[quote="toastyPeter Cooper is an Englishman and the nearest he ever got to Irish music is a listening to Library CDs in Enlgland- he is a joke amoung the Irish who call him the ‘Oirish Fuddler’-. It is very very very WRONG and you are acquiring some nasty habits from doing it that way.
.[/quote]
He’s got some really terrific tunes in there though…
I play a bit of fiddle,but definitely no great shakes. For one thing, it KILLS my left elbow-- after about 1/2 hr of holding the fiddle it hurts like hell to straighten out my arm.. Maybe if I played more often it would get better. Lots of fun though.
I started fooling around on the fiddle three or four weeks ago, about the same time I started fooling around on the tin whistle. I’ve had a violin for well over twenty years, but every time I pulled it out and tried to play it, both the wife and the cat made it clear that I should stick to piano and guitar. It takes a few days to get past the point where the violin sounds like a cat stuck in the vacuum cleaner all the time. I now wish I had put in the time to get past that point years ago - playing the fiddle is mega-fun.
I always loved IrTrad to listen to when I heard it, but have mostly played rock, blues, folk and jazz, mostly on keyboards, bass and guitar. I started branching out into early music (on recorder) about a year ago, and re-discovered IrTrad from there (don’t ask me how I made the connection).
In any case, I had my first lesson on the fiddle last week (with Willie Kelly, if anyone’s heard of him), and am very charged up. I figure I’ll be ready for my first session in ten or twenty years or so
He’s got some really terrific tunes in there though…
I play a bit of fiddle,but definitely no great shakes. For one thing, it KILLS my left elbow-- after about 1/2 hr of holding the fiddle it hurts like hell to straighten out my arm.. Maybe if I played more often it would get better. Lots of fun though.[/quote]
Try a real tutor such as Matt Cranitch which BTW assumes you have already taken a few lessons training you to correctly hold and use the fiddle and bow.
I laid down the uilleann pipes in July as being not for me, (had a brief relationship with an accordion I met on a blind date on ebay, but I’m embarassed to admit to that now) and I picked up the fiddle in the middle of August and haven’t looked back since!
Wow! These fiddles are great stuff, man. It’s great that you don’t need all that messing with reeds and stuff. Just stick it under your chin and you’re away. I love it. I think I’m becoming as obsessed with the fiddle as I was with the pipes. Correction: I AM as obsessed.
And I love the way I can play (with a big lump of metal mute applied) sitting at the kitchen table at 4am if I want to! Find me UP’s you can do that with. OR a whistle for that matter.
ON A SAD NOTE, I got really fed up with the bitchin’ and backbiting on the UP forum. Stopped visiting because I didn’t want to get contaminated by the vitriol. From the above it looks like this strings forum’s going to go the same way?
Very sad. Still, it encourages me to forum less and practice more.
Let’s not make this forum a backbiting forum. Let’s have as fun as it’s always been here. Let Cooper be an Englishman and let those who prefer Cranitch do that. Just don’t let us bash each other because this forum is about having fun with musical instruments and make new friends, isn’t it? If we don’t agree, so be it, we can’t agree on everything.
Brewerpaul, if your left arm hurts by holding the fiddle, maybe you should try to hold it more with your chin and shoulder than with the arm. Do you use a shoulder rest? I certainly helps. I also get pains in the arm if I haven’t played in a while, but I’m trying to hold it as much as possible with my chin.
Mutes are wonderful inventions!!! I tend to forget I have one, and not play night-time. Then I play the mandolin instead. But of course I could play more fiddle!!!
Now you have learned something about Piping! Pipers are nearly always ‘contrary’ or badtempered. I have no idea why eventhough I can squeeze a few tunes myself!
There is no bitchin here except for the Oirish exposing fakes such as Mr Cooper the English Fiddler setting up as an authority on Irish fiddling, which OC he knows absolutely nothing about except what he heard on some CD /Record.
You could easily still play TW - I do - and it takes nothing away from your fiddling -, also it will make a better piper of you far quicker than fighting with bad chanters, bad reeds, heck bad timing as well.
Tunes I have off well on TW today are several reels in Bminor eg Bag Of Spuds - several in Eminor eg Cooley’s, heap of Chieftain Jigs eg Banish Misfortune, The Humors Of Trim, Garret Barry’s etc etc. A couple of longdances eg The Job Of Journeywork etc.
Listening to myself on tape playing TW and TRYING to play along on fiddle has taught me more about what I do wrong fiddling than the 30 years of playing in sessions / bands etc that I used waste my time on.
