Feodosia - Posted - 06/26/2008:  07:12:24

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlecraver



Anyway, I was wondering what you all would say about the bowing of Burl Hammons (The Artist) or Wilson Douglas?

-Shawn

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Alot of oldtime fiddlers play to a driving hoedown beat or
the unrelenting festival-pulse .... but the old W.V. fiddlers like Wilson bowed and accented the tunes differently ... Wilson had a different sort of bounce going on with his tunes.... he wasn't afraid to hold notes,wail unisons, put in accents ...he could hold a note a long time and then quick-squiggle a rapid lick after that held note ... the music flowed like a twisted mountain stream tumbling down the rocks,interesting twists and turns .... Wilson would say that every fiddler has his own time-don't let anyone try to rush you through a tune.
I feel very lucky I got to play with Wilson ... never met Burl Hammons but I sure like the renditions of his tunes that Ive heard.

oh yeah, count me down as ignorant of the bowing-shufle-labels too... I never learned this stuff from a book ..... heck, the old timers didn't slow down their bow arm for you to study ...and they might not have been able to slow their bowings down for you if they wanted to .... for me, the bow arm follows the heart and soul of the tune that's in yer head .

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Edited by - Feodosia on 06/26/2008 07:19:11

fiddlecraver - Posted - 06/26/2008:  11:42:54

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Well Im with you on that--- this is how I described it on the back of my fiddle CD:

"Pre-1900 fiddlers often played solo. This lead to a style that wasn't bound by the rules of modern harmonic and rhythmic concepts. This old music reminds me of a river or a stream running through a muntain hollow... wild and free but also with direction..."

I call it FNG. "Flow NOT GROOVE!"

-Shawn

fiddlecraver@yahoo.com
shawncraver.com
myspace.com/shawncraver

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/23/2010:  07:04:18

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Could someone please tell me the bowing pattern for Uncle Bunt Stephens' Sail Away Ladies and Joe Birchfield's Brown's Dream? Thanks.

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Edited by - PhloridaPhiddler on 03/23/2010 11:02:03

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/23/2010:  12:42:22

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quote:

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Originally posted by PhloridaPhiddler

Could someone please tell me the bowing pattern for Uncle Bunt Stephens' Sail Away Ladies and Joe Birchfield's Brown's Dream? Thanks.

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Is there a video available of Birchfield doing the latter????
That would make it easier...

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/23/2010:  13:03:00

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Not that I have found. There's one on youtube of Bill Birchfield, his son with the Hilltoppers, playing a different rendition of Brown's Dream. It doesn't have the same "drive". Could be the bowing, maybe the tuning...

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/24/2010:  05:38:48

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I think I need a full pot of coffee to sit down with all of this!

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  06:10:34

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A full pot of coffee sounds like you're workin on it for me. I really like these 2 songs but if the bowing's not right they don't sound like much. Any help would be much appreciated.

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/24/2010:  06:26:55

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Well i gotta run for now, but do you mean how he's bowing in this Sail Away Ladies? youtube.com/watch?v=CmZVek4NDBw Just real quick... outta curiosity... I wanted to hear it... is he doing quick little saw strokes on that "sail away ladies" on two different strings.... kinda like people do in Ragtime Annie or Chicken Reel? Like... is he going... a slide on the note long(er) bow... kind of a jab... D, then ududud (on two strings alternately... one open and one stopped?) then back to sliding note, D,ud.... then D and back onto two strings like Ragtime Annie... ududud... sliding D, ud?

Could it be that... just looked real quck and I'mm no experrt and could be wrong, and running very late so gotta go for now!

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  07:41:17

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Ah, yes that is the tune. Is he sliding, rocking, crossing...therein lies the mystery for me. I just can't seperate what all's going on even with slow down software. I seem to get mesmerized by the drone and can't really hear the bow changes.

fishinmusician - Posted - 03/24/2010:  08:51:11

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I went to a Kenny Jackson bowing workshop last Fall, and he showed us the Bunt Stephens version note for note, complete with bowing. I still don't have it down, but as least I have a good idea of what is going on.

Kenny's one of the best OT fiddlers around, and a fine person. He's member here on FHO, and gives on line lessons. I think he even put up a blog on his homepage recently about his on line lessons. Check it out.

Dave

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/24/2010:  11:33:01

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This may sound surprising, but I'm hearing a lot of bowing similarities with Tommy Jarrell's playing,
but of course played in a much more stately, laid back way.
He's leading the beat, I'm hearing some Syncoshuffle or something similar,
and I also think he's doing something similar to Smoothshuffle.
But when you have a good fiddler like this that makes direction changes smoothly,
they don't leave much tell-tale "scritch" to let you know that the direction has changed.
So it's hard. One guy that might know how to do it is Mike Bryant. He's also from Tennessee like Bunt Stephens,
and I think he's got a very similar bowing style.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/24/2010:  11:45:12

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okay, I at least found a recording of Birchfield:
myspace.com/roanmountainhilltoppers
And in this case maybe not so surprisingly, I'm also
hearing similarities to Tommy Jarrell's bowing-
Birchfield is also leading the beat, and also using Syncoshuffle.
Syncoshuffle is the same bowing that Brad Leftwich calls "Tommy's Lick" in his bowing DVD

