I’ll be there Friday night to hang out, then am playing twice on Saturday:

Coty Hogue Band
Saturday, May 26, 2pm
Fisher Green Stage

Big Sur
Saturday, May 26, 9:15pm
Indie Roots Stage

Come say hi!

Hi friends! I just wanted to let you know that I still have a few spots open for the harmony class that starts tomorrow.

Stuff you’ll learn:

• A bunch of cool tunes: classic twin fiddle songs from the Western Swing and Old-Time traditions, as well as other tunes that aren’t always played in harmony but sound good that way.

• How to write your own harmony parts to tunes.

• How to play with other people, so you stay together in the music, no one’s bossing around anyone else, and everyone feels flexible in the face of mistakes.

This is an awesome class and I don’t want you to miss it if it sounds right for you.

You can still register by clicking one of the “Add to Cart” buttons below.

Class Fee: $60

Class + one 1-hour private lesson: $100

If you’ve already signed up for private lessons with me this month and wish you were doing this instead, let me know–we can get you registered and credit your account if necessary. I don’t want you to miss this material, which is hard to get outside of a class situation.

Hope to see you tomorrow at 5:30 for the class!

What Do I Do With These Chords Besides Droning?

Here’s an excerpt from the new article (I’d include the whole thing, but Mel Bay might get mad at me):

Off beat chucks are a common pattern for bluegrass, polka and other songs in 2/4 or 4/4 time. This is how to do it:

- Place the bow close to the frog.

- On beats two and four (the offbeats), play a short stroke, aiming for maximum crispness and punchiness. Most people do down bows; I prefer up bows because I find I can play more precisely that way. Try both and see which you prefer, or whether you like them both but in different contexts.

- If you’re confused about which beats are the offbeats, and there’s a bass player, see if s/he’s playing beats 1 and 3 and leaving the others empty. (Usually, the answer is yes, unless s/he’s getting really fancy and non-folky.) Your notes will happen between the bass notes. You are essentially providing two halves of the same rhythm part; the bass does the “boom” and you play the “chuck”. There’s no shame in watching her/his rhythm hand!

You can read the rest of the article here: What Do I Do With These Chords Besides Droning?

This is the final installment of a three-part series on chordal accompaniment that I wrote for Fiddle Sessions. If you missed the first two parts, here are the links:

Chords: What to Play When You Don’t Know What To Play
How Do I Know Which Chord To Play?

—–
Auditions for “Goodnight Moon” a musical by Chad Henry (“Angry Housewives”, “The Hoboken Chicken Emergency”, “Pinocchio”) will be:

Sat., Feb. 11th 10:30-12:00 with callbacks 12:00-1:00

Bellingham Theatre Guild

Runs May 5th-May 13th at the Firehouse Performing Arts Center (unless an offer of a donated space comes through!)

Rehearsals Feb. 21st-May 4th (Tuesday evenings and Saturday morning/early afternoons) with a short performance for Children’s Gallery Walk on

Fri., May 4th downtown after our tech.

Please go to our website for some more information and to sign up for an audition slot. I am hoping to see you there!

Character Breakdown is 6 actors who sing and move well (one of which is pre-cast). Pay is $250 for rehearsals and run.

Bunny (male/female) impish, doesn’t want to go to bed

Old Lady (female) stern with a bit of whimsy.

Mouse (male/female) sidekick to Bunny. Silly and sweet.

Ensemble (male) plays Dog with Dish/Spoon puppets and dancing bear, some tap or soft shoe

Ensemble (female) plays Cat with fiddle and dancing bear, some tap or soft shoe (hopefully plays the fiddle)

Tooth Fairy (precast)

Puppeteer (may be precast)

All characters sing well, so if you are not a singer, I apologize for sending this!

I so hope to work with you one of these days (in some cases, AGAIN). Please let me know if you have any questions –

Stay warm!

