Mary Had A Little Lamb – Hoedown Variation I

Mary Had A Little Lamb - hoedown variation in D Major
Beginner

Here is a lesson on how to add the hoedown rhythm (LONG-short-short) to Mary Had A Little Lamb. You may thinking, “Why are you teaching us to add variation to this dorky tune?!!” 

Simple tunes are amazing teaching vehicles. You know the melody well, so you can focus on the technique you’re learning. You can continue to return to a simple tune like this throughout your career as a fiddler and learn new things with it. Does that make sense?


I recommend first learning the basic version of this tune first: Mary Had A Little Lamb. 

Learning chunks 

A part, first quarter

A PART:

First quarter: D2-1-1-0-1-1 2 2-3-2-1-0

 

A part, second quarter

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A part, third quarter

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A part, fourth quarter

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Further Practice

Practice the song at your own pace with this drone track

Once you learn this and can play it with flow, try starting it on G string, which would be the key of G (use G drone):

First quarter: G2-1-1-0-1-1 2 2-3-2-1-0

Practice with a G drone:

Next, see try it in A major.

First quarter: A2-1-1-0-1-1 2 2-3-2-1-0

Practice with A drone:

You can practice at your own speed with a D drone:

 

Full Tabs, Audio & Sheet Music

First quarter: D2-1-1-0-1-1 2 2-3-2-1-0

Second quarter: D1 1-2-1-0-1 2-2-2 A0-0-0

Third quarter: D2-1-1-0-1-1 2 2-3-2-1-0

Fourth quarter: D1-1-0-2-1-0-1-2-1-0

Continue on to Using Drones to Create Epic Practice Sessions >>

Return to top of Module 1.2 >>

Leave a Reply

9 responses to “Mary Had A Little Lamb – Hoedown Variation I”

  1. Completely agree with Melissa Rice above. My hoedown sounds a bit boring, yours has a great groove to it. I suspect the magic is in loosening up my wrist more, but no amount of practice seems to be getting me there (I’m not a beginner). Any pointers as to how to unlock one’s wrist would be greatly appreciated.

  3. Great exercise for learning to add variations. When you first play the tune, and especially at around 6:08 minutes on the video, it has a stronger hoedown sound which I think has to do with subtleties of timing (a bit of swing?) and maybe which beats are stressed. Can you please give us pointers on how to work up to getting that kind of sound? Maybe a little exercise or something? Playing it straight just doesn’t have the same cool sound. Thanks!

  4. Loved it when playing along .. then when I tried it with the drone I got all Yehudi Manure-urin on myself and lost all timing … Thought my fingers were faster than they are .. or my brain is faster … great fun, although I can’t see when I will ever be able to play hoe down at any kind of hoe down speed.. I’ll stick to hoe down for seniors perhaps 😉

  6. On the 2nd quarter of the tabs the last 3 notes show open string assuming on “D” but sound like “A” string and, not that I know much about reading music, where I think it appears as an “A” or AO.