Toby Rider wrote: > I've always thought one of the problems with the fiddle is that it > is actually the same instrument as the classical violin, which means > that alot of people bring alot of baggage with them from other genres > of music when they cross-over to play Scottish music. So you end up > with some pretty stiff or strange sounding stuff. Concertina players > don't have that problem :-) >
I might have a somewhat biased opinion, since my wife plays violin professionally. I have an anecdote and a theory. A few years ago, we got sheet music for "All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border" from the Potomac Valley Fiddle Club. My dad really likes it -- the Black Watch uses it as a quickstep march. Anyway, we sat down to play (me on guitar) and it just sounded bad. I tried to explain how it went, but that didn't work. Then I got out a CD of the Black Watch playing it. 30 seconds later, it sounded pretty good. I think what happens is like this: a person spends a decade or two learning how to play their instrument, and works especially hard at playing what is written. After spending so much time developing a difficult skill, it is only natural to try to capitalize on it. Any decent classical violinist *should* be able to play Scottish fiddle music pretty well, from a technical standpoint. The problem is that learning a new style by listening to it takes a lot of time, and it basically entails starting over. I guess that is baggage. I like to slow things down and look at the waveforms in Cool Edit. It's really interesting how free the time is *between* the bar lines sometimes. Bob Rogers South Carolina Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