It sounds like you have a taste for syncopated bowing,
and Syncoshuffle is a good place to start.
You will not get the sound of either of these fiddlers with Nashville Shuffle, Georgia Shuffle, or Sawstroke
(the usual suspects!).
Syncoshuffle won't get you all the way there, but it's a start.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/24/2010:  11:53:26

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If this is Birchfield's son, it sounds pretty driving to me:
youtube.com/watch#!v=jY7ieGofJ...e=related

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  11:58:25

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Thanks for taking the time to consider my question. I believe you're right. He seems to be using some kind of syncopated bowing but to me because of the constant droning it's hard to tell if the notes are bowed, slurred or rocked. It's a great tune, one that sounds good without any accompaniment. Someone in this great fiddle community will have a difinitive answer. I'm sure of it!

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  12:28:19

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Seems like we crossed posts...thanks for the additional info. I'll try to link up the notes with the patterens you suggested. In the Bill Birchfield rendition on youtube he didn't play it (Brown's Dream) like his Dad. Maybe he put a few more notes in it. His Dad's version is straight forward and hard driv'n. Yup, I have to admit it I can't resist a sycopated rhythm...busted.. Now where's my fiddle? I need to try those bowings. Thanks again!

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/24/2010:  13:01:28

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo
He's leading the beat, [...]

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That's definitely what I'm hearing most about his bowing. Brad Leftwich teaches this right at the beginning of his 1st OT DVD/tape...he considers it one of the primary aspects of OT fiddling. Usually what you do is start each phrase with a strong downbow that begins BEFORE first bar line of that phrase, and continues across the bar line. In 2/4 notation (with 8 16th-notes per measure), the phrase starts on (what would be) the 7th 16th-note of the preceeding measure, and continues through (what would be) the first 16th-note of the starting measure of the phrase. Here's how I would diagram that:

   >   |                  |
   n   |   v              |
   1+1+|+1 1 1 1  1 1 1 1 |
       |                  |
       |                  |

The "1" numerals represent the 8 positions in the measure where 16th-notes could occur (I call them "SNE's" for "sixteenth-note-equivalents", and I refer to them individually as SNE1, SNE2, ..., SNE8). The "plus" characters denote ties between the 16th notes, to give the desired longer dotted 8th note for the first note of the phrase. The "n" character denotes a downbow, and the "v" denotes an upbow. The last seven SNE's of the measure may (or may not) be slurred or tied, depending on the lengths of the melody notes, and on the pattern being used.

This "leading the phrase" bowing is so important to Brad that, for each of his named bowing patterns, he uses the same name for the two different patterns that result when you either tie (or slur) across the measure, or you don't. For example, without the lead, one of his patterns is Melvin's lick (Fiddlepogo's "sawshuffle"). But Brad also uses the same name for the case where you slur (or tie) the last two SNE's of the preceeding measure in with the first SNE of the measure. When you do that with Melvin's lick, you get a shifted version of Fiddlepogo's "Smoothshuffle"...but Brad gives them the same name.

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  14:10:28

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Mike, are you referencing Sail Away Ladies or Brown's Dream?

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Edited by - PhloridaPhiddler on 03/24/2010 14:11:14

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/24/2010:  14:27:22

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quote:

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Originally posted by PhloridaPhiddler

Mike, are you referencing Sail Away Ladies or Brown's Dream?

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It was the one in this youtube link:

youtube.com/watch?v=CmZVek4NDBw

(Sail Away Ladies, I think). My computer wasn't able to do the myspace link.

PhloridaPhiddler - Posted - 03/24/2010:  18:19:25

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Mike--Ahh--good--thank you so much for taking the time to give such an in depth analysis to the bowing on this tune. I'll print out your reply and really go over it carefully tomorrow. Thanks again, it's much appreciated.

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/25/2010:  08:07:27

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quote:

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Originally posted by PhloridaPhiddler

[...]

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Thanks for that nice feedback.

I also belately remembered a great fiddle break that Sam Bush took on Newgrass Revival's version of Sail Away Ladies (that also had a great vocal by John Cowan). Sam uses that same "leading the beat" beginning to the first phrase, but he makes it sound even more "explosive" (perhaps by momentarily bowing a lower drone, and then immediately moving to a higher drone, to get a triad chord effect).

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/25/2010:  10:20:37

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Well I read (some of) this thread with a pot of coffee... coffee's all gone now, my head is spinning, I gotta be somewhere in half an hour... but I just can't wait to try some of this stuff.

For now, bumping it up... I think I need to sit down with the fiddle and mess around with some of this... my Over the Waterfall "jail-sentence" might take a turn in a different direction... like... well... no time for explanations now, but let's just say I'm very tempted to try some of this stuff now.

harwilli55 - Posted - 03/25/2010:  10:44:09

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As an aside, I have been working on a version of " Candy Girl" as taught by Rick Martin who learned it from Leftwich. Its a pattern piece, the first one I have really worked on.

The bowing in the "A" part consists of d uduu(rock)

The B part is d udu(rock) dududu(rock)

The ending rocking motion crosses from the A string to the E.

