I suspect (could be wrong) that any aspiring fiddler who chose to read the treatise on fiddle teaching that this topic has become would just settle for their Mel Bay books..

Other than that,  it is an interesting discussion.. I've backed off.. 

Chicken and Dumplings. (not the one on Slippery hill / but the banjo tune by TrevorStuart) 5 notes - 2 strings - rhythmic patterns (not necessarily bowing). A very simple tune to play (once you learn it) It sounds more complicated than it is (especially it you learn to add the drones) - which makes it a good way to illustrate how rhythm makes a tune.

Best played in GDgd cross tuning.

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

I suspect (could be wrong) that any aspiring fiddler who chose to read the treatise on fiddle teaching that this topic has become would just settle for their Mel Bay books..

Other than that,  it is an interesting discussion.. I've backed off.. 

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That seems to me an odd conclusion to draw from the thread. 

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

I suspect (could be wrong) that any aspiring fiddler who chose to read the treatise on fiddle teaching that this topic has become would just settle for their Mel Bay books..

Other than that,  it is an interesting discussion.. I've backed off.. 

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Were you looking for / hoping for / expecting a certain response? ...something to confirm an idea that you have - that would be better than Mel Bay books?  

The Hangout is like a box of chocolates.. you never know what you're going to get.

I would emphasize the importance of rhythm and phrasing in fiddle playing, and try to show them how to achieve that with bow, using sawstrokes and slurs.
Truly classicaly trained musicians look for lots of instructions from musical notation concerning phrasing, tempo, dynamics and articulation, etc. Many transcriptions of old time fiddle tunes don't include this kind of information, instead just presenting the barebones tune, assuming that the player will be familiar with the style, and make those decisions themselves. So, if they've been learning from notation I'd go over it with them and see what stylistic clues might be there that the've missed.
PS - This forum is no different from other user driven sources of information on the Internet - some people know what they're talking about and others don't, which doesn't stop them from expressing their opinion anyway. I've come to think its about 1/3 actual knowledge and 2/3 nonsense. This is what makes AI ("Abysmal Ignorance") bots so unreliable because they have trouble evaluating what they scrape up.

To The Violin Beautiful

 "Your approach of asking the student to dictate the terms of the lessons is nonsensical. "

Eh? I didn't say that...Or any of those points... so it looks like straw-manning to me. #confused

 

HMm Well, I grew up as a “dots reader” (playing in school orchestra, etc) and seem to have more or less made the crossover to fiddling (in the sense that I am invited to the private sessions…they must think I play ok). WHat helped me:

- not reading tunes out of the book, but learning mostly by ear. In this way the music is learned as a rhythmic dance and not a string of even notes, the way they look on the page…

- lots of listening to Irish trad (my fiddling genre)…recommended albums and players…slowing down recordings to hear every cut, tap, roll and copying. We Americans don’t have top players at the local pubs to learn from, so sadly I resort to this…

- some fiddle lessons, where the teacher gave out recordings + printed music with bowings written in. THese are genre “standard” bowings I.e. slurring across the measure, groups of three, etc…once I got those into my arm for a couple of reels, the bowings crossed over fairly easily into playing other reels. DItto with jigs. The Matt Cranitch fiddle book is great - has bowings written in and comes with recordings - was recommended to me by another fiddler. Is there the equivalent with OT? SOmebody should create one, if not :-)

So if there is an OT equivalent of the Matt Cranitch fiddle book, I’d work slowly through it with them, one tune per lesson. At the first lesson I’d present the dots and play it with them, send them home with the dots and a recording, At next lesson, we’ll play that tune together from Memory, many times round, like at a real jam…Then I’d assign the next tune. EVentually they should absorb the rhythm and style…?

