Bowing jigs on the fiddle

Tonight’s class focused on bowing jigs on the fiddle. We started the new term by checking what everyone in the class wanted to work on over the coming weeks. The main themes seemed to be bowing, playing rhythmically, and learning to play faster.
At the beginning of the evening we looked at our bow holds. It’s important to be able keep the bow hand relaxed throughout the full length of the bow stroke.

The thumb should remain slightly bent to prevent tension creeping up the forearm. The fingers are curved over the stick of the bow, to give a relaxed hold. The fiddle takes most of the weight of the bow when we’re playing, so the hand can be thought of as just guiding the bow rather than gripping or holding it. When we’re playing, the thumb acts as a pivot – we can add a bit of pressure with the pinkie to take some of the weight of the bow off the strings and create a lighter sounding tone, or we can add pressure with the first finger to really ‘dig in’ to the start of a note to add emphasis. When we’re playing, the whole hand should be slightly rotated anticlockwise (if you’re using your right hand). Doing this  puts the wrist into a comfortable position to bend and flex at the top and bottom of the bow stroke.

We spent some time playing long bow strokes while thinking about our tone. We worked on keeping the bow perpendicular to the strings and keeping the bow fairly close to the bridge while we played. We tried playing a jig rhythm on an open A. There are 6 quavers in the bar in a jig. We are aiming to learn a basic bowing pattern for playing jigs, which we can play subconsciously. Once we have a pattern learnt in this way, it opens up possibilities for us to play around with the bowing patterns and rhythms, as we’re not having to think about the basic mechanics of how we are bowing the tune.

Once we’d picked up a dotted jig rhythm on the open string, we split into two groups.Half of each group played the jig rhythm on an open D while the others were playing on the open A. We tried to keep a steady rhythm, and listen to others in the group, while using our first fingers to ‘dig in’ with the bow at the start of the first beat in each bar, to add emphasis.

After the break we learnt the jig The Road to Banff. The written music is on the tunes page. We’ll be spending some more time on this tune next week.

We spent some time taking about playing for dancing. Jigs are commonly played for the Strip the Willow. Four 32 bar jigs in a set would be enough for each couple to go through the dance twice.

At the end of the evening we played Jig Runrig, the Road to Banff and Rory Macleod. Then we played Campbell’s Farewell to Redcastle, which we learnt in the class last term.