It makes this version very distinctive. I have yet to pull it together....lol...though....when it is played right...there is no need for any other instrument....this is a pure fiddle tune as there is...it seems to me.

Anyone play that version...have you posted it ?

This pattern stuff ain't easy ...at least for now....but, I am finding that it makes me have to concentrate on my bowing....which is good for over-all control. I really have to practice slow...to keep it under control.

Harlan

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Edited by - harwilli55 on 03/25/2010 10:52:18

Shawn Craver - Posted - 03/25/2010:  12:29:48

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Still baffled at these formulas and diagrams... i must be pretty slow... lol
I cant follow the "8 notes" thing one bit.

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/25/2010:  12:49:44

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quote:

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Originally posted by Shawn Craver

Still baffled at these formulas and diagrams... i must be pretty slow... lol
I cant follow the "8 notes" thing one bit.

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Well, if you tap your foot once for every four fast notes, and if you regard a measure as having two foot-taps, then there will be eight fast notes per measure. Those "1's" in the diagram just identify the POSITIONS of each of those eight fast notes in the measure, i.e., where IN TIME those fast notes occur.

Shawn Craver - Posted - 03/25/2010:  13:09:59

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And if there are NOT eight 8th notes (or 16th), then for these methods to be understood, you must be imagining that there ARE 8 notes... when there really aren't?

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/25/2010:  16:14:21

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quote:

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Originally posted by Shawn Craver

And if there are NOT eight 8th notes (or 16th), then for these methods to be understood, you must be imagining that there ARE 8 notes... when there really aren't?

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YES!! You've got it!

That's exactly WHY I use the term "SNE" (and the corresponding "1" characters in the diagram), instead of the term "note". Those eight POSITIONS-IN-TIME are there REGARDLESS of whether or not there are longer notes in the melody. (The eight POSITIONS are still there even when there is a "rest" at that position).

If the melody has some 8th-notes in the measure, I can denote them as two 16th-notes tied together. And I can denote a dotted-eighth-note as three 16th-notes tied together, and a quarter note as four 16th-notes tied together, etc. The SNE's (or "1's" in the diagram) are there JUST to show those eight positions.

With those eight SNE's tied together in various ways, I can represent ANY melody. And with those eight SNE's SLURRED together in various ways, I can represent ANY pattern. (The bowing arm doesn't distinguish between ties and slurs (when there are no string-crossings)...that's just an issue for the fingering hand).

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/25/2010:  16:50:55

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i'm not even into thinking 8th notes or any of that. To me (beginner that I am--- and just not mathematically whatsoever), if I tried to put a regular old Nashville Shuffle (what i jus always called a shuffle before coming to this board) into a tune, I could think of it as 1 (e & a) 2 (e & a) 3 (e & a) 4 (e & a), meaning the groups 1 e & a... etc., are all 16th notes and there's 4 groups of them that would fit into a written measure. Then I would imagine my D to be 1 e... & a would be ud... then U being 2 e, and du being that & a, until you'd gotten 4 groups covered into a measure and ended up back ready to push the bow back down on the first group of 4 to start the following measure... this is how i figured out I think I am a downbower, because I depend on the measures beginning back on the downbow, unless I purposely start skipping around to shake things up.

Of course, this, to me is hypothetical, because the music I'm into playing isn't written... and I don't imagine measuires or 16th or 8th notes... that drives me crazy... I just think of it as regular pulses, beats, swells, and jabs. The pulses have a regularity to them that makes me need to be going up at certain points and going down at others, and I guess if you broke it down as written music you could describe it as above. What I really love is to think of it the other way... i.e., not written notation with measures and "beats" that can be numbered.

Trying to look at bowing patterns has also driven me crazy. However, I was finally able to see that apparently bow direction, beginner that I am, does make more difference to me while I'm playing than I thought it did.

I mostly Nashville Shuffle, but I'm thinking when that gets boring and you skip around it a little bit and then get back to it, it really makes sense to me that you can only do that if bow direction means something... i.e., you have to sense a regular pulse that you need to get back to... and if you switch bow directions on those pulses, you'll just feel upsidedown... just my take, again, as a beginner at all of this. But the whole idea never leaves my mind for a minute, and it about drives me crazy... yet I love it!!!! Apparently I was just born to be crazy.

Shawn Craver - Posted - 03/25/2010:  17:06:30

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Ok! I'll work on the new puzzle tomorrow... I actually have fiddling to do right now!

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/25/2010:  17:28:56

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That's probably the best plan!!!

To Pogo... just hopped over to your blog and listened to 8th of January... very nice... I am trying to learn this because my new (and only) grandchild was born on the 8th of January this year... I ran out and bought him a 1/8th fiddle (used, but cost more than my cheapie new one... lol... and I can't afford a better one for me, especially now after buying his)... I wanted to learn this tune and gradually mess around with him in a couple of years and see if he could pick it up from me on his little fiddle... I mean, everybody oughta learn a tune about their birthday!!!!

Guess I'll be wracking my brains trying to figger out what the heck you're doin' to make it sound so good.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/25/2010:  19:50:06

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quote:

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

That's probably the best plan!!!

