Bowing patterns and rhythm

Tonight we spent some time thinking about different bowing patterns and how they affect the rhythms in tunes we’re playing. We started off by playing through the Jig we learnt in the first week of term – The Road to Banff. When we first learnt this, we played it with a dotted rhythm, emphasising the 2 main beats in the bar. Tonight we looked at changing the emphasis to the upbeats in the first phrase. It adds a real lift to the tune, and gets peoples’ feet tapping!

We learnt the strathspey The Aird Ranters (by Fred Morrison). It’s a short and straightforward tune to play on the fiddle. Once we’d learnt the notes, we tried playing it down an octave.  We spent some time thinking about our bow holds, getting a relaxed hold on the bow, and keeping our thumb slightly bent to avoid building any tension in the forearm. We talked about using the thumb as a pivot. Adding a bit of pressure with the pinkie can be used to take the weight of the bow when we lift it off the fiddle strings. If we want to really ‘dig in’ with a note, we can do this by adding a bit of pressure with the first finger as we play the start of the note.

We tried out playing some long slow open strings, thinking about tone. Keeping the bow perpendicular to the strings, and the bow hold relaxed helps to create a full tone. Then we tried playing as quietly as we could manage, by using a little pressure with the pinkie to take some of the weight of the bow off the strings.

We tried out a couple of different ways to bow the opening phrase to the strathspey. Using a down bow at the start of the tune, and playing single bows, results in a big emphasis on the 3rd note. we also tried out playing  a down bow followed by 3 up bows, which gives a much lighter feel to the start of the tune.

At the end of the night we played Captain Campbell’s, and tried out playing the Aird Ranters while adding in some dynamics, by dropping the volume in the B part of the tune.