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ezfolk.com/music/Michael_Sprin
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Playing Since: 1973
Experience Level: Purty Good
fiddlepogo has made 521 recent additions to Fiddle Hangout 
Interests:
[Teaching] [Jamming] [Socializing] [Helping]
Occupation: musician
Gender: Male
Age: 59
My Instruments:
Two Knilling 4KF models:
One, labeled "Bucharest" dated 2006 and bought new. It's sounding fairly sweet for what it is, but LOUD.
Another, bought on eBay is possibly from about 2000, smells funny when the weather gets warm-
the label said Bucharest, but either the back or the top is some unconventional wood- or maybe both!
The newer one is strung with Prims, the other with Zyex, and I use Kaplan Premium rosin.
I bought an Eastman VL100 now strung with a mystery economy European steel string.
It's mellower than the other two, and is especially well suited for waltzes, Irish tunes, Bluegrass, and probably Swedish tunes too... with the mystery European strings, it LIKES klezmer tunes and other stuff in G minor.
Favorite Bands/Musicians:
Old Time Formative influences: William Stepp, Luther Strong, Tommy Jarrell, Bunt Stephens, Franklin George, Earl Collins, Tom Sauber,
John W. Summers, Jean Carignan (not Old Time but Quebecois, but the attitude in his playing was inspiring and seems quite applicable to Old Time), Kenny Hall,
Hubbard & Molk. Many of the key ones were downbow fiddlers.
Recently I like Erynn Marshall, Matt Brown, Chirps Smith, and Michael Garvin...
I like the Bruces- Greene and Molsky too, also Jehile Kirkhuff's Pennsylvania Old Time fiddling.
Bluegrass: I heard the Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys and the Bluegrass Cardinals, also Byron Berline with somebody or other at McCabe's Guitar shop in the early '70s. I also had an LP of the Stanley Brothers, and found a cassette version of the same album a couple of years back. So I'm really mostly into the older Bluegrass styles. I can sing the bass part (barely) in the quartet singing since I'm a low baritone.
Irish influences: The Irish players from the Bay area who would come down to play at the Renaissance Faires in Ventura. Richard Twomey, my Irish-style fiddler roomie for about 9 months after college, also bandmate. He shared insights on Irish ornamention that help me to this day, and he also turned me on to some good Irish recordings including Denis Murphy and Julia Clifford's "Star Above the Garter" album and Peter Carberry's and Sean Ryan's pipes and fiddle album. Those two are just about hardwired into my deep memory. Also our bandmates Nancy Dols on tinwhistle and Lori Cole on concertina.
Lori's wit and Nancy's wisdom helped me get some perspectives I desperately needed at the time! I also enjoyed hanging out with Kevin Carr and just talking about Irish music and stuff. Recently Liz Carrol is a favorite.
Even more recently (YouTube is expanding my fiddling mind!)
I like the Quebe Sisters Band, Graham Townshend, Gilles Apap, and Rachel Podge.
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Visible to: Public
Created 6/27/2007
Last Visit 2/5/2012
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Monday, January 30, 2012 @3:11:20 PM
I've gone through a phase lately where I'm in a quasi-Klezmer mood (I've always been a moody fellow!), and any Jewish or Eastern European sounding tune has been grist for the mill.
Havah Nagilah (learned in high school chorus), a couple of tunes from "Fiddler on the Roof", Those Were the Days, Yesterday, Sholom Aleichem, Brahm's Hungarian Dance #5 (By ear- I learned it off of Allan Sherman's "My Son the Nut" album when I was a kid), Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" and a few others. Almost all of them are in the key of G minor, or have a part in G minor. In an odd sense, most of them are "Old Time" to me.... I got the tunes in my head 50 years ago in some cases!!! They are already part of my life, and if they fit on the fiddle, I want to be able to play them.