Beginners to the style need some kind of structure to make it accessible…probably at first you need to start with the basics/standards instead of letting them pick tunes Willy-nilly. However my teacher (online zoom group lesson) would always let us make suggestions, and nix the tunes that he thought would be too complex. I do think structured learning like this from a good teacher cuts a lot of time off the “learning curve”…

And as they become more advanced players they may start to pick up different versions, approaches, etc from concerts, jams, workshops etc and structured lessons with a single teacher becomes less needed…it becomes more of a personal journey…

PHew, that is my seventeen cents worth of thoughts!
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When I started taking lessons 4 or 5 years ago I had pretty much all bad habits and nothing good and I was totally illiterate on the fiddle. My teacher sat with me and played through the notation pointing out all the bowing and phrasing and we went along together one on one for a half hour lesson each week. The first couple of tunes took a long time to iron out, but it gradually started to pick up a bit of pace. Six months in and my teachers husband had a major heart attack so she couldn’t continue teaching. By that time I had enough learnt to continue unaided. I think that there is nothing wrong with learning off the dots provided you are getting the right guidance from a teacher/mentor. Since then I have forgotten how to read the dots on the fiddle. I only know the notes of the open strings which is a pity.

Just yesterday while I was busking, a college aged kid said he played a little mandolin but was interested in fiddling..So, right there on the sidewalk I played a simplified version of Angeline the Baker.. He said he knew it. Then I played the tune using the Nashville shuffle, then I played it on two strings, and then I put some pulses and drones into it.. His eyes lit up!! THAT is what he wanted to learn..how to take a tune from its roots into having OT options....I hope to hear from him again...What I demonstrated is classic OT bow stuff..the stuff that isn't hard but just obscure enough that people don't understand what is going on.. That is the kind of stuff I was hoping to hear from others in the Original Post... I may not have made myself clear enough... What is "clear" is apparently debatable..

I think we've discussed that idea before... even Angeline the Baker. .. the idea of *adding * shuffles or prescribed bowing techniques *to* tunes...

sort of like i like adding an egg to a boxed cake mix. I call it workshop bowing because that's the only place I ever saw it.

What makes me uncomfortable with the approach is not so much the approach...or the resulting music...but the   authoritativeness and dogma that often goes a long with it.  

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Originally posted by ShawnCraver

I think we've discussed that idea before... even Angeline the Baker. .. the idea of *adding * shuffles or prescribed bowing techniques *to* tunes...

sort of like i like adding an egg to a boxed cake mix. I call it workshop bowing because that's the only place I ever saw it.

What makes me uncomfortable with the approach is not so much the approach...or the resulting music...but the   authoritativeness and dogma that often goes a long with it.  

 

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That's an interesting take. The workshops do seem to give off an air of authority on things, and that seems odd. I've never thought of fiddle workshops as being any kind of formal instruction, more as a gathering for players who are less experienced to pick up tidbits from more established players that can serve as a jumping-off point for a future learning process.

Workshops in other settings often consist heavily in presentations and lectures on various topics. They are intended to provide some researched and reviewed information to a curious audience and to showcase the understanding and ability of the lecturer. They also provide the presenter a personal advertising opportunity.

Fiddling workshops tend to have a large focus on tune teaching, I think because so few players can read and benefit from being handed sheet music or having examples displayed on a screen during a presentation and because many are unable to find personal meaning in a lecture if they aren't given the opportunity to play for themselves. I attended one a few years back where there were workshops and then concerts by the presenters. Two of the presenters were a klezmer band and a Mexican group. The klezmer group declined to give a workshop because they felt it was unnecessary, but the Mexican group agreed to make their presentation like the rest of the others. They watched the presentations that preceded theirs and realized that there was an almost total focus on tune learning--the Scottish player wanted to give some interesting historical insight but had to switch gears to playing a tune when it was apparent that the majority of the audience was glassy-eyed or distracted by the instruments in their own hands--so they decided to follow suit. They gave a brief introduction to their style of playing (I so wish I could have heard more about the various Mexican styles), then handed out some sheet music for everyone to use. They were flummoxed that almost no one there could read the simple tune  and I think they were disappointed that they had to spend the majority of their hour just going through one tune measure by measure to teach it.

I think the workshop setting is often misapplied and having learned a tune is often mistaken for having learned a lot about a style of playing or a good player's methods.

I should clarify... the term "workshop bowing" is something I have in my own brain when I see or hear the style of bowing I described as "adding an egg to a instant cake mix" ... It is not a term I am stuck to or wish to see propagated.

"Workshop" for me in this context can mean anything from an online line video about old time bowing to a festival workshop.

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Originally posted by ShawnCraver

I should clarify... the term "workshop bowing" is something I have in my own brain when I see or hear the style of bowing I described as "adding an egg to a instant cake mix" ... It is not a term I am stuck to or wish to see propagated.

"Workshop" for me in this context can mean anything from an online line video about old time bowing to a festival workshop.

