It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

Play it slow to play it fast. If you have to think about what to do in a fast tune while you are playing it then you are already behind the beat. Play those two tunes every day , isolate the problem areas , fix them , whether with a bowing solution or fingering , and then you can move on to " new problems". LOL ..... Loose wrist and loose everything else. Tension kills speed. Play with a metronome slowly increasing your speed until it is at the point where you are satisfied. Never sacrafice tone and timing for speed. It will come ... truly.. but it takes a lot of effort and patience. It's really cool that your family has "upped the ante" with a nod to your efforts. Congrats and keep fiddlin... R/

WOOHOO! Congrats on the fiddle!

There are two things I do to work on speeding things up. I jettison a lot of ornaments to bring a tune up to speed. Then I play it til the cows come home. For days. Once it's there and solid, I then start putting ornaments back in. Others may do things differently. There are a lot of roads to get you there.

It becomes more difficult if you're trying to recreate someone else's sound/style--  especially the bowing. Your uncle used a LOT of nashville shuffle bowing. That can be hard to bring up to speed. You might break the two things apart-- right hand and left hand. Get the left hand down first with a more simple bowing style, then later on add in the shuffle bowing.

Just keep at it. You'll get there. Perseverance is a good thing.

Persistence, every accomplished fiddler here has demonstrated that.

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

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 As I am not familiar with either of those tunes I can only advise of how to play faster. As has been mentioned before the tried and true method is to start slow and slowly increase the tempo as you are able to maintain your high level of correctness. It is easier to slur notes faster than articulating each one. That being due to the need of "video game" style left hand right hand coordination. If you are able to pat your head and rub your belly at the same time, then reverse and such you might have a chance. The rest of us need to work really hard at it. The last aspect you control needs to be out of your control. Thats muscle memory. The bodys ability to do a trained task over and again without conscious thought. I have noticed in my own journey that moving my third finger quickly enough has evolved into my third and fourth fingers snapping into posistion without so much as a thought on time. This is because I have worked on it to the point that it just happens. This is an amazing part of playing and of the bodys ability. Once you are proficient enough in any skill that it "just happens" then you know you are making progress, and it increases speed. At my level now, all the modest improvements have collected into a leap in development. So I suggest working on the small things as they will gather on their own in your playing. IMO- pfish

Something I do sometimes to learn a difficult passage is to play it through slowly at first (as was mentioned several times) but make a loop of it and repeat that part over and over. Just that part alone. This seems to help me hammer it into my brain cells quicker.

My first attempts at learning new tunes - most of the time - is spent listening - listening alot , up to speed, in an effort to get the melody into my head. I want to be familiar enough with the tune (and the way it feels) to recognize / discern what is working and what isn't working as I attempt to play the tune.

I will usually try and learn the tune up to speed by default. I'm not in favor of playing slow and slowly progressing to fast by default. That doesn't mean I never slow it down. But when I slow it down - it's more for hearing the finer points of the melody and getting them into my head, and not so much to figure out how or where to note the tune on the finger board or how I will handle the bowing.

I will usually try and learn how to play the tune from beginning to end by default - along with the recording. And I will usually only resort to disecting sections and creating loops on the difficult passages I struggle with. But I will keep them at tempo - at first.

I'm sure others might like to disagree, but for me, it seems there is a danger of learning a tune at a slow tempo. There's a lot of "room" at the slower tempo - and it can invite us to stuff notes in there where they aren't needed - and sometimes you can lose the feel of the tune. Then when you try and play up to tempo - with all that stuff you worked out at the slower tempo -it doesn't work as well. And sometimes you may not even notice what you've done. You've learned a slow version of the tune - and you've made it work there, but that might not work at the normal tempo - it potentially can lose the feel it should have at the faster tempo.

The other thing I have in mind in using my approach is that - this method is also going to help train my ear and hand (finger) coordination so that I have a better chance of picking tunes up on the fly when I'm at a jam. And that has a high priority for me.

