Jig Bowing

Art of Fiddling

Here’s a little lesson on jig bowing. This will help you to make your jigs sound more musical, more flowing.

I gave a workshop on this but there were technical problems with the audio. I’m including a short video below and will soon make a more in-depth video.

Let’s practice

We’ll start with a basic pattern:

D0-1-2-2-1-0

And apply a few simple bowing patterns to it.

  • Separate bows
  • Slur 3
  • Single 1-Slur 2
  • Slur 2-Single 1
  • Slur 6

Then we’ll repeat those patterns on the D Major Pentatonic scale

D0-1-2-A0-1-3 | A3-1-0-D2-1-0

After that I offer some examples for bowing Kerfunken and Swallowtail in different ways. Email me if you want suggestions for bowing on specific jigs (include spots within the song you want help with).

Sheet music

Further

Here are some relevant lessons for you to take or review.

 

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3 responses to “Jig Bowing”

    1. Agreed!
      One method is to play the two D2 8th notes as a quarter note. So, holding D2 double the length when slurring all those notes together. I would also attempt to sing it in my head or out loud as I play, as it’s written, to practise.
      One could also make a little pause/emphasis between the two D2s while doing the 6 slur to somewhat keep each note individually heard.
      Great question, John