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That doesn't make much sense, though. The style of playing/bowing/interpretation taught at workshops is the boxed cake mix. Adding an egg to the boxed mix is a part of the standard recipe, but adding an extra egg or swapping out some of the other ingredients you add as a standard is a way to spruce up a full recipe and make it seem like a better recipe.

I don't think that the workshops are really teaching anyone how to play more freely, individually, or interestingly, no matter what they may claim in the blurbs.

Comparing it to YouTube is a little complicated because that platform encompasses so many different types of  instructional approaches that there really isn't one way to describe its content. For example, there are awful videos made by people who know nothing about playing who just want to look important online, there are instructional videos made specifically for the platform (of widely varying quality), and there are videos that are just recordings of classes taken with a phone or video camera.

I don't think that term is one that only you have used, and it tends to describe a set pattern of bowing that gets applied to everything without discretion. 

So what does it mean that I am a big fan of Maura Shawn Scanlin’s playing…and I subscribe to her Patreon, I’ve watched her videos on Irish ornaments and practice the way she does them, and I learn tunes from her videos. I also went to her concert when she came to town.

I mean, I don’t feel locked in jail or anything!
I enjoy learning new stuff and trying to become a better fiddler. :-)
MAybe I'm becoming a cookie-cutter player, but if I turn out like Maura - well, I'm ok with that :-D

( If you haven't heard of her, sample of her playing: 
https://youtu.be/mHi_15WqTFo?is=AO2jvtkUqgSZi3Zr )
 

Can you not use these as supplemental materials if you're still the one doing the teaching. Is use of existing recordings permitted in this hypothetical scenario at all. Are you just talking about teaching by yourself and not using other people's instructional videos and books to teach?

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

Is someone who could already play fiddle tunes from sheet music was to ask you to teach them old time fiddle techniques, that would make their music sound more 'ole timey'  what would you teach them? Where would you start?  PS.. they want YOU to teach .. they are not wanting a list of downloads of other musicians...

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I think that the kind of shuffle Tommy Jarrell used a lot (121211) and variants of it might be a good shortcut to an old-timey sound, because it seems like it's less common outside of the Old-Time genre. I don't hear Contest-Style, Bluegrass, or Celtic players use it nearly as much as people who are part of the Old-Time crowd and are studying the ancient and distinctive-sounding styles of guys like Tommy Jarrell. I think Uncle Norm Edmonds is another who used it a lot, if I remember correctly. 211211 is used by pretty much all fiddlers, although to differring degrees depending on style. I think of it as a good shortcut for a rhythm that cloggers and square dancers can gravitate toward, but 121211 and its variants seem more genre-specific to Old-Time, especially southern Appalachian styles, and it's used so much in Round Peak/Surry County style that i tend to call it the Round Peak shuffle, although it was definitely used in Virginia, East Tennessee, and West Virginia, too.

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Originally posted by NCnotes

So what does it mean that I am a big fan of Maura Shawn Scanlin’s playing…and I subscribe to her Patreon, I’ve watched her videos on Irish ornaments and practice the way she does them, and I learn tunes from her videos. I also went to her concert when she came to town.

I mean, I don’t feel locked in jail or anything!
I enjoy learning new stuff and trying to become a better fiddler. :-)
MAybe I'm becoming a cookie-cutter player, but if I turn out like Maura - well, I'm ok with that :-D

( If you haven't heard of her, sample of her playing: 
https://youtu.be/mHi_15WqTFo?is=AO2jvtkUqgSZi3Zr )
 

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As I see it, emulating other players is in no way limiting, but rather a way to better understand playing and make personal improvement (so long as what's being emulated is good).

I think the emphasis on trying to sound unique is a mistake because it's something that will happen regardless of your efforts. Attention is better given to trying to play well and appropriately and in trying to achieve specific sounds in playing. The violin is an imitative instrument by its nature, so ignoring that nature in learning to play is counterproductive.

I think the most cookie-cutter players are the ones who try to be unique too much. They sound far more alike and their playing tends to be pretty reliably unexciting. Some go to extremes to sound different, but the extreme players are just clowns. Jack Benny played in an extreme way to great effect on stage to be funny, but some players take it seriously and make it painful instead. 

i don't have strong opinions on defining or dictating what a workshop is or isn't