Playing chords and harmonies on the fiddle

Tonight we spent some time working on finding chords and harmonies to play with a tune. We put some chords into Charlie McKerron’s tune ‘Fionn’s. We also looked at some of the grace notes we can add. We talked about making the drone notes into an accompanying rhythm. The way that we bow the tune will have a big impact on this. Using different bowing patterns will vary the rhythm of the ringing strings as they accompany the tune. We also learnt a harmony for the third part. The written music is on the website’s music page.

After the break we learnt the first part of the Gordon Duncan tune ‘Break Your Bass Drone’. This is a lively driving reel in A. It’s a good tune to put at the end of a set of tunes, as it adds a real lift.