It’s hard to learn the fiddle on your own.

With FiddleHed as your guide, you’ll learn fun tunes which help you develop specific skills. With our “Small Steps Small Wins” fiddlosophy, you’ll have fun as you make measurable progress.


Beginner Fiddle Skills You’ll Learn

Here are some of the FUNdamental skills you’ll learn

  • Getting a good sound with the bow on open strings
  • String crossing
  • Left-hand fingering
  • Ear-training with call-and-response games
  • Drone-tuning
  • Note-reading
  • Major and minor scales
  • Adding variation to tunes
  • Transposing tunes
  • How to remember fiddle tunes

Beginner Fiddle Songs And Tunes

As you learn each of the skills listed above, you’ll learn specific tunes and songs to practice those skills.

  • Bile ’em Cabbage Down
  • Wildwood Flower
  • Blackest Crow
  • Auld Lang Syne
  • The Girl I Left Behind Me
  • Shady Grove
  • I’ll Fly Away
  • Road to Lisdonverna
  • Swallowtail Jig
  • Arkansas Traveller

And more! In the beginner course you’ll learn forty core tunes. You’ll also have the option to supplement your learning with 50 Bonus tunes, all presented in order of difficulty.


  • All-access Monthly
  • Full access to all courses, lessons & content
  • Live Group Lessons
  • Download Audio and Sheet Music
  • FiddleHed Tune Book
  • Save $78
Best deal


Songs are broken down into bite-sized chunks

All songs are broken into a series of smaller and smaller chunks. This helps you learn new songs more easily. But even better, you learn how to learn new songs by breaking them into smaller chunks.

For example, Kerry Polka Hasan A and a B part. We can break the A part into quarters. Then we break the first quarter down even further. This helps you to master every challenge.

Kerry Polka, A Part, First Quarter

Intervals

D0-0-1-1

A1-1-D0-0

First quarter: A1-D0-1-0-A1-D0-1-0

Since the first and second bars are the same, you just need to practice the play-along track for the first bar 🙂


Beginner Course Modules

Here’s a brief run-down of each module in the beginner course.

1.1 Start Fiddling Now!

This where you start if you’re an absolute beginner. You’ll learn essential skills like posture, plucking, bowing, fingering, string crossing and more. Whew! And you’ll practice these new found skills with three tunes that present you with the perfect challenge:Bile ’em Cabbage Down, Mary Had A Little Lamb,Twinkle Little Star.


1.2 Lingering with Fingering

Skills

  • Drone tuning
  • How to Read Fiddle Tabs
  • Little Lift
  • Call-and-response 1.2

Tunes

  • Freres Jacques
  • Fais Do Do (Cajun waltz)
  • When The Saints Go Marching In
  • Mary Had A Little Lamb – Hoedown version

1.3 One Small Giant Step for Mankind: The D Major Scale

Skills

  • Drone Tuning A String Notes
  • D Major Scale
  • Simple Intervals
  • Adding Variation to Scales
  • Music journaling
  • Call-and-response 1.3

Tunes

  • Oh Susannah
  • Little Liza Jane
  • Wildwood Flower
  • Angeline The Baker (A Major)

1.4 More Scales, More Tunes, More Fun, More or Less

Skills

  • Drone Tuning G String Notes
  • G Major Scale
  • Transposing tunes to G Major
  • Intervals 2
  • Staccato bowing
  • Call-and-response 1.4

Tunes

  • Kerry Polka
  • Shooting Creek – Beginner version
  • Kerfunken Jig
  • Ballydesmond Polka – Lower Octave
  • First Review Point

1.5 A Major Step Forward

Skills

  • Drone Tuning E String Notes
  • A Major Scale
  • Transposing tunes to A Major
  • How to Get a Good Sound
  • Pentatonic Scales
  • Intervals 3
  • Call-and-response 1.5

Tunes

  • Blackest Crow
  • Britches Full of Stitches
  • Cripple Creek
  • O’Keefe’s Slide

1.6 Living in the Ear Now

Skills

  • Slur Two Bowing
  • Singing and Playing
  • Intervals 4
  • Pedal Exercises 1
  • Rhythmic Scale Variation
  • Transposing Challenge
  • Call-and-response 1.6

Tunes

  • Bile ’em Cabbage Down – Variation 1
  • Joy to the World
  • Auld Lang Syne
  • Fire On The Mountain

1.7 The Power of the Low Second Finger

Skills

  • Low Second Finger
  • D and A Dorian Scales
  • Slur Three
  • Pedal Exercises 2
  • Fiddling With Rhythmic Patterns
  • Call-and-response 1.7

Tunes

  • Shady Grove
  • Cluck Old Hen
  • I’ll Fly Away
  • Drunken Sailor
  • Second Review Point

1.8 The High Road and the Low Road

Skills

  • C Major and G Major Scale Upper Octave
  • Slur Four
  • Intervals with Low and High Second Finger
  • Transposing Tunes to Upper Octave of G Major
  • Call-and-response 1.8

Tunes

  • Old Joe Clarke – Basic Version
  • Soldier’s Joy – Beginner Version
  • Road to Lisdonverna
  • Girl I Left Behind Me

1.9 Trying Out Triads

Skills

  • Triads
  • Adding Slurs to Tunes
  • Lifting The Bow
  • Slur Two-Separate Two Bowing
  • Going From Bowing to Plucking
  • Call-and-response 1.9

Tunes

  • Tobin’s Jig
  • Swallowtail Jig
  • Whiskey Before Breakfast
  • Fisher’s Hornpipe

1.10 The Way of Fiddling

Skills

  • G Major Scale in Two Octaves
  • Chaining
  • Slur Two-Separate Two Bowing in Tunes
  • Practice Loops
  • How To Remember Fiddle Tunes
  • Call-and-response 1.10

Tunes

  • Arkansas Traveller
  • Old Joe Clarke – Variation 1
  • Banshee
  • Third Review Point

  • All-access Monthly
  • Full access to all courses, lessons & content
  • Live Group Lessons
  • Download Audio and Sheet Music
  • FiddleHed Tune Book
  • Save $78
Best deal


Further

Where do you go after the Beginner course? The Intermediate Course, of course.

The journey doesn’t end there. We also have more advanced courses:

  • Irish Fiddle Journeys
  • Appalachian Fiddle Journeys
  • Art Of Fiddling

Got questions?

If this doesn’t make sense, just email me. Don’t be shy! I love to hear from new students because it helps me improve the course.