But there is a lot of ways to skin a cat. My way is only one way - but it seems to work for me.

wanted to add - bj gives good advice about striping the tune down when you first start working on it. Get comfortable with the essence of the tune - the part that needs to be there in order for it to be recognized by name. By the time that gets comfortable, you will begin to hear and feel where you can add and vary what you are doing and still not lose that essence. But you need to know where that is first.

Edited by - tonyelder on 08/27/2012 11:47:59

I think slow learning and practice is good, especially if you focus on trouble spots. But you have to check if stuff that works at low speed also works at high speeds.

Do both.

Classical players sometimes finger more firmly, more of a strike and release, to clear up passages of fast notes. Something like enunciated definitively when speaking, for effect and emphasis.

Devil in the Woodpile is a difficult piece to play well.  It's dramatic and beautiful in its own twisted way (to me it's a cry of panic and pain), but it is confusing both to the fingers and to the ear.  I love the tune (and me and a couple others play it at some jams!) but even after playing it for two years or so, I can only pull it off half to three-quarters of the time.  Jump Jim Crow is equally difficult for my fingers.  The tune seems to force my fingering hand either into a cramped closeness or an odd stretch.  The actual tune, though, is jaunty, engaging and clear as a bell. 

It seems i have achieved the spirit of uncle mels tunes while keeping my own identity. Suzy(his daughter) thought they were playing a cd until she walked in and saw me playing, which was a great compliment. The slowing everything down/metronome method seems to help but i think im trying to put too many bows where there are several notes played fast. would slurs help correct this?

If you listen carefully to your recording, especially slowed-down, you may be able to hear what notes are being slurred together. You can't hear the direction, but often you can guess, or get a hint from a little bite in the tone at the frog.

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Originally posted by Sue B.

Classical players sometimes finger more firmly, more of a strike and release, to clear up passages of fast notes. Something like enunciated definitively when speaking, for effect and emphasis.

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That's a good point. When you slur, the left hand becomes responsible for the articulation, rather than the bow.  Lots of times, I find it easier to get the clarity I want, even on 16th note phrases at full speed, by sawstroking. It's really pretty easy if you don't use too much bow.

do you mean using the bow very lightly when you say don't us too much bow?

I don't bear down much, having once had a very heavy bow hand, but what I meant was to use 2 or 3 inches of bow per note.  Sometimes I bow that sort of thing with just my wrist and fingers, no arm at all.

I think there's a lot of merit to the studies that indicate progress and breakthroughs come after finite hours of play time. 200, 500, 1000, and 10,000 hour milestones for instance. The more fun you have playing and practicing, the quicker you'll get to each milestone. I know there are times I just cannot put my fiddle down.

Melvin Wine is one of my favorite fiddlers. Goin' Down to Georgie-O sounds simple, yet its elusive to emulate convincingly. Another is his Bob Wine's Tune. Its gloriously mysterious how some fiddlers make a simple tune so memorable, yet difficult to emulate. Too me, that's the best of fiddling.

I plan to play a healthy dose of Mr. Wine's tunes this weekend in East TN at a gathering. I better go brush up those mentioned, and a few other favorites.

where about in east TN?

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

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Playing notes clearly is what sawstroke does best, but sawstroke isn't all that easy to play fast, especially if the bow hold isn't optimized for wrist flex.

Also, "Jump Jim Crow" is one of the tunes that your great uncle did that got put on video, and the videos are on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujwe1NTWJ6E

What I see him doing in "Jump Jim Crow" is mostly Nashville Shuffle, with most of a Sawshuffle at the end:

Sawshuffle is normally:

1-1-1-3-1-1,

(down-up-down-uhhhhhp-down-up)

but I don't see him putting the last two sawstrokes on, so it's probably:

1-1-1-5.

(Down-up-down-uhhhhhhhhhhp!!!!)

Edited by - fiddlepogo on 08/28/2012 09:47:46

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

quote:

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

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Playing notes clearly is what sawstroke does best, but sawstroke isn't all that easy to play fast, especially if the bow hold isn't optimized for wrist flex.

