[dylanblawrence]

All, thanks for the kind words, and sorry for my delay in responding. In answer to the questions:

1) For the sheet music for Niel Gow’s Lament, I believe I obtained it from the abcnotation.com/tunes website. The sheet music is pretty basic.

2) For the embellishments, that is mostly based on my listening to various versions of the song available on Apple Music, Spotify, etc., and implementing the embellishments that both sound good to me and are within my ability. My two favorite versions are by Alasdair Fraser and Chris Duncan. I could listen to them all day.

3) For the sheet music for Mallai Chroch Shli, I could not find sheet music online, so that was 100% trial and error. If you’ve not discovered it yet, the app the ‘Amazing Slow Downer’ is awesome for figuring out tunes for which you don’t have sheet music. It slows down tunes on your device without affecting the pitch.

4) Apparently, Niel Gow’s first wife bore him eight children before she died. She clearly deserved a lament too, but I’ve not found one for her.

[dylanblawrence]

Thanks so much for the kind words. Not like I am some grizzled veteran or anything, but if I can offer one piece of advice, it would be to take videos of yourself playing the fiddle, and then go back and really study them. When I did this, I realized I was often rushing through certain parts of tunes, and was consistently too sharp on the third finger D note on the A string. I did not realize either of these until I watched myself. Do it!

[Author]

Posts