Uh-oh...how can I explain it? Well I'll tell the story of a few hours of my afternoon...unexpectedly and happily found a little time for music...hurry, hurry...which instrument???? I chose my fiddle. I began with the idea of exploring a bowing pattern, just to see what happens...will the thing explode or what? But then found myself wandering into key/ double stop patterns. And I'm sure it's something taught and well understood by most fiddlers, but it was something I just innocently, as a non-music reader or even someone who has no clue what notes Im playing: I named them to sort them in my mind. First, the Driver...this is a single note...let's say you bow across an open G, low G string. From the Driver we go to the Hammer, in which you take your index and ring fingers, leave the spot where the middle would be but don't include it...place it down a string from the Driver...making it that you place your ring on the D string and your index falls to the A string...this makes a G double stop...then for my own clarity on this I named another finger shape the Spike...this is the index and middle jammed pretty close together, so that if we are continuing with G double stops, all you do is from your Hammer position, lift your ring finger off of the D string and let it rest, keeping the index in place on the A string, and then squsih yoour middle finger up close just past the space the index holds, but on the E string....and you have the Spike G double stop. But the thing I began discovering was move them all up on the fingerboard, spacing them from each other relatively to what you had in G, and you have instant double stops in every key. For instance, if your Driver shape goes onto the G string, but you place it a whole step up from G, so that you are sounding A, then your Hammer shape A on the next two strings will begin a whole step toward the bridge, away from the nut, and likewise the Spike A double stop will just drop the middle finger relative to where the index now falls for an A stop. The next thing I began discovering with this is that you can take any of these double stop shapes and do a simple 1 IV, V progression...for instance...if...you start in the middle two strings with the Hammer double stop, go to the first two strings with the same position double stop for IV, then the two high strings for V...same with the other shapes...there is more but company is now here so I'll get into that later.

I'm not sure I follow you, but occasionally when I do a double stop, instead of doing a plain old doublestop like the G with the first and second fingers on the A and E strings, or the C with the first and second fingers on the D and A strings, I will start with a two note "barre" with the first finger on the equivalent of the second fret (if you imagined that a violin HAD frets), and then add the second finger like a hammer-on to resolve the double stop into what it REALLY is supposed to be.

If you can follow THAT- is that like what you're talking about???

I think I follow you, Pogo... I didn't get to that barre type stop (writing about it) before people started coming to me...lol...and thanks for trying to read through this stuff I'm trying to say...but I think more what I'm saying is I started seeing patterns in how these different shapes of double stops all seem to neatly fall into chord progressions, by doing them first in the middle two strings ... Like the G stop in my "Hammer" hand shape, I., e., the index on the higher pitched string and ring finger on the lower pitched string...then if you move that exact shape , really shift it as it is to the two lower strings, you get the IV chord of the progression...so if you played chords on fidde to Boil 'em Cabbage Down...you'd start with that hand shape in your middle two strings with: "Boil em cabbage..." and the when you got to the word, "Down," you'd shift you fingers, holding them the same, to the lower two strings...back to the G, I chord, "Make them biscuits ...". And then on "Round, you'd shift that finger position up to the two high strings for the V chord, etc. I think that's how it went if I'm remembering...whichever shape, middle strings made a I or root chord, lower strings the IV, and higher strings the V. I was jst starting to explore how these hand shapes made double stops, how they fit together on the four strings, and how somebody could put all that together to be able to Mae double stops in all keys, using whole or half positions up and dwn the fingerboard...when I stopped to write it down (to clear it up in my head!) and then people saw me on my porch and came over here and I had to stop. I'll be bsy tonight but I hope to find time to explore this better in the morning...don't wanna have to wait too long or I'll lose my train of thought!

Edited by - groundhogpeggy on 07/19/2012 14:43:27

What pogo described is a great way to 'fake it' when some singer wants to sing in say... the key of F. I'll barr the D and A strings at the F position (same spot on each string) and leave my index finger there while I play the open string scale above it. (which, if it were really open it'd be open, whole step, whole step, half step)
That throws you into F, but works for finding any key. Just find the right position to barr. Good exercise for yer pinky too!

Okay, Peggy, I think I get what you're saying.

THAT double stop with the first finger higher and the third finger lower is probably my most used double stop, in C, G, or D.
I usually use that double stop for the opening "potatoes" lick if the 1st melody note starts near where the first and third are.

But while you could jump over a string with it like you're saying, when you do that it sounds SO different to me.
On the bottom two strings it has a lot of low end if your fiddle has that available. On the middle strings, much less, and on the top two, not at all.

