Super Cool Fiddle Sounds - Lesson

Fiddle [Music] Head hey folks welcome to Fiddle Head fiddle essons I'm going to show you some super cool sounds you can make on the fiddle so when I was a kid practicing violin in my room by myself I would sit there and do stuff like [Music] this and my mom would yell from the other room is that what you're supposed to be doing no I was supposed to be doing classical pieces like [Music] sbond Anyway in this video I'm going to do a survey of the amazing Sonic potential of this instrument so I'm not going to go into too much detail on how to do each sound sound maybe a little bit but I've made more in-depth videos for a lot of these Sonic textures on the YouTube Channel and in the Fiddle Head course so let's start with tremolo to do this you play in the upper third of the bow and you move your wrist very slightly and beginners may only be able to do it at a speed like that that's fine so for each texture I give you in this lesson I recommend you start on an open note until it feels good and then try it on a super simple simple song like Twinkle Little [Music] Star and just a reminder that anytime you learn a new skill return to those super easy songs that you know well and they they're like friends that help you practice the new challenging thing next up is sliding so we can slide up to notes [Music] or we can slide down we can make our slides really subtle I do that all the time or we can make them obvious greasy longdistance slides harmonics place your finger I like to use my ring finger in the midpoint of a string like the D E string lightly place it and you'll hear this very ethereal nice sound of the [Music] harmonic so this divides the string into segments and these segments resonate at a higher frequency we can divide it by moving in a different way by moving towards a scroll to get an octave plus a fifth two octaves major 3 major 3 and sorry two octaves plus a fifth you can keep going but it gets a little harder the further you go a very fun sound effect you can do is to lightly touch the string first practice it without bowing and just very move it very lightly you might even be able to do this as a beginner you just need a strong hold on with your chin rest sorry with your chin and shoulder and then [Music] I love doing stuff like that false harmonics so false harmonics are are playing your first finger and then placing your fourth finger about just placing your fourth finger lightly it's a just just in a normal the way you'd finger and what's cool about this is that you can then move it [Music] around that one's harder and without going into too much detail to really be able to play melodies with the false harmonics you would practice playing with just your index finger [Music] and that paves the way for adding that false harmonic another super cool fiddle sound is bouncing so in order to do that or to get into it start by just doing a vertical bounce on the strings and try to let it naturally happen I'm I am doing some work with my my right hand but you really just want to let it balce and then slowly move back and forth I kind of like it for like a rock songs hey baby all right next up is double stops playing two strings at once [Music] [Applause] so a lot of you may be thinking well that's not that weird or cool that's just normal I do that all the time well I pointed out because it's a great modifier to use with some of these cool sounds so for instance sliding if you try sliding the fourth finger on D and playing the open a you get a very cool bluesy oh also with harmonics it sounds prettyy neat and bouncing we already did that [Music] but next up is [Applause] pontello this gives you almost like a fuzzbox guitar sound and I think it's really cool it's the kind of thing that a lot of students do in their beginning and they they think oh God I'm playing it wrong I'm making a mistake and though you know when you're a beginner you're just trying to get a good wholesome sound the Ponto Chou sounds a very cool effect so to do it you simply play close to the bridge and it brings out overtones but you have all this nice random sounds that pop out too so I find that adding adding vbr and even a little sliding ver really brings out the the craziness of the sound channeling Jimmy [Applause] hris hours of entertainment another sound is the pulse a brief acceleration of the bow combine it with double [Music] stops so this next one is one that I sort of made up called whammy bar plucking if you uh have roommates or parents that you want to annoy this is a good one and you use your thumb to pluck the strings and then you you basically play with a huge sliding rbr here's another one I made up called Bamboo Flute I'm sure that there's some like formal music term for this in Italian but basically playing up the fingerboard playing with your bow up the fingerboard you get kind of almost a flute like [Music] sound and finally the chop [Music] so that's my survey of some of the cool fiddle sounds you can make now I want to say again something kind of important if you're a beginner it's good to explore the instrument just like a a little kid exploring the environment but your main goal should be just getting a good solid meat and potato sound on an open string and in fact most people could simply practice tone more than they do just play pick an any note and play it until it sounds good and if you ever think that you're not sounding good in a particular day this is an amazing practice just put on a drone note so this is e could be any note of the 12 tones and simply play and get a good sound the Drone will help you play tune and it might help you [Applause] relax and just return to a good sound so I really feel like it's it was important to mention that because as fiddle players we can get really distracted by shiny objects new Tunes new techniques fiddle camps whatever and so it's really good to remember to always return to a good sound and the beautiful thing is it's a simple thing you can do anywhere anytime when you play just take a moment play a single note make it sound good so keep that all in mind but have fun explore these sounds and you know I probably forgot something so feel free to leave a comment saying like you didn't talk about the Twisted flying Golem sound so I'll have to invent that one if it doesn't actually exist okay take care go to fiddlehead tocom for a progressive stepbystep course outline colorcoded tabs playong tracks sheet music and much more thanks foring the [Music] video excellent and don't forget to subscribe thanks

Channel: FiddleHed

Views: 10,418

Keywords: Fiddle (Musical Instrument), Folk Music (Musical Genre), Violin (Musical Instrument), Tutorial (Media Genre), fiddle, violin, fiddlehedlessons, mandolin, fiddlelesson, fiddlelessons, violinlesson, violinlessons, folk, folkmusic, oldtime, oldtimefiddle, appalachianmusic, appalachianfiddle, bluegrass, irishfiddle, irishmusic, celticmusic, Irish, diegosumbrella

Id: yQa5Aj--eMo

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2024