from its beginnings in the 1960s and 70s with some of the biggest pop bands - like the Bee Gees, one of the most famous bands from the period - as well as a host of others.

From this, however, spawned an entirely different type of music that aimed to fight against conventional pop music and bring about its own political message. This included a rapid growth of heavy metal in the 1970s, alongside which arrived the political punk era. Helmed by The Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks, the Manchester music scene was one of much turbulence and discontent that saw many bands kick start their careers joined together in songs of protest.

Music developed along different avenues and one of the biggest attendees to Manchester's underground concerts, Morrissey, then went on to create huge rock band The Smiths, which gained massive acclaim and is still well known today. Alongside Simply Red, Joy Division and New Order, The Smiths propelled the Manchester music scene through the 80s and were greeted at the end of the decade by 'Madchester' bands the Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. During the 90s, many bands still going today sprung up, the most famous being Oasis, who sold millions of records across the globe.

Other bands joining Oasis were M People, The Verve, Badly Drawn Boy, Elbow, Lamb and, of course, Take That, whose Robbie Williams is still releasing solo records much to the delight of new generations of music fans.

Since then, Manchester's music scene is still considered one of continual innovation and many tourists book hotels in Manchester in the hopes of discovering the next big thing. If you're a music fan, it could well be worth visiting this exciting city too - you could then get the chance to say you were a fan 'before they were famous'.
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Online Course to Learn Electric Guitar

If you're looking to learn electric guitar the first thing is you need to have one and if you don't then you will need to buy one. In this piece we'll look at what you'll need in order to learn electric guitar.
Certainly as you will soon find that an electric guitar is much simpler to play than an acoustic one. But together with the guitar you may also have to have an amp, a guitar cable and a guitar pick. But let us first have a look at the necessities.

Click here to learn electric guitar online for free!

it is important that you know the different features that are going to be found on an electric guitar as well as the qualities of one. So spend time getting familiar with the different knobs and controls on your electric guitar by playing with them, as this will provide you with an idea on how to mix everything properly to get the best sound out of the instrument as possible. What one must remember is that an electrical guitar is not something you can just plug in and play it requires a heap of time apropos mixing the sounds and tones together.
2.
get a good quality amp, as even the most expensive of guitars will sound terrible if they are fed from a low quality amp. If you are ready to when buying an amp for your guitar then try it in the store first. If you can and the store allows you to then turn all of the switches on it to their highest point and hear the sound that the amp produces.
3. Hear electric Guitar Tracks

One of the finest methods of grasping the fundamentals of playing an electric guitar is to listen to a couple of the greatest electric guitar sounds in history. In fact many people find that they learn more from listening to different riffs and tunes, which can be produced by an electrical guitar, and then attempting to reproduce the sound themselves all alone guitar.
These are just a few pointers that help someone learn the way to play the electrical guitar but there are plenty of sites on the internet that may provide further information, tips and techniques.
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Using a Professional Music Producer

A professional music producer
can take your music production from average run of the mill flatness to top a shelf I just have to have a copy in my collection feeling. Let’s face it. Anyone with a computer can turn out song
after boring song that technically could be considered great. The levels can be hot, the bass can be right there in your chest and the kick can thump you where it hurts. And yet when you listen to it you feel like you’ve been robbed. Even GREAT songs can suffer from lack luster production.

But on the reverse of that, if you take a great producer that knows how to use the tweaks that make things come alive. They can take an average or even sub par tune and add the glimmer to make the song a shiny and glossy radio friendly hit. If you don’t think that is possible, take a listen to a lot of the things on almost any top-40 radio station and you can see how some production magic can take a poor song with relatively obnoxious lines that seem to repeat endlessly and run the boring diva want to be vocals through some pro tools plug ins and you have a smash hit.

Then dust off a copy of “This Boy” by the Beatles. George Martin took a very simple arrangement of a song, gave Ringo the treatment and glitzed it up a little and you have a good song made great with talent and not with production. That is precisely what a professional music producer can do for you and your music.

I’m not saying that a sixteen year-old teen queen shouldn’t be recording hit singles. I am noting that there is a lot of non life lessons there that were popped up to make a hit that is boring. The other example grabs you and lets the producer shine through and is memorable.

So what can you do to get that kind of production on your material? That is precisely where places like myMusicCircle some into play. You can go on there and peruse the available producers or even post your own ad for a professional music producer and let the multi talented production folks out there across the world bid for the chance to produce your next platinum hit.

Life is wonderful isn’t it? You can stay there safe in your home and let the world come to you.
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