March 17, 2005

Welcome To World Fiddle Music
posted by Jerry Junior 19 years ago
  • I've recorded a variety of tunes both at normal and slower playback speed. no no !! we want them at TRIPLE speed! wooo! cool site, thanks!
  • Looks nice! It's my ornamentation that really sucks. I'll pop up the coffee shop tomorrow and watch these on broadband. All my fiddle bookmarks seem to be to collections of tunes - here's a big old list.
  • D'oh big old list.
  • Thanks, Jerry, for the cailigh! /left reeling
  • Okay, fiddle afficionados - I have a question. Or two. Or three... What's the difference between Irish style and Scottish style fiddling? And again from Bluegrass, other than the repetoire? Is there a playing style difference? I've also heard that Cape Breton is suposed to have a distinctive tone, but since 2 of the 3 fiddlers I've listened to most are from there, I don't know what that distinction is suposed to be.
  • love it.
  • jb: all three styles differ. Scottish fiddling, and indeed Scottish dance forms in general like the Strathspey, have some pretty distinct "dotted rhythm" things going on, and many figures where long notes are follwed by a burst of short strokes. DAH di DAH di DAAAHHHH, tuckata DAH di DAH di DAHHHH, ... Bluegrass is distinguished by a need for a more full-on technique: lots of double stopping, lots of complicated arpeggios and string crossing (eg the famous "Georigia Shuffle"). And bluegrass music uses the blues scale as well as the modes of Old World folk music, leading to some different possibilities for ornamenation. A lot of folk fiddle styles come down to the dance forms they accompany. If you ever see the dances, you suddenly realise that the typical rhythmic figures that just seemed nice in the tune actually provide cues for the dancers.
  • jb - Bluegrass often uses distinctive bowing styles where you slur notes together to create a kind of off-beat that gives it that laid-back feel (not that I know so much about influences) there's regional styles in both Scots and Irish fiddling - for example Shetland float fiddle is quite different to mainland styles. AFAIK a lot of the difference comes fro influences - Norwegian fiddle in Shetland, 18th century Italian music in Scottish dance music (which differs from the slow airs etc. which are more native) - Ireland I couldn't say about the influences but again big regional differences between say Donegal and Clare. Not sure if the sharing of repertoire with the pipes has any effect - seem to be more slip jigs in Irish sets which are a tune that suits the uillean. So different regions prefer more or less ornamentation of different types, favour certain types of tune and have predominant bowing styles. That's all off the top of my head and probably a load of old tosh, but there you go for what it's worth. Not really looked at it properly.