# Fine Wine or Real Ale?



## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I am beginning to wonder if I should just concentrate on learning folk with Fiddle Guru.

I adore the baroque lessons (which usually include early music). Baroque is Fiddle Guru's speciality and he teaches it so well and in so much detail, and with so much verve. I have bought quite a lot of baroque sheet music and I would certainly like the opportunity to try gems like Oswald's *Hawthorn Sonat*a.

But I don't suppose I'll ever be good enough to *do anything* with baroque. And with a bit more time, would I progress in fiddling, which is where my heart and my ambition lies?

I have raised this question on some other forums that I belong to, and will post the links here.

https://thesession.org/discussions/37481

http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=26960

http://www.fiddleforum.com/fiddleforum/index.php?topic=37029.0

A surprising number of people play more than one genre on their violins, and the consensus seems to be that it does no harm and adds to the enjoyment.

But I think that ultimately - six months or a year down the line - I will decide to specialise. I love Scottish, Irish & English folk tunes with a passion.

'I *am* Heathcliff!' 

The structure of baroque tunes - arpeggios, repeats, ascending & descending flights - is like folk. Moreover, in Scots eighteenth-century tradition there is no huge gap between art music & folk music, violin & fiddle. I am interested in learning more about figures like William Marshall, Robert Mackintosh, and William McGibbon, who wrote and/or collected music in both the baroque and the folk idiom.

Some techniques used in baroque - 'double stops' and phrasing of sprigs - are also similar to folk. But techniques like lifting the bow, tapering the note, phasing out notes of less importance almost to the point of non-existence, dynamics of loud-soft repetition - these are not used much in playing jigs, reels and strathspeys, particularly for dancing.

Early music is lovely, and in the 1970s, when we attended the Durham Folk Festival, we'd often hear groups like Strawhead or English Tapestry including early music in their repertoire along with folk songs and ballads. But the amount of early music that survives is limited, and I've probably already played the estampies, saltarellos and branles that interest me.

Currently I am learning ornaments in Irish folk music with Fiddle Guru and it is fascinating. But I need a lot of time & practice to learn these new skills, and at present about half my ordinary practice (90 mins to two hours a day) is spent on baroque. I have practically no time to practise my Scottish repertoire book, and have not learned to bow double stops, and my bowing of 'Scottish snaps' could be improved. I haven't picked up Niel Gow's technique of the 'up-driven bow', for example.

When I sit at home in the bedroom - my *bower*  - and play my Scottish (or English or Irish) dance tunes, just relaxing, listening to the melody, trying to improve the tone and rhythm - *I am in Heaven*. :angel:

I cannot help thinking that it is Real Ale that will sustain me in the future. Fine wines are not for the likes of me - I have a peasant's soul!


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