Fiddle Tunes by Ear

My grandson put this up for me. He said all I had to do was type, so I'm typing. If it looks plain, that's because I told him I didn't want any of the spinning things.

I'm 70 years old and I've played the fiddle since I was nine. My uncle taught me on his back porch in Minnesota, one tune at a time, and he could not read a note of music and neither can I, not really. I can pick my way through a hymn book if I have to. But every fiddle tune I know, and I know a couple hundred, I learned the way he taught me: by listening to somebody play it until I could hear it in my head, and then finding it on the strings. That's what this page is about. If you can hum a tune, you can learn to play it. It's slower than reading, at first. Then it's faster, and the tune is yours in a way a tune off a page never is.

Contents: The tunes and their keys | How to learn by ear | Fiddle or violin? | Rosin, strings, and such | The Saturday jam

The tunes and their keys

These are old tunes. Nobody owns them. They were old when my uncle learned them. Most of them have two parts, an A part and a B part, and you play each part twice: AABB, and around again till somebody's foot gives out. The key matters because a fiddle tune sits on the open strings of whichever key it's in, and if you learn Soldier's Joy in G you'll be fighting it your whole life. Here are the ones I'd start a beginner on, in the keys we play them at the jam.

You'll notice most of them are in D, A or G. That's not laziness. Those keys use the open strings for drones and double-stops, and they're the keys the guitar and banjo players are set up for. When somebody at a jam says "what key," they're really asking whether to put a capo on.

How to learn a tune by ear

Here is the whole method. It isn't complicated. It's just slow, and people quit because it's slow.

1. Get a recording of the tune played plain. Not a hot-shot contest version. Somebody playing the melody straight, at a reasonable speed. The best thing is to tape somebody at a jam; bring a cassette recorder and ask first. Nobody's ever told me no. Failing that, there are plenty of records and tapes of old-time fiddlers, and your library may have some.
2. Listen to it until you can hum it. All of it, A part and B part, in the car, doing dishes. Don't pick up the fiddle yet. If you can't hum it, you can't play it, and if you can hum it, you're halfway there. This step takes days and people skip it. Don't.
3. Slow it down. If your tape machine has a speed control, use it. If not, just play the first phrase over and over; rewind, play, rewind, play. Some of the young folks have a way of slowing tapes down on the computer without changing the pitch; I don't, but I've heard it done and it works.
4. Find the first note. Hunt for it on the fiddle. Once you have the first note and you know the key, the rest of the phrase is usually within reach of that hand position.
5. One phrase at a time. A phrase is about two bars, the length of one breath if you were singing it. Get the first phrase so you can play it ten times without a mistake. Then the second. Then the two together. Then the whole A part. Then the B part the same way. This is the part that's slow. It's also the part that works.
6. Get the skeleton first, the frills later. Every fiddler dresses a tune up different: a slide here, a double-stop there, a little roll. Ignore all that. Find the plain notes underneath. You'll add your own frills later, and they'll be yours.
7. Tape yourself. This is the one that hurts. Play the tune into the recorder, then play the tape back next to the original. You'll hear every place you're wrong, and you'll fix it, because now you can hear it. Do this once a week.
8. Play it with people. A tune learned alone is half learned. Take it to a jam and play it with a guitar behind you. The first time through you'll fall apart; the fifth time you'll have it forever.

One more thing. Learn one tune at a time. Not four. One tune, learned all the way, is worth more than a dozen you can sort of play. When you can play it in your sleep, start the next.

Fiddle or violin?

Same instrument. Exactly the same. Four strings, tuned G D A E, a bow with horsehair on it. The difference is what you do with it. If you play Bach on it, it's a violin. If you play Soldier's Joy on it, it's a fiddle. Some of the finest fiddlers I know play instruments a classical player would be glad to own, and some play something their granddad bought out of a catalog, and I couldn't tell you which sounded better with my eyes shut.

