Topic 5 Free Inquiry Post

This week I spent time starting to learn a few new tunes! While they are by no means performance ready yet, it was still fun to get a start on them. Some of the pieces I chose definitely are above my playing level but are some of my favourite tunes so it’s hard to stop myself from starting to learn them 🙂 I started learning Mairi’s Wedding, Ashokan’s Farewell, and Tennessee Waltz. Mairi’s Wedding has been manageable but the two waltzes are proving to be more difficult. Those ones will have to be more of an end goal for me.

The tune that I focused on mostly for this week was Egan’s Polka, or also called Kerry’s Polka. This is a fairly common novice tune that is often played at dances. The sheet music that I found for this one was helpful because it has which finger on which string to use for each note (eg. A1 means 1st finger on the A string). This was helpful for me as while I can read music, it has been harder to focus on reading the music in relation to fingering on the instrument which are still a bit unfamiliar.

After learning a tune, I have been trying to memorize it as that is common practice in fiddle music. Rarely do you see fiddle players perform with music. They usually learn tunes by ear, without music, or they will learn it with the music and then memorize it. Here is me playing Egan’s Polka from memory:

A technical element that I worked on this week was by bow hold. It is very easy to start playing with the correct bow hold but then end up with something completely different by the end of the tune. It also feels a bit unnatural at times so I have been trying to be very intentional about having a proper bow hold. Here is a video I referenced to help me with this: How To Stop The Bow Hold Creep

For next week I will continue to work on my bow hold and general bow control as well as working on Mairi’s Wedding.