Also, "Jump Jim Crow" is one of the tunes that your great uncle did that got put on video, and the videos are on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujwe1NTWJ6E

What I see him doing in "Jump Jim Crow" is mostly Nashville Shuffle, with most of a Sawshuffle at the end:

Sawshuffle is normally:

1-1-1-3-1-1,

(down-up-down-uhhhhhp-down-up)

but I don't see him putting the last two sawstrokes on, so it's probably:

1-1-1-5.

(Down-up-down-uhhhhhhhhhhp!!!!)

---

The challenge of sawstroke is precisely why it should be focused on, not avoided.

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

quote:

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

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Playing notes clearly is what sawstroke does best, but sawstroke isn't all that easy to play fast, especially if the bow hold isn't optimized for wrist flex.

Also, "Jump Jim Crow" is one of the tunes that your great uncle did that got put on video, and the videos are on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujwe1NTWJ6E

What I see him doing in "Jump Jim Crow" is mostly Nashville Shuffle, with most of a Sawshuffle at the end:

Sawshuffle is normally:

1-1-1-3-1-1,

(down-up-down-uhhhhhp-down-up)

but I don't see him putting the last two sawstrokes on, so it's probably:

1-1-1-5.

(Down-up-down-uhhhhhhhhhhp!!!!)

---

The challenge of sawstroke is precisely why it should be focused on, not avoided.

quote:

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Originally posted by woodwiz

 

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That's a good point. When you slur, the left hand becomes responsible for the articulation, rather than the bow.  Lots of times, I find it easier to get the clarity I want, even on 16th note phrases at full speed, by sawstroking. It's really pretty easy if you don't use too much bow.

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 The way I learned to play uses this technique a lot. Its called short bow style and is very rhythmic. Each note has its own bowstroke and a slight emphasis is added to the down strokes which sets up a lively rhythm thats great for dances. Slurs are used sparingly if not avoided completely.

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Originally posted by IdleHands

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

quote:

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

It seems in fiddling as soon as you get on your feet and feel good about what your doing there comes yet another hurdle to slow you down,lol. This is why i love it. My newest hurdle is playing fast notes clearly in certain tunes (specifically "devil in the wood pile" and "Jump Jim Crow") from my great uncles collection. I am open to any suggestions since the bar has been raised for me(I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently) so the family has turned up the heat,lol.

---

Playing notes clearly is what sawstroke does best, but sawstroke isn't all that easy to play fast, especially if the bow hold isn't optimized for wrist flex.

Also, "Jump Jim Crow" is one of the tunes that your great uncle did that got put on video, and the videos are on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujwe1NTWJ6E

What I see him doing in "Jump Jim Crow" is mostly Nashville Shuffle, with most of a Sawshuffle at the end:

Sawshuffle is normally:

1-1-1-3-1-1,

(down-up-down-uhhhhhp-down-up)

but I don't see him putting the last two sawstrokes on, so it's probably:

1-1-1-5.

(Down-up-down-uhhhhhhhhhhp!!!!)

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The challenge of sawstroke is precisely why it should be focused on, not avoided.

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Well, yeah.  I've never avoided sawstroke myself.  Interestingly enough, both you and I have a taste for hornpipes and such out of Cole's 1001/Ryan's Mammoth Collection.  Durang's, Money Musk, Fisher's and Rickett's have been on my tune lists since I was still a neophyte fiddler.  And sawstroke is the most natural way to play many of those tunes.

BUT, the fact of the matter is that it took me a good long time to where I could play any of those in public.

It's good to have a backup plan while you are working on perfecting your sawstroke.

When I was a new fiddler, most of my jamming was on simple hoedown tunes, and the hornpipes were reserved for practice.

"Sawshuffle" is a good pattern strategy for someone who likes and is working on sawstroke, since it's 5/8's sawstroke, but the 3-note upbow slur makes it less rigid.  And less rigid is a good thing when you're jamming.

And variations where you learn to move the 3-note upbow slur around are good too, that gives you more ways of phrasing a complex hornpipe melody.

Edited by - fiddlepogo on 08/28/2012 19:07:25

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Originally posted by oldtimewine

I was awarded with one of uncle Mels fiddles recently

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WOW, WOW, WOW!

i am still in shock i have done well enough that the family thought i should have it
,lol.