Description

Secrets of Reels
Tips and Technique for Fiddle
Volume 1: Foundation Bowing Patterns

Contents

• Basic Rhythm and Bowing
  • 6 fundamental bowing patterns for Reels
  • Hack bowing plus Simple Shuffle, Georgia Shuffle, Shetland Shuffle, Hexham Shuffle, Abbey Shuffle and Irish Shuffle
• Combining Bowing Patterns 1
  • Soldier’s Joy
  • Rachel Rae
  • The Fairy Dance
  • The Merry Blacksmith
  • Donald Blue
  • Hexham Lasses
  • High Road to Linton
  • John Stenson’s No. 2
  • The Shetland Fiddler

• Combining Bowing Patterns 2
  • The Pinch of Snuff

The Secrets of… series is a set of instructional books for fiddle which are specifically intended to fill the gap between written music and traditional music as it is played throughout the British Isles. The material has been carefully selected to provide a clear and concise route from notation to performance. An opportunity is offered to develop the player’s interpretational skills so that information can be extracted from a page of notation and be transformed into convincing fiddle music. A CD is provided with the books and listening skills are developed so as to recognize and recreate the techniques that are heard – the techniques which act together to achieve satisfying performances.

Initially, the series was aimed at two groups of musicians: those competent violin players who can read music but struggle to recreate the style of the traditional fiddle player and the ambitious fiddle player who understands the sound they are trying to achieve, but who is frustrated by an inability to reproduce it when playing material from written sources. A third group has emerged: a number of teachers, both those who specialize in the fiddle and those who incorporate fiddle music in their teaching, have expressed satisfaction with how techniques are broken down, saying that this enabled them to incorporate the material into their lessons.