How do you know when to use double stops?

Tara, North Carolina asks: Should double stops be played throughout the entire tune or should I sprinkle them in when I feel it’s “right”? When I listen to fiddle players like yourself, Ian Walsh, Mark O’Connor it seems like you guys play the entire tune with DS, or are you picking and choosing when to play them? So hard to tell when you’re playing fast 🙂

• Listen to other fiddlers. Listen to other kinds of music as well. Discover what sounds good to you.
• Learn to trust your ear.
• How much does a double stop add to the song? Does playing a single string sound better?
• Experiment
  • Keep alternating between double stops and single notes
  • Try different combinations
  • Double stops on different parts of a tune
• Play double stops accents
  • Single/double patterns
    • Create rhythmic textures with sing and double stops
  • Whiskey example
• Experiment with double stops on different parts of a tune.

Further learning

This micro-lesson is an excerpt from an office hours webinar I gave on July 15, 2020. View the entire live-stream with indexed questions here.

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