Booker, my main fiddle, got tweaked about a month ago to have some more low tones. This has been great for my favorite G major fiddle tunes, as well as the tunes in this klezmeroid phase. What it also did, and it's taken a bit for my mood to catch up with it, is that Booker now sounds REALLY good on D major fiddle tunes.... if you look back in my blog for my tune list, it's obvious that at one time D major tunes were a staple of my repertoire, but I've neglected them lately. The reason for this I think is simply that Booker always had a nice singing tone in G major, but not so good in D.... they would have sounded okay with a guitar or a banjo, but solo, it just wasn't cutting it in the key of D. NOW, they are really sounding nice, and last night, my mood turned back to D tunes in a big way, and mostly today too, although I threw in a few of my less played G tunes for variety. One of the key things is that somehow, playing some simpler tunes that I'd been neglecting for a while, I could really get a feeling for them... it wasn't just notes. Actually, Booker now sounds good in just about every key- A is good now too- before if D sounded thin, A major sounded even thinner. My few C tunes are sounding good, so they are getting more playing time too.
So, what's the virtue of having an alternate genre on fiddle???
I think for me it's that the alternate genre keeps my tone and intonation up, so that when my mood swings back to Old Time, I can play it at close to top form.... my tone and intonation hasn't decayed, so I can focus on the phrasing, and pretty soon, they're sounding pretty good indeed.
I actually have SEVERAL alternate genres... maybe about 30 reasonably strong Irish Trad tunes, about 30 waltzy old pop tunes, now the (about 20) Klezmeroid tunes. I could almost count "Cole's 1001/Ryan's Mammoth" type hornpipes as another genre too. Scottish and Swedish tunes I probably ought to work on to get about 20 or 30 apiece. Seems like a couple of dozen tunes is a magic number or threshold... it allows me to really hammer on that style when the mood hits. I also have a couple dozen Old Time tunes that are also in the Bluegrass genre that I practice when I get into a Bluegrass mood, or if the Bluegrass jam is the next weekend.
Oh yeah.... Christmas tunes are really a one-time-a-year alternate genre.... I think they are partly what got me in the mood for minor tunes (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, We Three Kings, ones like that) in the first place, and the minor key mood hadn't left when Christmas was over. Christmas tunes, waltzes, and klezmeroid tunes have in common that they favor longer bow strokes.
One of the reasons I think I need the alternation of genres is that I tend to practice VERY intensely, and I often group similar tunes together. And I can only really DO that when I'm in the mood for that flavor of tune- I've always been more passionate than disciplined about music, and my approach has nearly always been to harness the passion to fuel my practice. I always get better, more permanent results when I practice with passion, rather than a "Practice this- it's GOOD for you" medicinal type way. This is good in one way since it allows me to hammer on problems and get a bunch of similar tunes up to snuff at the same time, since they reinforce each other. The down side is that it's almost like having too much of a certain kind of food- sort of like it's possible to eat an awful lot of turkey in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, depending on how much leftovers there are.... and at some point, you don't want turkey again for a good long while! So when intense practice leads to temporary burnout, I always have something else to play, to keep my interest and general fiddling chops up.
This also pays dividends in gigging, because it allows me to stretch if I get asked to do an ethnic gig- I've been asked to do Swedish, Scottish, Irish, and Jewish flavored gigs. If I don't think I have enough solid ones on fiddle, I'll learn some songs on guitar.
One factor in my tendency to temporary burn out on Old Time tunes... I've been playing most of the Old Time tunes for about 25 years total!!! I don't learn tunes quickly from scratch anymore, and my standards are high- a new tune has to be as strong a tune as my old ones, and I won't be happy with it until I can play it very nearly as well as the old ones.
It's taken two or three years on the last batch of "new-to-me" Old Time tunes to where they are now getting to where I can throw them into my practice mix with the good old tunes, and not feeling like the playing level goes WAY down. IOW, it takes a while for them to "get through the pipeline"!
Another factor is that I don't have anyone locally who is so into Old Time that they push me to learn new stuff.... well, there IS a banjo player, but I've already learned his favorite tunes. With someone to put a bit of pressure on me, it would also pressurize the "pipeline" for new tunes, and speed things up.
I need to find my Irish Trad mood soon- St. Paddy's Day is coming!!!
(LATER)
Arghhh!!!! Just when I'd gotten Booker sounding really good- I saw something that inspired a tweak on the Eastman, it seemed to help, and I HAD to try it on Booker too (will I never LEARN???)... it sounded good at first, but when I pulled it out of the case, it was weird. Had to do a bunch more tweaks to get it back to what sounds like useable... but then I had to quit for the night.
I hope it's playable tomorrow!!!
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