Folk Fiddle Style: Bowings and Ornaments on Viola
Learning folk fiddle style
Sheet music for the repertoire of traditional fiddle tunes generally does not include stylistic elements (such as bowings and ornamentation) written out. This is because these are personal to each player, and trying to emulate someone else's version might feel unnatural and sound stilted if we always simply read it off the page without an understanding of how it is developed.
If you would like to learn how to add the twiddly bits that make a fiddle tune sound more like a fiddle tune, I recommend The Fiddle Project by Deb Chalmers. Deb is writing a series of books on folk fiddle style. The first has been published and there is a viola version available – visit the Fiddle Project website for more information.
Transcriptions of the bowings and ornaments in my own videos
Having said all that, when learning any musical style it is often helpful to have a model to work from. So I have transcribed the bowings and ornaments I use myself from my videos of ten different tunes, and published the sheet music.
These detailed transcriptions are available as a pdf download. For each tune there is a copy of the basic tune, plus a version with the bowings and ornaments that I play. These can be used in combination with my videos as a basis for learning bowing patterns and ornaments. You can use the basic (blank) version of the tune to make your own version if you find that playing exactly what I play doesn't feel quite right to you.
These sheet music transcriptions are also included in my "everything" bundle.
Bowings and Ornaments: Learning Video Subscriptions
I have also made a series of close-up, slowed down learning videos to accompany the sheet music. You can get access to these with a video subscription.
There is a one free sample of these videos available, which you can view in the player at the bottom of this page or on YouTube here.
