🎻 This one tweak helped me fix my reel rhythms

Hi Reader!

Isn't it funny how one tiny exercise can totally transform your approach to Irish traditional music?

This happened to me the first year I attended the Swannanoa Gathering in the mountains of North Carolina (11 years ago now...scary)! I was in a fiddle technique class with Andrew Finn Magill, and he gave us a bunch of handy little exercises to help make more sense of some common bow patterns and ornaments.

He had a great way of tying in exercises I had come across in the classical world and putting a more fiddle-y twist on them!

It's been over a decade since that first class, but I still believe in the power of just one exercise to transform your style and overall sound (and yes, I'll tell you what that exercise was for me).

My biggest block when it came to "sounding like an Irish fiddler" in the early days was rhythm, and probably phrasing to some extent as well. I could play the notes and feel my way through the ornaments from the classical world, but the actual groove and lilt was lacking.

So the exercise that ended up helping me the most was the "reset moment".

Basically you start playing a reel rhythm (or jig or hornpipe -- whichever you need work on) just on one note. It can be the start note of your tune to make it easy. Once you're locked in and in a groove, you start playing the tune.

The moment you feel like you're getting out of the groove you go back to hanging on one note until you're back in.

Rinse and repeat as often as needed! Eventually you'll find you don't have to stop and start so much, and that rhythm comes more naturally to you.

Now that I write this, that's probably going to end up as a video tutorial on my YouTube channel as part of that 100 day experiment soon...! So you'll get a visual and audio aspect of this as well!

I'll be "out of the office" all week teaching at Summer Wheat in mid-Michigan (so you may or may not hear from me next Sunday), but if you're curious in either starting up private lessons in late June/early July or want to check out the video feedback trade option (recorded on your own time like a private lesson, but not live), let me know!

Happy practicing!

~Hannah