Here’s a set of Scottish tunes I recorded this afternoon. A few bum notes, but you get the idea.

Here’s some fiddle videos I’ve uploaded recently. They represent about 2 years of me playing fiddle.

3 Reels:

3 Jigs:

I’m a lucky chap. I’m getting on now (I’m 33 yesterday) but I still have a great family who always manage to get me some really fun presents. Wii was definitely a feature of this year’s gifts and tonight I’ve been playing Wii Fit Plus. There’s some great new games in it, although my favourites are the juggling and the kung fu. I also got Mario Kart, Colin McRae Dirt Rally and another fitness one (can’t remember the name of it).

My folks paid for half of my new fiddle for me. A week ago today, I went to John Dike’s Violins in Sherborne and managed to find one stand out fiddle. In fact, the rest I didn’t much like but I liked this French fiddle that had been recently repaired from a sound post crack down the back. It cost £800, but my parents have kindly offered to pay half, so that was my very generous present from them.

Yesterday evening I went and saw the new Pixar movie, Up. It was really good. I could see myself in the old man, Carl. We saw it in 3D too, which was really great. Caroline wasn’t so impressed with the 3D, but I thought it worked well. It’s a reason to actually go to the cinema rather than just wait until it comes out on Blue Ray! We ate beforehand at TGI Friday’s a gorgeous, if somewhat oversized, meal before using our vouchers to get in the film for free

We’re off out tomorrow lunch for a meal with my parents and sister. I’m not sure if we’ve decided where to go yet, but we’ve also got various shopping tasks to do too before going to a fireworks do in the evening. Sunday evening we’re off around a musician friend’s house for another bonfire do. It’s a busy weekend!

It’s been a while since I updated — it always is I’ve been meaning to post these two videos for a while.

The first I did after seeing Breabach play a concert in Wimborne as part of the Celtic Folk club here. They were fantastic. Ewan Robertson plays guitar and sings, Callum MacCrimmon and Donal Brown play pipes, whistles and flutes and the lovely Pasty Reid plays fiddle. Unfortunately Donal wasn’t there, but another fantastic chap took his place (although I can’t remember his name right now). At the concert we indulged in a purchase of their CD – The Big Spree – and it has since (3 weeks now) been a permanent fixture in the car’s CD player. On that CD the band sing a song called The Rolling Hills of the Borders. It was written by Glaswegian Matt McGinn but it’s Breabach’s version that I really like. I attempted my own version (not a patch on their’s but still fun to do).

I also did another music video recently. It’s a couple slides played on the concertina and the fiddle: The Road to Lisdoonvarna and Two Little Boats Went Out to Sea.

Here’s a couple of jigs I recorded a few weeks ago. The first is the Milltimber Jig, a Scottish Jig in D that I learnt for a Cape Breton workshop I was participating in. The second is a jig called The Rambler that I learnt quite a few months ago when I was learning to play in the key of E.

Milltimber Jig

The Rambler

No, no. No baby on the way. I’ve now been playing the violin for 9 months. I realised I haven’t done a violin video since way back in April, so I thought I better fix it. So here’s two Irish polkas: Dan Mack’s (also known as the Newmarket) and Tourniore Lasses.

The video was created from the first take of both guitar and violin parts; I guess if I’d done more takes I might have gotten them better – particularly the A-part of Tourniore Ladies!

Tourniore Lasses and Dan Mack's Polkas

A week ago today I removed my mandolin from the wall so that I could steal the pick from it, as I’d lost the pick from my guitar. Admiring how nice it looked, I gave it a quick pluck and remembered that a mandolin is tuned identical to a violin. As it has a similar scale length too, I realised that I might be able to play some of the tunes I’d learnt for the violin on it. I tried and hey presto, I could! In fact, in a few hours I’d pretty much managed my whole violin repertoire.

It was suggested to me that I do a duet for violin and mandolin, and here’s my first attempt.