Lizanne Schader, Artistic Director
THE NEIGHBORHOOD PLAYHOUSE
www.theneighborhoodplayhouse.net

I’ll be taking off this weekend to play a few shows in Washington and Oregon with Coty Hogue. Come say hi, and hear some great roots/Americana music!

JANUARY 11TH (Wednesday) – BELLINGHAM, WA: Roeder Home
7:30 PM (doors at 7:00)
$8-12 suggested donation
The Roeder Home is located at 2600 Sunset Dr.
E-mail me at kat@bellinghamfiddle.com for more info.

JANUARY 12TH (Thursday) – PORTLAND, OR: House Concert
7:30 PM start time $10-15 suggested donation
This is going to be a co-bill with Water Tower (Kenny Feinstein and Josh Rabie)
I was just given the heads up that this is the first night of the Portland Old-Time Gathering, so if you feel like venturing out a little, come on by!!
For more info and to reserve a seat, e-mail me at kat@bellinghamfiddle.com.

JANUARY 13/14 (Friday/Sat.) – FLORENCE, OREGON: WINTER FOLK FESTIVAL
Our main set will be Saturday (14th) at 1:30 PM. We’ll also be playing a set on Friday, yet to be determined.
This is going to be fun with lots of good acts. Take a trip to the Oregon coast!
For more info visit: http://www.winterfolkfestival.org

JANUARY 15 (Sunday) – SEATTLE, WA: House Concert
Concert starts at 6:30. But come early for a potluck and jam. Doors open at 4:00, and people can show up to play tunes and eat good food! The concert will start at 6:30 and we’ll play a couple of sets. For more info, e-mail me at kat@bellinghamfiddle.com.

JANUARY 18 (Wednesday) – KIRKLAND, WA: Parkplace Books
7:00 pm
Presented by the KIRKLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, this is going to be a shorter evening, probably one set, but it’s going to be a blast! Come hear good music and check out this great bookstore.
Parkplace Books, 348 Parkplace Center, Kirkland WA

http://www.parkplacebookskirkland.com

Fiddle music relies very much on specific bowing patterns, meaning sequences of up bows and down bows, to get those danceable rhythms.

A down bow tends to create a natural accent (meaning you stress the beat, rather like accenting a syllable when you speak). This happens because gravity is helping you pull the bow across the string. An up bow, by contrast, is weaker.

Different types of tunes use accents in different places, depending on which beats need to be stressed to support the dances that go with them. This is what makes a jig sound different than a rag, and what makes a reel sound different than a waltz. But if you’re not used to paying attention to your bow direction and accents, those distinctions between song types probably aren’t so clear to you.

If you haven’t been working to keep your downs and ups in order, or if you’re used to ignoring slurs because they’re hard or because you’re just not used to looking for them, go back to the songs that you know and really pay attention to which direction your bow is going. This’ll be easy if you’ve got sheet music. If all the stuff that you know is by ear, then you’re going have to pay that much more attention. Take your songs, slow them down, feel where you tap your foot. Usually you should be down bow when your foot taps; jigs and waltzes are more complicated exceptions. Are you consistent?

The more you can say, “yes! My bowing is consistently strengthening the beat!”, the dancier your playing will be. Master this and your playing will light people up even if your intonation and tone aren’t perfect. Ignore this and your fiddling will be kinda flat even if your technique is otherwise impeccable.

Want to really dig into the different patterns and techniques for bowing different types of tunes? I’m offering a class this month:

Fiddle Tunes Lab: Bowing Styles

January 9 – January 30, Mondays, 5:30 – 7pm
Learn some new tunes and flex those bowing muscles. How do bowing patterns and articulations affect the feel of a song? How do you make a rag sound raggier and a jig sound jiggier? Georgia bow, hokum, rah rah rah! Recommended for lower-intermediate to advanced fiddlers, and classical violinists new to fiddling.

Location to be confirmed depending on how many people register (no more than 10), but will be convenient to downtown Bellingham.

