Art of Fiddling

🧭 Overview

The Art of Fiddling Pathway is designed for players who have completed the beginner and intermediate courses and are ready to explore advanced, expressive techniques.

You’ll learn new scales, creative bowing, and left-hand skills like vibrato, slides, and shifting up the neck.

Along the way, you’ll build the foundation for improvising, adding variation to any tune, and developing your own personal fiddle style.

🎻 Lessons

Rhythmic Variation

Simple Rhythms And Bowings
Lesson: Rhythmic Scale Variation I
Syncopated Scales
Syncopated Riffs
Rhythm Workshop
Fiddling With Rhythm Loops
Offbeat Accent Patterns
3 + 3 + 2 Rhythm
Fire On The Mountain With Tresillo Rhythm (3+3+2)

Sliding the Left-Hand Fingers

Here’s a mini-course on sliding the left-hand fingers.

Preparation for sliding:

Here are the sliding lessons:

Melodic Variation

Melodic scale variation is the addition of little patterns to scales. This will better your technique, allow you to learn tunes more easily and give you ideas for improvisation. If you practice melodic variation, you’ll start to hear the scale in the tune.

Tunes for melodic variation practice

Vibrato

Vibrato 1: Overview, Basic Hand Motion, Chromatic Shifting
Vibrato 2: Micro-sliding into vibrato
Vibrato 3: Slow vibrato pulsing
Vibrato 4: Applying vibrato to 1st & 2nd fingers in tunes
Vibrato 5: Vibrato on third and fourth fingers
Vibrato 6: Apply vibrato to 3rd & 4th fingers in tunes

Adding Variation to Tunes

General Approach to Variation

Bowing Variation

Slur Two-Separate Two Exercises
Slur Two-Separate Two In Tunes
How To Make Jigs Sound Musical On Fiddle
Texture Scale Variation
Easy Georgia Shuffle
Georgia Shuffle
Georgia Shuffle on Tunes
Pulse Bowing
Figure 8 Bowing
Figure 8 bowing – Advanced Exercises
Offbeat Accent Patterns
Bouncing The Bow
Bouncing The Bow – Intermediate Exercises
Hook Bowing

Mary Had A Little Lamb variation series

This moves from simple to more challenging versions. Familiar songs are a great way to practice variation and more challenging skills.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star variation series

Kerry Polka variation series

Kerry Polka – basic
Kerry Polka – adding double stops
Kerry Polka – backup chords
Kerry Polka – adding Irish variation

Adding variation to other tunes

When The Saints Go Marching In – Variation

I’ll Fly Away – Variation

Ode To Joy – Fiddle Variation Lesson

Brahm’s Fiddle Waltz – Variation

Ashokan Farewell – Variation

15 Ways To Practice Sail Away Ladies

17 Ways To Practice Jenny Lynn

Courses

To dive deeper into adding variation, take lessons in these courses:

Irish Fiddle Journeys

Appalachian Fiddle Journeys

Shifting Up The Neck

Shifting Up The Neck Workshop

Orange Blossom Special

How To Play On Songs

Here’s lessons to help you play on songs. Learn strategies and techniques to help you play on songs with others.

You can also learn to play chord backup on fiddle as sing. See this page of lessons if you want to go further with chord backup: Chord Backup Central

Improvisation

Improvisation lessons (shorts)

Pentatonic scales

Pentatonic scales unlock the power of variation

Improvisation workshops

Blues Fiddle

Blues Fiddle Workshop

Practicing Call-and-response is a form of improvisation.

Melodic Variation is a form of improvisation. See the tab above for lesson links.