It’s a traditional Irish hornpipe called The Boys of Bluehill. Here’s the music:

And the ABC which I got from theSession:

X: 1
T: Boys Of Bluehill, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: hornpipe
K: Dmaj
||FA|BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|df ed B2 dB|
| BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|d2 f2 d2
|: fg| af df a2 g2 | ef ga b2 ag |fa gf eg fe |df ed B2 dB|
| BA FA D2 FA| BA (3Bcd e2 de |fa gf eg fe|d2 f2 d2

Here’s the result (you need Flash 9 installed to play it):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Flash player possibly won’t work in Firefox, so download here)

I recorded the mandolin and guitar using my Zoom H4, and the violin recorded with a Microvox gooseneck pickup (which unfortunately I kept huffing into, if you’re wondering what that low rumbly noise is). Put together in Cakewalk Sonar 4 and to MP3 in Sound Forge.

Since I started fiddling I have been rather anxious about going to folk music sessions or workshops. As a complete violin beginner, I know I play slightly out of tune and that my technique needs a lot to be desired, so forcing my playing upon others always fills me with dread.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my teacher, Matt, organised a session for all of his students. In fact, he’d already organised one a month before that but I couldn’t go.

One of Matt’s other students, Sheila, kindly offered to host the session and so I headed down to Portland Bill in Dorset for the session. Turns out it was great fun with good food! Even a beginner accordionist turned up, and Matt persuaded one of his pro guitarists to come along and strum to the screeching.

Last week I plucked up the courage to go to one of the fiddling workshops at the Wimborne Folk Festival. It was taught by Tom McConville, a fiddler from Northumberland. He was a great fiddler, but trying to teach 3 tunes to a bunch of mixed abilities in 1 hour was a bit too much. My head was spinning afterwards. Still, he gave out some copies of the music and I have managed to learn two of the tunes.

Last night I went to my second session. Again, it’s specifically for beginner-types so I didn’t feel too out of place. It is run in Sturminster Marshall once a month and the people that turned up were all very friendly. Again, it was great fun and I’m glad I made the effort to go. The session actually has its own website: http://www.oldschoolsession.org/.

I’m still plodding along with my fiddle. Last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to improve my posture and intonation. I’m still finding it really difficult to be consistent though.

I’ll do another video soon; I haven’t managed to keep up my promise to myself to do a video every 3 lessons. I’m up to 16 lessons.

So, last week, before I went for my 10th violin lesson I made my 3rd, 3-weekly video of my violin progress. Here it is:

This post is partly as a reminder to me what my teacher suggested I learn this week. We initially went through some jigs and he suggested I learn “Tell her I am” as it will help get my fourth finger stronger. Then he suggested I try a slip-jig, “Hardiman the Fiddler”. Slip-jigs have a different timing to jigs, but are essentially the same rythmn from what I can tell. We moved on to doing some polka bowing; this is where you bow strongly on the offbeat. It seems quite hard to do. Finally, he even suggested I try a reel. Reels are fast and furious 4/4 tunes. Obviously I’m not up to that yet, but I can start to learn the notes to “The Silver Spear”. This starts with a triplet (or treble) which, in Irish music, has the intention to add a bit of percussion to the proceedings. Matt showed me how to play the triplet such that the bow crunches a little. When played fast it sounds just right. When I play it, it sounds like a beginner crunching the bow! Doh.

So, I’ve managed to remember that I decided to keep a log of how I’m getting on with my violin lessons every third lesson. My wife got my 6 lessons for Christmas, so, in a way, this point is an important one: am I happy enough to continue and carry on paying the 20-odd quid an hour? Well, the answer is yes, actually. I am enjoying learning the violin and my teacher is a really nice bloke, so it’s all going very well.

Here’s the video of me after my 6th lesson. In this video I play Hut (not Hat) on Staffin Island, a Scottish folk tune, Gelasma, an ancient Cornish tune, and a marginally out-of-control Garret’s Barry, an Irish Jig.

I’ve actually already had my 7th lesson now, and we worked on the tone in Gelasma and on the jig playing. I think I’m already slightly better at playing than this video, although I always get nervous when recording so the recording probably isn’t as good as it could have been.