Hey Folks,
Congrats to the six winners of the video-chat lesson giveaway: Gary, Grace, Ken, Nathan, Dina, and Jason (no, I didn’t win a lesson with myself 🤓).
Thanks to all who entered. Giving these lessons will be the first step towards finding a way to give you guys more feedback on your playing. Some ideas:
- Small group lessons on zoom.
- Short one-on-one lessons with a fiddle tutor.
- Giving feedback on videos you share.
Featured lessons
Reading Rhythm 4 / In this lesson we go more into dotted notes. Learning to read rhythm is tricky. But my basic teaching is to let your brain figure out the patterns in a natural way. I call this Intuitive Note Reading.
I’m almost done with the Note-Reading For Fiddlers course. Yay! Looking forward to switching to gears to lessons on slides, vibrato and the Orange Blossom Special.
I recently added sheet music videos to many of the tune lessons. These are another way for you to get the hang of reading sheet music in an intuitive way.
I also have integrated the note-reading lessons into the main course, so you can learn to read as you learn techniques and tunes.
Question of the week
How to play with others? / Start by learning to listen as you play. It’s hard at first. I remember the first time I played violin along with my teacher. I was thrown off by the sound of the piano. You can train yourself to in listening to parallel voices by playing with drones and play-along tracks. In this way you learn to hear your playing as well as what others are doing. I offer a few other tips.
Tune of the Week
Here’s a version of Margaret’s Waltz by Dulahan.
Community
Dayved has been my student and friend for 8 years. He plays viola along with violin and loves Eastern European music. He’s actually a big part of why FiddleHed exists today.
OK! Thanks for making music…
❤️ Jason