To Pogo... just hopped over to your blog and listened to 8th of January... very nice... I am trying to learn this because my new (and only) grandchild was born on the 8th of January this year... I ran out and bought him a 1/8th fiddle (used, but cost more than my cheapie new one... lol... and I can't afford a better one for me, especially now after buying his)... I wanted to learn this tune and gradually mess around with him in a couple of years and see if he could pick it up from me on his little fiddle... I mean, everybody oughta learn a tune about their birthday!!!!

Guess I'll be wracking my brains trying to figger out what the heck you're doin' to make it sound so good.

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If you mean over on ezfolk,
you don't have to wrack your brain to figger out what I'm doing-
I'll tell you!

Sawshuffle in the first part,
Smoothshuffle in the second, probably with Sawshuffle at the end of the phrase.

NOW you just have to wrack your brain AND bowing arm to figger out how to play those two patterns... they are right in Dave Reiner's first post at the beginning of this thread-
Sawshuffle is the fifth one-
1-1-1-3-1-1,
and Smoothshuffle is the sixth one-
3-3-1-1.

Both of those are on Brad Leftwich's DVD,
and he calls them both "Melvin's Lick"- one being the starting lick and the other the ending lick, or something like that.
If you look at them both, the last three bow strokes are identical in both-
the 3-1-1 part.
Sawshuffle starts out with 3 saw strokes,
but in Smoothshuffle they are smoothed out into a single 3 note downward slur.

So whichever one of those you learn, you are 3/8 of the way to learning the other

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/27/2010:  07:42:37

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Ok

Thanks. Your 8th of January sounds really great! Something really weird is I actually had some time to mess around with my fiddle again this morning (very weird I'm suddenly having so much time WITH the fiddle, instead of just having to think about it) and I was attempting to fit in new stuff just here in the re in Over the Waterfall, and I just jumped back into the 8th of January, slowed it way down (not that I can play it fast...LOL!), and found a place to put in that offset Nashville Shuffle in there instead of regular. Then I wandered into this post of you spelling out your 8th of January!!! Well, mine is about all N. Shuffle, of course, as far as I can tell... but my situation is I wander around outside of N. Shuffle, having no idea what I'm doing, but not for long, and then wander back in. This seems to be a habit with me, even though I haven't played that much to really have habits, yet. I would like to identify what I'm doing (it might be some of these things, or parts of these things, as I tend to hurry and jump back into familiar territory before too long)... and I would like to know that and then purposely put in some things here and there, just knowing what I'm doing... to shave off a few decades of playing experience, which I need since I'm in mmy upper 50's now!!!! I can't afford to find it all by chance.

Anyway... seems my ability to fit newer stuff in might be happening more naturally for me with 8th of Jan instead of Over the Waterfall... so my next littel youtube thing might be different... maybe I'll have to get the time to get up strictly N. shuffle 8th of Jan to compare the newer one later... also... I guess what happens at breathing points (i.e., ends/beginnings of phrases) doesn't count... I get off of my regular stuff normally for breathers at the ends and beginnings of things... but sometimes not.

This should be exciting to just see how it all works out... I'm afraid I'm totally obsessed at this point... totally wasted with it all...

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/27/2010:  16:33:50

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

quote:

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy
Guess I'll be wracking my brains trying to figger out what the heck you're doin' to make it sound so good.

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If you mean over on ezfolk,
you don't have to wrack your brain to figger out what I'm doing-
I'll tell you!

Sawshuffle in the first part,
Smoothshuffle in the second, probably with Sawshuffle at the end of the phrase.
[...]
Both of those are on Brad Leftwich's DVD,
and he calls them both "Melvin's Lick"- one being the starting lick and the other the ending lick, or something like that.

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Also, if you (Groundhogpeggy) want to just HEAR those patterns, rather than try to understand descriptions of them, you might profit from those Brad Leftwich DVD's (especially the 2nd one). When he introduces a pattern, he plays it several times just droning on two open strings, without any distraction of fingering, melody, or string-crossings.

But beware that Brad's pattern similar to Fiddlepogo's "smoothshuffle" is a SHIFTED version of Fiddlepogo's pattern. Fiddlepogo's pattern ENDS with two sawstrokes, whereas Brad's version downbow-slurs across the bar lines, and sawstrokes the 2nd and 3rd SNE.

Note to Fiddlepogo: Maybe you might want to consider recording all your patterns in the same way (just with a constant drone on two strings)...that might be helpful to those who don't like descriptions. You'd probably also need a metronome click (or an audible foot-tap) twice per measure, to make it clear where the beats are.

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Edited by - Mike_Fontenot on 03/27/2010 17:15:55

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/27/2010:  21:29:56

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike_Fontenot

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

quote:

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy
Guess I'll be wracking my brains trying to figger out what the heck you're doin' to make it sound so good.

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If you mean over on ezfolk,
you don't have to wrack your brain to figger out what I'm doing-
I'll tell you!

Sawshuffle in the first part,
Smoothshuffle in the second, probably with Sawshuffle at the end of the phrase.
[...]
Both of those are on Brad Leftwich's DVD,
and he calls them both "Melvin's Lick"- one being the starting lick and the other the ending lick, or something like that.

