Category: String Circle fiddle workshops

Monthly fiddle workshops

The String Circle fiddle classes are changing their format and venue. From 5th September 2015 I’ll be running a series of one-day fiddle workshops on the first Saturday of each month. These will be based at Tribe Porty, in Windsor Place, close to the centre of Portobello. Full details are on the website here.

Each workshop will have a general focus, and there will also be plenty of time to explore issues that arise in the course of the day.

  • Saturday 5th September: Working with the bow – how does the bow affect tone and pulse?
  • Saturday 3rd October: Playing up to speed, and controlling your speed
  • Saturday 7th November: Rhythm and tempo
  • Saturday 5th December: Playing fluidly – getting ‘in the zone’

If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to see covered in future workshops, do get in touch.

Workshops cst £40 (£30 concession). The price includes a simple lunch. Enrolment is now open online for all 2015 dates.

I hope to see you there!

Ros Gasson

11th August 2015

Stiring Circle fiddle workshop logo
©Ros Gasson

Tidy playing

Tidy playing

Tonight we learnt the tune Young Betty by Mairi Campbell. We spent some time working on controlling the volume of our playing, trying out playing long open strings as quietly as possible, taking a lot of the weight of the bow from the string by using a bit of pressure with the pinkie. Then we tried playing really loud notes, using pressure with the first finger on the stick of the bow, and transferring the weight of the arm into the bow.

There are several points in the tune where we tried out separating pairs of the same note with a A short phrase of the tunegrace note. We emphasised the second note in the pair when we were doing this. we also worked on a bit of bowing in the B part, bowing this phrase down, up, up, up, down. We made the 3 up bows short staccato notes.

We ended the evening by playing through the tunes we have learnt this term.