# Finding a Fiddle Guru



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

*Story of Our Musical Retirement Continued: 2011-2012*

I could see how much John was enjoying his piano playing, and I thought about taking up the violin again. I had taken it up once before - when I was thirty - and taken lessons in Durham with a peripatetic music teacher called Gordon who was a colleague of John's. I was interested in folk fiddle then, as now, and though Gordon wasn't into folk, I liked him and got on well with him; we even had him and his wife Giovanna round for supper. However, I got a new & demanding teaching job, and had to give up the fiddle again.

Now I found out that violins from China could be very cheap, and wondered about trying one out. But when I asked, there were none in Allen's at that time - October - and I put it out of my head.

But John got keen on the idea, and kept ringing the shop asking when their new consignment would be in. Finally we went down, on the day before Christmas Eve, and bought one, but the luthier employed by Allen's at that time - Stephen Lyle - advised me to have better strings put on it. He also changed the set-up of the violin - did that for free - and I picked it up for real the next day, Christmas Eve 2011. Stephen wouldn't let me try it in the shop, so I took Bonnie home, rosined the bow, and tried the strings - and they didn't sound too bad!

Over Christmas and New Year, John and I played many folk duets, sometimes practising for three hours at a time, and then I too emailed the music teacher at the college for the name of a violin teacher. He gave me the name of one - I'll call her Stella - and at first I got on well with her; but later I found that this impression was superficial & I couldn't talk to her about my progress. She was abrupt and defensive if I tried. She didn't seem to enjoy teaching and often made derogatory comments to me about her other pupils - wonder what she was saying about me!  She also usually forgot what we'd been doing the week before and used every excuse to chat and cut down on our half hour lessons. I had asked her to prepare me for violin grade exams, but we didn't seem to be making any progress. Then she moved house, and left me without any tuition for 5 weeks.
John discovered the name of someone who taught folk fiddle & I emailed him. He emailed back - and that's how I started with Fiddle Guru.

I was so nervous for my first lesson. John came down with me, to ask about folk instruments he might learn, and after Fiddle Guru had talked for a while - I thought he seemed a nice if rather posh young man - John went out to sit in the car, The lesson was in the Guru's parents' house in Kirkley, Lowestoft, a nicely decorated traditional lounge. I had put my violin on the sofa! He asked me to play. I started to play Flowers of Edinburgh, not too badly, and suddenly Fiddle Guru started to tap his feet, and then joined in on his own fiddle, as we moved on to Soldier's Joy and Staten Island. He said he was pleased with my rhythm and intonation, but that I shouldn't just do separate bowing.

He demonstrated by playing an Irish jig first with separate bows, and then with slurs, mixed in with no discernible pattern. It obviously sounded much more 'easy' and Irish, the second version. Then we worked on Flowers of Edinburgh and he marked in a new bowing system for me. I could hardly manage it at all. When the half hour was up, I felt dazed and could hardly walk back to the car! But I was hooked. I worked very hard for Fiddle Guru over the next few lessons, and although I was so nervous every time that I'd break down when playing the jigs etc, I started to make progress. I would tremble as I climbed into the car to drive down to Pakefield - where Fiddle Guru had now moved into his own terraced house - and as I left the house, I'd feel all weak and wobbly. The lessons were so intense - the Guru is such a charismatic person - and I felt so passionate, and still do, about Celtic traditional music. In our second lesson we'd moved on to the old English tunes in Playford's English Dancing Master, and these too I adored.

I started back with Stella, but her new house was less congenial than the old, as there was no anteroom, and she made me come and sit in on another pupil's lesson while I was waiting. I asked if we could go in for the grade 3 violin exam. I'd been practising the exam pieces over the Easter holiday. Stella said that we could - but once again, seemed to take no interest. She also refused to hear the non-exam piece I'd been lovingly preparing, Purcell's Rondeau. Finally, after a sleepless night, I decided to finish taking lessons with her and concentrate on folk fiddle with Fiddle Guru. I was wondering whether to find another teacher who could teach me for the exam, but the Guru (at that time) said that he didn't do exams. So I was left with a dilemma to solve just as John and I went on a week's holiday to the village of Blair Atholl in Perthshire, in May 2012.


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