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Also, if you (Groundhogpeggy) want to just HEAR those patterns, rather than try to understand descriptions of them, you might profit from those Brad Leftwich DVD's (especially the 2nd one). When he introduces a pattern, he plays it several times just droning on two open strings, without any distraction of fingering, melody, or string-crossings.

But beware that Brad's pattern similar to Fiddlepogo's "smoothshuffle" is a SHIFTED version of Fiddlepogo's pattern. Fiddlepogo's pattern ENDS with two sawstrokes, whereas Brad's version downbow-slurs across the bar lines, and sawstrokes the 2nd and 3rd SNE.

Note to Fiddlepogo: Maybe you might want to consider recording all your patterns in the same way (just with a constant drone on two strings)...that might be helpful to those who don't like descriptions. You'd probably also need a metronome click (or an audible foot-tap) twice per measure, to make it clear where the beats are.

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Okay... that does it... I've GOT to buy that Leftwich DVD... even though in one sense I don't think I NEED it.... but I keep recommending it, so I need to know <exactly> whats in it.

I guess I'm partly afraid that it's only going to add fuel to the fire of my bowing obsessions!!! He's probably got about 3 bowings that I don't know yet.
Part of me thinks I'm just fine with the shuffles I have, but if I see more demoed, who KNOWS what might happen!!!

The idea of the clicks is an excellent one... I do have MOST of the patterns recorded and posted,
but not with any rhythmic reference like that.

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/28/2010:  08:47:03

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

Okay... that does it... I've GOT to buy that Leftwich DVD... even though in one sense I don't think I NEED it.... but I keep recommending it, so I need to know <exactly> whats in it.
[...]
He's probably got about 3 bowings that I don't know yet.

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I doubt that there's much in it that you don't already know. You already know that the nice thing about 3-SNE slurs is that they can pretty much be moved around at will, without screwing anything up. And that you can always substitute a 3-SNE slur for any group of 3 sawtroked SNE's (and vice-versa), without changing the downstream directions.

Brad's "Benton's lick" is the only one that would really be new, and it's probably not used very often. It was helpful to me, mostly because it pointed me toward a "downbow the accents" strategy, even when that means "don't necessarily downbow the first beat of every measure".

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/28/2010:  12:57:48

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike_Fontenot

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo
He's probably got about 3 bowings that I don't know yet.

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I doubt that there's much in it that you don't already know.

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The only other thing that Brad does, that you might not do, is to always reserve the right to take (almost) any of his basic patterns, and modify them by leading into the first beat with a long downbow. That works anytime the last two SNE's in the basic pattern are sawstrokes. In the modification, he just slurs those last two SNE's into the first SNE of the following measure. He can mix and match the unmodified pattern and the modified pattern in any order. And he refers to both patterns with the same name.

That's how he gets something similar to your smoothshuffle from your sawshuffle. The result is just your smoothshuffle shifted two SNE's to the left.

But as you know, the modified pattern can FEEL quite different from the unmodified pattern. Their degree of imbalance can be very different, resulting in different accent tendencies. For example, your sawshuffle is unbalanced (and will tend to accent one or more downbowed SNE's compared to the upbowed SNE's), but your smoothshuffle is balanced (same number of downbowed SNE's as upbowed SNE's), and thus doesn't "automatically" accent anything.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/28/2010:  13:40:49

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I do lead the beat when consciously trying for a Tommy Jarrell flavor, but I'd be hard put to graph it out-
I picked it up by imitating Tommy's motions, and do it intuitively.... I'd be interested in seeing how Brad does it,
and how he graphs it out.

Definitely, the offset versions feel WAY different.
"Unshuffle" and "Georgia Shuffle" are offsets of each other-
one is extremely straight and English sounding, and the other is very Bluegrassy sounding.
And Offset Nashville has a very different feel from normal Nashville.

Nevertheless, because the basic motions are the same, it's almost like getting a new shuffle for free..well,
maybe for half-off!!! You still have some work to do, but it is easier, in my experience.

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/28/2010:  14:27:50

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

I do lead the beat when consciously trying for a Tommy Jarrell flavor, but I'd be hard put to graph it out-
I picked it up by imitating Tommy's motions, and do it intuitively.... I'd be interested in seeing how Brad does it,
and how he graphs it out.

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Actually, he doesn't diagram anything...it's all just looking and listening to him doing it slowly. My diagrams were (and are) just an attempt on my part to better understand what he was showing me.

Ironically, Brad wrote a series of articles for the OldTime Herald (well before his Homespun tapes were recorded), where he used a graphing technique that I thought was VERY useful. But it is an actual GRAPH, and wouldn't work in ASCII on a web forum at all. I've used it on several occasions to reason something out, that I couldn't figure out any other way.

I told Brad once how useful it was to me, and he said that he never uses it any more, because no one seemed to be able to understand what he was doing!

quote:

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Definitely, the offset versions feel WAY different.
"Unshuffle" and "Georgia Shuffle" are offsets of each other-
one is extremely straight and English sounding, and the other is very Bluegrassy sounding.

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But their degree of imbalance IS the same...very heavy "automatic" accents in both cases. But the difference is whether the accents are on-beat or off-beat, and that DOES feel very different.

