Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody

Subject: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 02:12 AM

We've all heard the amazing and wonderful things fiddlers can do when they are not playing the melody, but what the heck do you call the assorted effects, ornaments, and stylings when the fiddle is playing neither melody nor harmony and some other instrument (or the vocal) is leading?

How come I wanna know is because it's time to stretch our capabilities into non-gospel songs. As I work up the chords and vocal scheme, I can often sort of "hear" a fiddle part, but I lack words to describe what I want to my fiddling husband. We can't seem to get to any lessons, because of his schedule. What do we need to be listening to, to develop our ears and his technique for the sounds, and what they heck do YOU do with your fiddle to support a tune, when you aren't taking the starring role? And what do you CALL all those little things-- riffs? licks? or some arcane, known-only-to-fiddlers terminology?

Give it to me straight, in plain English!

~Susan

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: GUEST,Sarah
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 02:27 AM

don't have any jargon for it but:

play counter melodies to the tune, harmonise using thirds and sixths, also use drones in fifths and sometimes others to complement tune.

You can use a lot of two string chords (three if you are super=flexible).

You can 'shuffle' to the rythm or provide other types of rythmic accompaniment - whatever you 'hear' that sounds good, do it.

Cheers Sarah

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 04:38 AM

Susan, do you have the same problem as me? I can "play" songs in my head and hear an instrument (mandolin, guitar or voice for me) doing wonderful things; but when I pick up the mandolin and try to play what I've "heard", it just evaporates! I understand it's to do with pathways in the brain: the creative part makes up the arrangement and passes it to the hearing part, to which it's connected; but there's no connection to the hands, so you can't play it. (The same reason stammerers have no difficulty singing.) You have to remember what you "heard" and play it from that memory. I suppose you can train yourself to do this, but I'm not doing very well so far! I'd think that the training would establish the pathway in time. I need someone to teach me the technique!

Steve

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 10:17 AM

Maybe "side work" is what you are looking for? I can just now do a little of it but only on bluesy stuff. I use diatonic scales and the regular chord progressions that a guitar player uses. Can he "read" the guitar player's hand? Soft drones sometimes work too. Sounds like the trouble is that he can't hear what's in your head and I don't know how to tell you to get him too. Play what's in your head on a keyboard, or dum-ditty it for him?

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 11:03 AM

Yeah, Steve, unless I imediately let it out in whistling, poof! And here, of course, as Sorcha says, the trouble is that it's someone else playing an instrument I do not play, who I want to have execute the thing I "heard"!

As far as working with that cretivity loop, and capturing the stuff, I can tell you that when I am riding around in a car, I can get a tune started in my head, say it's just a single phrase. I whistle it and let the pitches come as I whistle. I go over it and over it till I have it memorized, then I start to hear variations and harmonies and so forth. I leave off whistling the melody, it now being stuck in my head, and now I am hearing that in my head and whistling what would go with it... just as if I were singing a harmony along with a CD I am listening to. (See an old thread on Karaoke of the Mind.) Often it will be a waltz and the new stuff amounts to ornamentation of the melody, such as quick notes (subdivided time from the melody), weaving around the melody. If I keep this up long enough it sticks.

Then MORE stuff comes, like blue notes here and there and what a harmonica player might add to a blues piece... other instruments.... well if I could just TAPE all that and mix it together... and hear it and play it for the other musicians so they could hear their parts! But I would still need to know what these little thingies are CALLED, if I wanted to write them down, without using notation. I CAN notate but I'm so SLOW.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 12:21 PM

You don't have to notate if you play it into Noteworthy Composer on a keyboard. When I get a tune like that, I usually try to record it on a small portable tape player first, then work on it from there. That way I know I won't forget it.:-) You can also sing it or play into Real Producer and take it into Notate It! if you want sheet music.

As for what do you call it? In orchestra we called it "playing second fiddle!" That usually meant no melody part, just harmonising, etc. as the others have noted.

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: NicoleC
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 12:39 PM

Steve, I have the opposite problem -- I can play it once I get rolling but I can't hear it in my head. Makes it hard to get started!

