By Julian Smedley As a jazz violinist, my challenge was to improvise over a traditional tune from one genre and era using the vocabulary of a different style and era. To do so, I used devices popularized by Swing era players such as Eddie South, Benny Goodman and Lester Young. I included arpeggios, scales, riffs and rhythmic [...]

By Martin Norgaard My solo on Go Tell Aunt Rhody is heavily influenced by Bebop. Specifically, I use a lot of eighth notes that connect chord tones with arpeggios, scales and chromatics. Eighth-note lines in tonal music in many styles from fiddle tunes to Bach and Bebop is constructed by placing the notes of the [...]

By Miamon Miller    In December of ’09, Mel Bay published an online article I wrote regarding Romanian folk music from the region of Moldavia.  In that short piece, I said that   “Those of you who play klezmer and other types of Jewish music may have taken special notice of this article’s title “Hora [...]

by  Matt Glaser       A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR AND TRANSCRIBER   Check out the two previous solos that Matt contributing in recent issues of Fiddle Sessions.                         Stacy Phillips    GLASER Rhody talk6c.mp3 | GLASER Rhody music6c.mp3 | Printable Version                 about Matt Glaser Matt says, “I like a lot of different styles [...]

By Sam Bardfeld      In my “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” solo, the first thing on my mind was what I wanted the overall shape of the 16 bar solo to look like. The first six bars or so are a statement of the melody using a combination of slightly altered 2-note double-stop voicings and [...]

by Paul Anastasio                            about the improvisor   Initially classically trained, Paul Anastasio soon began exploring the worlds of bluegrass and fiddle music. In the mid-1970s Paul studied and performed with Joe Venuti. Begining in 1978, Paul toured with Merle Haggard, Asleep at the Wheel, Larry Gatlin, Loretta Lynn and many [...]

By Evan Price In this solo, I made extensive use of ‘neighbor tones’ in order to create the illusion of harmonic motion, of which there is very little in the chords of the tune.  ‘Neighbor tones’ are simply non-chordal notes which surround the chordal notes.  They can belong to the scale which corresponds to the [...]

by Michael Mendelson Cripple Creek as played by Benny Thomason; Transciption by Michael Mendelson. Printable Version   DiggShareShare with StumblersTweet

  (continued from the October/November 2011 issue) Interview conducted by Willa Horowitz, Au.D. Tues. Feb. 1, 2011 Wendy Cheng (C): How I hear/play music. Over the years I’ve discovered that I can tell when I’m playing in tune with my teacher if we are playing in unison. Willa Horowitz (H): On the Association of Adult [...]

By Kat Bula If you’ve read the first two installments of this article (“Chords: What To Play When You Don’t Know What to Play” and “How Do I Know Which Chord to Play?”), you should have a pretty good idea about how to figure out which chords go in a song and how to play [...]