That said, fiddlers do a few things to the instrument that a symphony player generally doesn't:

• Fine tuners on all four strings, not just the E. Fiddlers use steel strings (see below) and steel strings need fine tuners.
• Some of us have the bridge cut a little flatter across the top, so it's easier to bow two strings at once for double-stops and drones. Not too flat or you'll hit three strings when you want one. A good repair shop will do this; don't try it with a pocketknife.
• Cross-tuning. For certain old tunes we tune the fiddle differently, most often to AEAE (bottom two strings tuned up a step) for tunes in A, or ADAE. It makes the low strings ring along with the tune. Old Joe Clark and Cluck Old Hen sound right this way and not quite right any other way. Tune up slowly and don't leave it there for weeks; it's hard on the strings.
• We hold it however it's comfortable. Some old-timers rest it on the chest or the arm instead of under the chin. I use a chin rest and a shoulder rest because at 70 my neck says so.

Rosin, strings, and such

Rosin. Rosin is pine sap, cooked down hard, in a little cake. You rub the bow hair across it and that's what makes the hair grip the string. No rosin, no sound, just a whisper. Too much rosin and you get a scratchy sound and white dust all over the top of the fiddle. Three or four strokes across the cake before you play is plenty, most days. A brand-new bow or fresh hair takes a lot more the first time, maybe a couple of minutes' worth, because the hair is slick. Wipe the strings and the top with a soft cloth when you're done, every time; rosin dust hardens on the varnish.

Strings. Fiddlers mostly use steel-core strings. They're loud, they're cheap, they stay in tune, and they stand up to cross-tuning. The ones with a synthetic core that classical players use sound sweeter but they're softer and they cost more, and at a jam with three banjos nobody will hear the difference. Change them when they go dull and false, which for me is twice a year. Change one at a time so the bridge doesn't fall over. And keep a spare E in the case, because the E is the one that breaks, always on a Saturday.

The bow. Loosen the hair when you put it away. Every time. Don't touch the hair with your fingers; the oil from your skin is the enemy of rosin. Have it rehaired when it won't hold rosin any more, once a year or so if you play a lot.

Care. Don't leave the fiddle in the car in July or January. Keep it in the case when you're not playing it. A humidifier in the case in the winter if your house is dry, which mine is. That's about it. They're tougher than people think.

The Saturday jam at Pruett's

Every Saturday morning, 10 o'clock till noon or till the tunes run out, a bunch of us play in the back of Pruett's Feed & Seed, by the seed bins, where it's warm in the winter and smells like sweet feed and alfalfa. Been going on since 1987, when Pruett's boy asked if some of us would come play while folks did their Saturday shopping. Somebody brought a thermos, then somebody brought a chair, and here we are.

How it works:

• We sit in a circle. Anybody can sit in. Fiddles, guitars, banjos, mandolins, a bass when Merle's back isn't out. We've had a dulcimer, an accordion, and once a man with a saw.
• Somebody names a tune and a key, somebody kicks it off, and we play it around till the person who called it lifts a foot. That's the signal for the last time through.
• Beginners are welcome and I mean it. Sit next to me. Play the parts you know and lay out on the parts you don't. Nobody minds. Everybody in that circle was a beginner in that circle.
• Bring a tape recorder. We don't mind.
• Most tunes in D, A and G, as above. Every so often somebody calls one in C to keep us honest.
• Coffee's on the counter, a quarter in the can. Pruett's asks that you not lean instruments on the seed bins, on account of the last time.

If you're passing through and you play, come find us. Ask at the counter. You'll hear it from the door anyway.

Other pages I visit: Hometown Pickers Bluegrass Jam (Earl and I disagree about tempo and have for years) · Bluebird Guitar Repair & Setup (Wes cut my bridge) · Line Dancing 101 (Becky Sue has us play her spring hoedown) · The Community String Quartet (they call it a violin, and that's all right) · The Blues Harmonica Page

Write me if you've got a question about a tune. I'm slow to answer because my grandson has to show me where the messages are, but I do answer.
[email protected]

Folks who've stopped by since the page went up in March:
My grandson says that's a lot. I don't know what's a lot.

Last updated September 18, 1999. Added St. Anne's Reel and the part about the bow hair.
© 1999 Joe Halvorsen. The tunes belong to everybody. The opinions are mine and Merle disagrees with most of them.

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