Old-time and Bluegrass Reel in A Major
Beginner > Module 1.5

Cripple Creek

This is a traditional tutorial on the tune. If you want an extra challenge, learn the tune with the call-and-response lessons below. If you choose the traditional tutorial, you can always take the call-and-response lessons later (for further practice).


Cripple Creek Call-And-Response Lessons

Learn the tune through old-school call-and-response. I’ll play something, then leave you a space to play it back. Use these lessons to learn, improve or review the tune. I encourage you to struggle a bit with learning this by ear before referring to the music.

Learning chunks 

I’ve made some “Learning Chunks” to help you learn more easily. These focused exercises contain sheet music, tabs and mp3 snippets to guide you on your fiddle journey. The idea is to start with small musical bits, get good at those, and then put them together into bigger pieces until you have the whole tune. I call it Micro-practice.

Preparation

Warm up with the A major scale and phrases from the tune (once you’ve learned it) using a A drone: 

For those of you who read (or want to read), all snippets use this key and time signature:

 

A part, second half

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Interlude

Let’s pause for a moment and pay attention to how we practice.

Creativity, Fun and Adventure?

Always try to find creative ways to make practicing fun. How can you practice the same thing in different ways? Can you learn to enjoy the sound? Can you even learn to enjoy the struggle?

If you explore different options for playing the same thing, then you will be able to enjoy practicing that for a longer time. Remember, the brain gets bored easily, but the hands need lots and lots of time to learn things.

B part, first half

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B part, second half

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Other versions on Youtube

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Sheet music video

Learn to intuitively read sheet music with this animated video. If you’re an absolute beginner, then I suggest you don’t worry about fo it for the moment.

This is here for continuing students who want to learn about sheet music. It’s part of the Note-Reading For Fiddlers course.


Continue on to Pentatonic Scales Introduction >>

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12 responses to “Cripple Creek

  1. Fun tune (even if “Cripple Creek” makes me think first of The Band from back in the day)! Seems easy to play, even with some swing in there. Maybe I’m actually getting better little by little! 😅

  2. I’m confused.
    When I look at the A scale I see the third finger on the D string is G# But is seems that you are playing a G.
    How can I figure this stuff out when I’m just looking a sheet music?
    Thanks!