When doing backup, I tend to prefer using different shaped double stops, but all on the same two strings, so they all have the same tone.

you can get pattern for bowing from (red desert violin) and if you ask lora she has this in TAB with notes you print there really good

Well I'm not saying to just stay in those shapes, but just noticiing the pattern of how they always form the I, IV, and V as you shift them from middle, to lower, and then higher strings.  I noticed it with different shapes that you hold your hand into (why I named them just so I could get my head on straight about them when I was thinking this through for the first time)...wait, company again... I'll get back layer

I've been thinking in finger shapes since I started, since I initially played guitar and was thinking chordally, but got away from it when I started thinking more fiddle-melodically. I guess you've inspired me to re-explore that territory.

Speaking of patterns, all the chord shapes on the fiddle are really just one repeating constellation.

Edited by - Peghead on 07/20/2012 13:27:24

In case anyone's interested here is a picture of the (major) chord universe.    R - root.   3-  3rds    5 -5ths  You may have to look at it for a while to get it.

Put any finger down, on any note, anywhere and you'll see the adjacent chord. Everything repeats infinitely vertically and horizontally.

Fiddle chord shapes

Edited by - Peghead on 07/20/2012 13:37:13

Well I think that's the thing I've been figuring our, and thanks fr that PDF...but, what the heck does it mean????????

Does that fiddle have 15 strings?

LOL, it's the reason for our existence here on earth!  Seriously, it's just another chart gizmo, but it's a good one. An expanded generic chart for figuring stuff out. It's a map of the 1s, 3s and 5s. in their relative positions on the neck. I've added a lot more strings so you can see the positions evolving off the neck. Every key is the same you just start in a different place. Pretty soon your fingers know where the next one is, but you need a serious pinky to move through the positions.  It works on and  viol family instruments that are tuned in 5ths (in standard tuning)  From any starting point, it shows you where the adjacent note is to for form a major double stop (or the full chord if you play mandolin) Mando players will recognize this immediately, but on frettless instruments when you only play 2 notes at a time it's harder to see.       

Too complicated for my poor little mind. I discovered patterns in how chords, their inversions, and progressions worked on the guitar fretboard gradually over the course of about ten years or so, then here in recent years saw on the net where people sort of charted out how neatly it all works ups and down the guitar fretboard by designing a system called CAGED...kinda like how each chord tags off into another, etc. I discovered a little bit the ther night of a similar thing on fiddle and then started looking for the way it all falls together. If I get a sense of how "chords," technically double stops, work up and down and all around on the fiddle...then filling in the notes, or finding the notes, seems like it oughta just be a lot easier...plus I think it would open up the feared fiddling keys for me.

Peghead...I see how the roots fives and threes lie, but when you say evolving off the neck, do you mean if there were more strings, like in the logical sequence that would continue on if the strings continued on by fifths??? Like, (F, non existent, C, nonexistent) G D A E ( B non existent) ??? Just asking...if so, maybe I get it, if not, I just totally lost my mind.

 Wow, this takes me back, but only a little, say about five years. Here is a similar chart I made back then. (I think I got the color codes for the major and minor sixths backwards, though.)

Peggy, I'm pretty sure that the pattern you call the Spike is a minor sixth. The Hammer is a major third. I've always thought of the Spike as "the triangle." I recognize other patterns, but I've never given them names.

Omg...these charts are confusing!!! Lol...yeah I had to stop and name chord shapes to just keep my thoughts from colliding into one another. But my Spike is a major "chord" I didn't get the time to wander past the regular I, IV, and V chords...if I do I might rename..."sad spike, " e some such...lol... I jst need some way to categorize my thoughts so they don't all jumble into each ther...I see I'm wandering into that land where most fiddlers eventually explore! So whether I understand your-all's charts or not, at least I can see I'm in good company!

I think that organizing one's thoughts can be useful sometimes. Charts like that might help some visual thinkers, but it seems that drawing the chart for myself was what helped me. Looking at it afterwards, not so much. There are only so many ways for one hand to grab a couple of strings comfortably.

If the normal spelling of a major chord is 1 3 5 8, then the spike gives you the 3 and the 8, which can be enough to imply the whole chord. As you probably know, music theorists really do call it spelling. 

I could drone on about this at great length, but I had better not. Well, just one more thing... If you make a backwards triangle, you get a tritone, which shows up as the 3 and ♭7 of the dominant 7th chord, 1 3 5 ♭7 8. I use that in The Boy's Lament for His Dragon (out of D) where there is a C natural in the second turn, the B part. Lightly kissing the F♯ for a moment on the D string alongside the C on the A string implies a D7 chord. I don't always do that, but it changes the flavor just a bit, in a way I like.