Camp Prep For Novice Fiddle Players Page 3

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Fiddle
Bluegrass fiddle grew out of the Appalachian tradition – from where it gets the ‘high lonesome’
wails, blues – the ‘blue notes’, and jazz and Western Swing – the fast improvisations and ‘spicy’
notes.   Examples of bluegrass style are:
sliding up to a note
playing the same note on two strings (an open string, and with your little finger on the
string below)
and playing two strings at once generally (‘double-stopping’) – sometimes just playing
an open string next to the string you are playing the tune on, as long as it fits with the
harmony at the time.
Bluegrass fiddlers use lots of bowing patterns for different effects:
Saw-stroke – change bow direction for every note
Nashville Shuffle – long bow followed by two short bows
Georgia Bow – three notes played up with one down: obviously the down-bow must
be played ‘harder’ so that you don’t end up at the bottom of the bow all the time;  to
make a point of this the down-bow is on the off-beat of the music, giving a nice
rhythmic effect.
Orange Blossom Special shuffle – like the banjo, this is a syncopated rhythm to give
 
a really exciting feel to this ‘train-tune’.  Each quaver note can be played with a
separate bow or some run together for extra rhythmic madness. This kind of shuffle is
used in other tunes and breaks too. 
As you get more experienced and confident, you’ll find that you develop your own bowing style,
running notes together as seems right on the occasion, to suit your music.
You notice that there are no tablature files for fiddle on this CD – all the other instrument
tablatures contain standard notation for the tunes anyway, so use any of them.  The mandolin is
tuned just like the fiddle, so this may help if you are happy to translate fret numbers to the fiddle
neck.
Mandolin
Bluegrass mandolin is an exciting combination of rhythm and melody – more ‘traditional’
players, copying Bill Monroe’s own style, tend to like syncopated rhythms while the more

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