But when you replace three sawstroked SNE's with a 3-SNE slur, you DO change the degree of imbalance, and that causes another kind of difference in feel....that's what happens in your smoothshuffle versus your sawshuffle.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/28/2010:  23:17:36

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike_Fontenot

quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo

I do lead the beat when consciously trying for a Tommy Jarrell flavor, but I'd be hard put to graph it out-
I picked it up by imitating Tommy's motions, and do it intuitively.... I'd be interested in seeing how Brad does it,
and how he graphs it out.

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Actually, he doesn't diagram anything...it's all just looking and listening to him doing it slowly.

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All the better for those who find themselves getting dizzy during bowing threads!

quote:

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My diagrams were (and are) just an attempt on my part to better understand what he was showing me.

Ironically, Brad wrote a series of articles for the OldTime Herald (well before his Homespun tapes were recorded), where he used a graphing technique that I thought was VERY useful. But it is an actual GRAPH, and wouldn't work in ASCII on a web forum at all. I've used it on several occasions to reason something out, that I couldn't figure out any other way.

I told Brad once how useful it was to me, and he said that he never uses it any more, because no one seemed to be able to understand what he was doing!

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Almost no one- it was obviously meant for YOU!!!

quote:

---

quote:

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Definitely, the offset versions feel WAY different.
"Unshuffle" and "Georgia Shuffle" are offsets of each other-
one is extremely straight and English sounding, and the other is very Bluegrassy sounding.

---

But their degree of imbalance IS the same...very heavy "automatic" accents in both cases. But the difference is whether the accents are on-beat or off-beat, and that DOES feel very different.

But when you replace three sawstroked SNE's with a 3-SNE slur, you DO change the degree of imbalance, and that causes another kind of difference in feel....that's what happens in your smoothshuffle versus your sawshuffle.

---

You know, I don't think the real difference is as much as you think-
at least it isn't for me. My downstrokes are strong enough that my SAWSTROKE may actually be unbalanced as far as a tendency to have "bow creep" towards the tip.
My upstrokes are often just a flick of the wrist.
If you replace 2 strong downstrokes plus one such weak upstroke with a 3 note downstroke,
it's just not that big a difference. Now if someone had more even down- and upstrokes, yeah, it might be more of an issue

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/29/2010:  05:12:54

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When i try some of these patterns, they come out very stiff. I don't mean my wrist or fingers or arm (although maybe that's part of it... I don't know), but the sound is stiff, rather than musical and easy-sounding.

That's what's so hard... I can put 'em in there, but suddenly during that part of the tune, it's stiff, contrived, and artifical-sounding.

I'm messin' around with sawstroke a little bit, and might have more to say about that later... at this point I'm just pretty freaked out. More later.

dsreiner - Posted - 03/29/2010:  05:16:34

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo
My downstrokes are strong enough that my SAWSTROKE may actually be unbalanced as far as a tendency to have "bow creep" towards the tip.
My upstrokes are often just a flick of the wrist.
If you replace 2 strong downstrokes plus one such weak upstroke with a 3 note downstroke,
it's just not that big a difference.

---

Shorten that weak upbow to the extreme, and it becomes a "ghost note" or "ghost bow." It's common in French Canadian and New England styles (more so with modern players), and also occurs in some oldtime playing, like Tommy Jarrell's shakedown bowing. It produces a delightful hitch in the sound, and may be (mis-)interpreted as two downs in a row with a pulse, but the short upbow is actually there.

Dave

P.S. Forgot to post this on Halloween...

OTJunky - Posted - 03/29/2010:  05:46:10

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shakedown bowing?

--OTJ

groundhogpeggy - Posted - 03/29/2010:  08:45:07

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LOL... I thought the same thing... but was afraid to ask!

dsreiner - Posted - 03/29/2010:  09:46:02

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quote:

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Originally posted by OTJunky

shakedown bowing?

--OTJ

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From Oldtime Fiddling Across America, p. 41 in the Bowing Patterns section, I wrote: "Tommy Jarrell's "shakedown" bowing style is ... a rocking pattern where the up-bows brush lower strings as drones."

I'm pretty sure Tommy -- who loved to rock and weave his bow across his cross-tuned strings -- mentioned "shakedown" bowing to me and Pete Anick while we were interviewing him for our book. Nancy Dols Neithammer studied with Tommy for a couple of years and might be able to confirm or further explain this term.

From p. 40:
"I got part of my daddy's style of bowing and I got part of a neighbor that lived just over in the next holler from where my daddy lived, the name of Tony Lowe. And I got some of daddy's style, some of his [Tony's] style, and some of my own. I was awful young when Tony died. He died when I was eleven years old. But Charlie Lowe, he was older than my dad, and he played a lot with Tony and he told me how, he showed me kinda how Tony used the bow. He used some wrist work with his bow."
- Tommy Jarrell, fiddler from Mt. Airy, North Carolina

Dave

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/29/2010:  09:52:22

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quote:

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Originally posted by fiddlepogo
If you replace 2 strong downstrokes plus one such weak upstroke with a 3 note downstroke,
it's just not that big a difference.

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If you REPEATEDLY play your sawshuffle for many measures, the AVERAGE loudness of the 3 downbowed SNE's WILL be greater than the AVERAGE loudness of the 5 upbowed SNE's. There's just no way around that constraint.

