Just wanted to give you fiddlers the name of a cool resource. I just ordered a fiddle lesson video with Natalie MacMaster for my daughter, who’s an intermediate level player. Natalie MacMaster is a Cape Breton style fiddler.
The lesson gives students some tunes (march, strathspey, reel, jig, and hornpipe). She provides the sheet music, but takes each tune and then minutely goes through each one giving suggestions for stylistic ornamentation and bowing. There is a lot of detail-- every single phrase has suggestions for grace notes, bowing, cuts or double stops. You could come up with some really polished pieces if you spent some time with this.
It turns out that at this point in time, it’s a little too detailed for my daughter, who has a twelve-year-old’s attention span (appropriate, since she’s twelve years old) and is not ready to do quite so many new things at once. But I think it’s terrific, especially for someone who wants to apply all the Cape Breton style ornamentation to some real music. Just thought I’d offer a recommendation for anyone who’s at that level right now. I got it from Paul Cranford Publications. Anyone else using this? Or have another suggestion for those of us who are far from teachers?
Jennie
Edited to fix spelling of MacMaster.