Susan, part of what you're hearing might also be ornamentation. Little notes outside the melody, so to speak. They don't show up on the sheet music much, because they are hard to notate and thend ot e made up as they go along.

I think of them as lead material, mostly, but I could see how they would be effective as "fill" in backing material. You hear that a lot in Celtic fiddling. Some ornaments would be rolls (long and short), cuts, bowed triplets, bends, etc.

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 12:40 PM

Yeah, I think I need a MIDI keyboard. I do tape what I can and use NWC to transcribe from tape or memory, but it's so cumbersome, especially since I am not sure what the fiddler has to do to give me what I want. I have two good tunes partly enterted, but have had many more slip through my mind and out the car window.

I know where all this comes from-- when I was too little to walk or talk, my dad started me on listening to great classical music and singers of the time--and he would focus me on one instrument at a time, then whole sections, instruements in pairs playing together or against each other... training me to HEAR them all separately as well as together. All those snips of excellently applied music theory and creative license are stored away down deep in my memory, and I use them like building blocks. Due to our family circumstances, life then overlaid on that a learning style that must be free and follow its own course, so I lack the vocabulary I might have gained in music school. So now it amounts to having the ear and talent to arrange, but few if any tools to do it with. So, a MIDI keyboard seems necessary eventually.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 12:43 PM

NC, yeah, I know about ornaments, from baroque choral singing, but as you say, that's part of the lead work, and I think I am after the nuts and bolts of what Sorcha called the side work.

I'll have to find a loving way to introduce Kat's perfectly accurate term thoughtfully-- "Honey, um, in this tune..... yer the 2nd fiddle....." *G*

~S~

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: DonMeixner
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 07:25 PM

Sorcha,

Does side work go on in the background? And who performs it? Sidemen I'd assume. Can sidemen play a prelude? Can a sideman in one band be the front man in another band? Can frontmen and sidemen switch places and not be confused as to their rolls?

Just wondering

Don

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: michaelr
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 08:48 PM

I'm no fiddler but I've had the same problem of trying to explain what I want from an instrument I don't play. Have him play long notes, with just a little of the bowing/ ornamentation that makes a fiddle sound like a fiddle. Harmony, fills, trills... as long as it doesn't tread on the vocals. Make him listen to recordings that feature fiddle backing up singers. Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 09:12 PM

Don, I can't speak for Everybody, but yes, side does go in the background. In our bunch, the fiddlers always introduce the tune and play it at least one time thru,then pass it to somebody. They can pass it on or give it back to us. We can also call another person to take it after the First Person we called. But yes, the Side can intro the tune then turn it over to somebody else to take the lead.

Good suggestion, Michael! But who..........

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: michaelr
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 09:31 PM

Well, I'm a Celtoid kinda guy, so I'd say Waterson:Carthy, Patrick Street, Kate Rusby, Altan, Old Blind Dogs, Brian McNeill, Fairport Convention, Deanta, De Danann... any band that has fiddle and vocals. There's much to be learned from listening to how the pros arrange their stuff.

If you're more into the American style, there's John Hartford, Alison Krauss, (early) Emmylou Harris, David Bromberg, er, um... as I said, I'm more of a Celtoid kinda guy.

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 09:35 PM

I forgot to mention that what I call Side Work may not be what the Pros define it as. In Nashville, I think, a side man is always a side man and only the Title Artist gets to do anything to start or suggest stuff. Side man just keeps quiet and does what he is told. We're not at all like that, and I presume you aren't either. We don't have a Name to answer to.

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 10:11 PM

Of course, we answer to a higher Name, ha ha, but no, Hardi ain't always the side man, sometimes I'se the side girl mahseff.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: Sorcha
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 10:17 PM

I didn't mean Him/Her, you know that!!! *VBG* I meant somebody who only thinks he is Him/Her..............

Subject: RE: Fiddling, and I Don't Mean Melody
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Sep 02 - 11:27 PM

Yah, yah, I know, but it was a mandatory!

~S~