It's exactly analogous to the situation where you drive from your house to a point 60 miles away. You have an unlimited number of choices about exactly how fast you decide to drive during various portions of that trip, but no matter what, your AVERAGE speed will be 60 miles/hour...there's just no way around that.

On the other hand, your smoothshuffle has the SAME number of downbows as upbows (it's a "balanced pattern"). So the AVERAGE loudness of the 4 downbowed SNE's will ALWAYS be equal to the AVERAGE loudness of the 4 upbowed SNE's (whenever you repeatedly play that pattern for many measures). There's just no way around that.

So the smoothshuffle can be played, if desired, with absolutely no accents at all. But it doesn't HAVE to be. You can choose to make one or more upbowed SNE's louder if you want, but if so, you will HAVE to make one or more downbowed SNE's louder also, so that the AVERAGES remain equal.

You have an unlimited choice of how to vary the accents of various individual SNE's, but those choices will always be constrained by the requirement that the AVERAGE loudness of the upbowed SNE's must always equal the AVERAGE loudness of the downbowed SNE's, for ANY balanced pattern, like smoothshuffle.

Likewise, you have an unlimited number of choices of how to accent the individual SNE's in sawshuffle, but subject to the constraint that the AVERAGE loudness of the downbowed SNE's must ALWAYS be greater than the AVERAGE loudness of the upbowed SNE's.

And for any UNBALANCED pattern (like sawshuffle), whichever bowing direction has the FEWER number of SNE's in the measure MUST be louder, on average. The larger the difference in the number of SNE's in the two directions, the larger the difference in average loudness. Sawshuffle has a fairly small degree of imbalance (5 ups versus 3 downs), so the loudness difference is fairly small. But the Georgia shuffle has 6 ups and 2 downs, and so it's degree of imbalance is larger, and has a correspondingly larger loudness difference. Georgia shuffle is easy to detect when you listen to a fiddler who uses it, and it's also very obvious VISUALLY...when people talk about a fiddler's "lightning thrusts", there's usually some Georgia shuffling going on. (The same is true for "On-beat Georgia" (Fiddlepogo's "Unshuffle")...it has the same degree of unbalance, but with the accents ON the beat, instead of on the off-beat).

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Edited by - Mike_Fontenot on 03/29/2010 10:37:12

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/29/2010:  12:22:08

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quote:

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Originally posted by groundhogpeggy

When i try some of these patterns, they come out very stiff. I don't mean my wrist or fingers or arm (although maybe that's part of it... I don't know), but the sound is stiff, rather than musical and easy-sounding.

That's what's so hard... I can put 'em in there, but suddenly during that part of the tune, it's stiff, contrived, and artifical-sounding.

---

Patience, patience! Back-burner on low heat, cook until tender,
then stir in to your main dish!!!!

Yes, it feels stiff compared to the stuff you know well, but every time you play them,
they'll be a little less stiff... eventually, they'll actually be COMFORTABLE! When that happens, they'll mix with the rest of your style just fine.

quote:

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I'm messin' around with sawstroke a little bit, and might have more to say about that later... at this point I'm just pretty freaked out. More later.

---

Yeah, sawstroke can kind of freak you out if your not used to it.
It's good for your fiddling, though.
Again, I wouldn't try and stick it in to the stuff you've worked out.
Find a hornpipe you'd like to play, learn it and play it with sawstroke.
If it's got lots of bowrocks like Durang's, so much the better.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/29/2010:  12:25:57

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IOW,
TJ's "shakedown" bowing = ornamental bow-rocking = "bow-bobbling"

Good to hear from you again Dave! It surprised me- I thought I'd accidentally scrolled up to an older part of the thread!!!

quote:

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Originally posted by dsreiner

quote:

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Originally posted by OTJunky

shakedown bowing?

--OTJ

---

From Oldtime Fiddling Across America, p. 41 in the Bowing Patterns section, I wrote: "Tommy Jarrell's "shakedown" bowing style is ... a rocking pattern where the up-bows brush lower strings as drones."

I'm pretty sure Tommy -- who loved to rock and weave his bow across his cross-tuned strings -- mentioned "shakedown" bowing to me and Pete Anick while we were interviewing him for our book. Nancy Dols Neithammer studied with Tommy for a couple of years and might be able to confirm or further explain this term.

From p. 40:
"I got part of my daddy's style of bowing and I got part of a neighbor that lived just over in the next holler from where my daddy lived, the name of Tony Lowe. And I got some of daddy's style, some of his [Tony's] style, and some of my own. I was awful young when Tony died. He died when I was eleven years old. But Charlie Lowe, he was older than my dad, and he played a lot with Tony and he told me how, he showed me kinda how Tony used the bow. He used some wrist work with his bow."
- Tommy Jarrell, fiddler from Mt. Airy, North Carolina

Dave

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Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/29/2010:  20:56:47

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I finally realized what Fiddlepogo and Dave Reiner were telling me!

I knew that my simplified conclusions about average bow speeds DO assume something that I didn't talk about in my explanation: I was assuming that the time required to play one measure is EVENLY DIVIDED into 8 equal slices of time, one slice for each of the 8 SNE's. I WAS aware that in some cases, the 16th-notes actually AREN'T all given exactly equal amounts of time...the best example is when the 16th-notes are "swung". But I thought that, more often than not, that the slices ARE close to being equal.

