I am playing at a Home next month and I was just wondering if anyone out there knew any tunes, in any tuning, that involve plucking notes like Drunken Hiccups or Cluck Old Hen, that I could add to my repertoire? There fun to play and keep people interested while their listening, any help is appreciated!
Red Lamb taught us Old Lady's Pickin Chickens, that's a good one.
Also we do Flop Eared Mule with a variation every round. I started doing a pluck at the mule braing/rest, and adding a pluck for every time it went around. Don't forget Pop Goes the Weasel too.
I once met a fiddle instructor who thought that a student should learn the tune using pizzicato, and not worry about bowing until they could play a tune using pizzicato. At the time, I didn't think much about it. But later, I came to realize that what that instructor was trying to accomplish. He was having students work on one problem at a time. First, learn the melody. After that, work on which bowing techniques will work best for a tune.
A player accustomed to doing this would be able to create pizzicato versions or all or parts of most tunes in their repertoire.
Fanitullen. Yeah, sure, it's supposed to be for hardingfele, and I haven't figured it out yet on fiddle, but there is a good recording in the FHO archives on fiddle. Cool, strange.
Some versions of the Hanged Man's Reel (Reel du Pendu) have a left-hand pizzicato sweep across the swings in one of the middle sections (it's usually played in AEAC# tuning, so that makes a nice chord).
That's the way Aly Bain used to play it in the opening theme music for a TV series he did about 20 or so years ago, which is how I first became familiar with the tune. I can't remember if the left-hand pizz thing is notated in the Fiddler's Fakebook, which was my other main source for learning the tune some years later, but it's certainly included in the way I usually play it now.
Thanks very much everybody for all the tune names and tips, I will definitely giv them all a shot! dddddd
give them all a Try!
And I was just performing all by myself!
I really like the idea of learning a song by using pizzicato, it is something I will be working on too, like Mr. Hauser said, to become accustomed to doing it to create pizzicato parts of most tunes that I know.
Check out The Lost Child as played by Charlie Stripling, the great AL fiddler from Kennedy, AL. His brother, Robert, played guitar. Recorded in Birmingham, AL 11/15/1928.
A little easier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8-lRqhQSEM Apparently the prototype for the "Black Mountain Raga." Part of it reminds me of "Saddle Up the Grey" by the Carter Brothers - or maybe they're all just starting to sound the same to me.
Flop Eared Mule does have good opportunities for left handed pizz. A tune I got from Elmer Shaffer in Millheim, PA called Bear Creek Hop has a whole second part full of lefty pizz. Teaching with plucking is a fine old violin school technique that blunts the (horrendous) sound of a dozen new students sawing away with complete rapture on their newly discovered instruments. Plus, as has been mentioned, the tune is one thing and the bow is another. Sooner or later everyone has to reckon with the bow, however. Bruce
Check out The Lost Child as played by Charlie Stripling, the great AL fiddler from Kennedy, AL. His brother, Robert, played guitar. Recorded in Birmingham, AL 11/15/1928.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8-lRqhQSEM
Chirps
Oops, Robert was the son of Charlie or Ira (I forget which at the moment), Ira Stripling was Charlie's brother and played guitar on the recording. Thanks for fixing the link Doug.
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