But what Fiddlepogo was telling me, was that when he plays those first three sawstroked 16th-notes in his sawshuffle, that the first and third one "steal" time from the middle one. I.e., the first and third 16th-notes each get MORE than 1/8 of the measure, and the middle 16th-note gets LESS than 1/8 of the measure.

And as Dave pointed out, as that middle note gets squeezed more and more, that group of three sawstroked notes starts to look more and more like a 3-SNE slur. And that means that the sawshuffle gets closer and closer to being the same as smoothshuffle, which is a balanced pattern.

Sorry for being so slow to catch on.

fiddlepogo - Posted - 03/30/2010:  03:48:30

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mike_Fontenot


I finally realized what Fiddlepogo and Dave Reiner were telling me!

I knew that my simplified conclusions about average bow speeds DO assume something that I didn't talk about in my explanation: I was assuming that the time required to play one measure is EVENLY DIVIDED into 8 equal slices of time, one slice for each of the 8 SNE's. I WAS aware that in some cases, the 16th-notes actually AREN'T all given exactly equal amounts of time...the best example is when the 16th-notes are "swung". But I thought that, more often than not, that the slices ARE close to being equal.

But what Fiddlepogo was telling me, was that when he plays those first three sawstroked 16th-notes in his sawshuffle, that the first and third one "steal" time from the middle one. I.e., the first and third 16th-notes each get MORE than 1/8 of the measure, and the middle 16th-note gets LESS than 1/8 of the measure.

And as Dave pointed out, as that middle note gets squeezed more and more, that group of three sawstroked notes starts to look more and more like a 3-SNE slur. And that means that the sawshuffle gets closer and closer to being the same as smoothshuffle, which is a balanced pattern.

Sorry for being so slow to catch on.

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S'okay!!!

I was preparing another explanation, but ran out of time since I needed to prepare for a volunteer gig! And now it's not needed... whew!!!

I'm glad you had a "Eureka" moment on that!

The nature of this kind of analysis is that the mind tends to lock onto certain things as given factors.... oh bother!!!
my brains to tired too even talk about talking about bowing...
I need to go to bed!!!

Mike_Fontenot - Posted - 03/30/2010:  09:00:01

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When there are subtleties in the timing of a tune, that gets handled in standard music notation by using some shorter notes in the transcription. For example, in a tune where the fast notes are mostly 16th-notes, then 32nd-notes can be used to indicate finer-grained timing variations.

When those timing variations occur throughout the tune, most people don't want to try to read or write the whole tune with those subtleties explicitly shown throughout. Instead, usually there will just be a transcriber's note at the beginning, that indicates (for example) that all pairs of 8th-notes should be played as if they were an 8th-note triplet, with the first two notes of the triplet tied together, to make a longer note (twice as long as the third note of the triplet). Or frequently, if a "hornpipe" rhythm is desired, there will be a transcriber's note saying that all 8th-note pairs should be played as if they were a 16th-note followed by a dotted 8th-note.

The same thing can be done with my rhythm diagramming method. The idea is that we sometimes will need to use a narrower time-slice (narrower than 1/8 of a measure), in order to show the timing subtleties.

Usually, the numerals "1" in my diagrams represent a time-slice of 1/8 of a measure (in 2/4 time with 16th-notes). So they represent the "fast notes" in a tune that consists mostly of 16th-notes. When that is the case, I call them "SNE's", short for "sixteenth note equivalents". But more generally, they should probably be called "FNE's", for "fast note equivalents".

In order to represent the timing variation that Fiddlepogo (sometimes) uses on the first three sawstroked 16th-notes in his sawshuffle pattern, I need to be able to represent notes shorter than 16th-notes...perhaps 32nd-notes would be about right. Then, I would use a numeral "1" in the diagram to represent 32nd-notes, rather than 16th-notes as I usually do. I could then use a numeral "2" in the diagram to represent 16th-notes. (Or I could show a 16th-note as two tied "1's", if I want). The numeral "1's" are now "TNE's", or "thirty-second-note equivalents".

With that scheme, I could diagram a measure of Fiddlepogo's sawshuffle that explicitly shows the timing subtleties. Instead of the usual sawshuffle diagram:

       |                  |
       | n v n            |
       | 1 1 1 1__1_1 1 1 |
       |                  |

I could use this diagram:

       |                  |
       | n v n            |
       | 3 1 3 2__2_2 2 2 |
       |                  |

The numeral "3" in the above diagram means that the first and third sawstroked 16th-notes in Fiddlepogo's sawshuffle are played as if they were dotted 16th-notes (three tied 32nd-notes).

In a similar way, the timing of "swung eighths" could be explicitly shown like this:

                   _3_
     1 1    -->   1+1 1

       |                  |
       | n v n            |
       | 2 2 2 2__2_2 2 2 |
       |                  |

       |                  |
       | n v n            |
       | 5 2 5 4__4_4 4 4 |
       |                  |

       |                  |
       | n v n            |
       | 4 1 4 3__3_3 3 3 |
       |                  |