Class fee: $50

Class + one 1-hour private lesson: $90

**Is this way ahead of where you are? Don’t worry! I’m offering a beginner’s class in the spring; stay tuned for details.

I’ve heard great things about this festival/camp from friends and students for years, and I’m excited to finally attend. I’m hoping to make new friends, and study at least one fiddle tradition that I’ve never worked in before. (Danish? New Mexican?)

Will I see you there?

In that spirit… behold! I’m making you a thing!:

The Partridge Book for fiddlers
15 19 holiday tunes with harmony parts and guitar chords
standard notation and tablature
32 pages

$10 for a printed copy
$7 for a downloadable PDF

This will be available on Tuesday, the 15th.
EDIT: It’s here! Click the button to order the PDF:

Or click here to order a physical copy:

Pre-order bonus: Order by Sunday night (the 13th) and you can request one or more songs to be included. Hanukkah and other holiday/winter songs warmly welcomed! Just send a PayPal payment to kat@bellinghamfiddle.com, and include your request in the “note to seller” box.

One of my teenage students walked in the door today, obviously frazzled. I asked how she was doing. “Tired!” she said, with uncharacteristic force.

“Are you tired from good things or bad things?” I asked.

“Good things. But they’re wearing me out.” She went onto explain: she’s just joined a gymnastics team. Their first meet is only a few days away. The team has only a few practices to learn a lot of moves and put together an entire routine. Most of them have never done gymnastics before, including her.

As we settled into the lesson, it became obvious that this situation had taken a toll on the amount of time she’d been able to spend practicing this week. That’s natural enough. It’s not that she’s losing interest in fiddle; she’s just engaged in an intensive project right now in another part of her life.

I see this all the time with my teenage students; they have so many opportunities available to them, so many adults in their lives encouraging them to express themselves creatively and athletically and to do it all right now. Hey, I’m one of them! We adults like to enable kids to overcommit themselves with fun stuff since we know they won’t have as much time to pursue these opportunities later. Of course, we need to be careful to avoid burnout, and we need to teach kids how to set boundaries that will support their emotional and physical health. But that’s a different article.

This busy-busy theme is obviously not limited to the teenagers I work with. My adult students are even more likely to come to their lessons buzzing with stress: “I’m sorry I’m late; my business meeting ran over time and then I hit all the red lights! They’re restructuring my department and now I’m doing the jobs of two people, for three-quarters of my old pay!” And then “I didn’t have time to practice,” often followed by “I’m sorry” or “I know I should be practicing” or some other self-deprecating comment.

Look. We are all going a mile a minute. Want to know a secret? There are weeks I don’t practice at all. And I’m a full-time musician! The important thing is to know what our priorities are, and to live according to them. Some weeks, music and the personal growth it facilitates are top priorities. Some weeks, they aren’t. And that is okay.

But we also know that we do need to practice regularly if we are to keep making progress. A day we don’t take a step forward is a day we take a step backward. What we need is a way to be kind to ourselves by continuing to press forward in our music projects at the same time that we allow ourselves the freedom to respond to the rest of life as it happens dynamically around and within us.

We need to practice efficiently.

We need to know what the bare minimum is that we have to do in order to keep moving forward, even in baby steps. Or at the very least, we need to know what we have to do to stop going backward–even if we’re just treading water.

So, okay: how to do that.

• Focus your practice time on the stuff you don’t already know. This sounds obvious, but most of us don’t actually practice that way. Especially if we’re stressed. We’ve been working all day; we don’t want to work more now! Music is supposed to be fun! So we play the stuff we do know, over and over.

  There’s nothing wrong with this when you have unlimited practice time. It’s really fun and rewarding to play the stuff you’ve already mastered. And of course, the more you play in general, the more fluent you are with your instrument. But doing what you already know doesn’t help you move forward. If you only have ten minutes to practice, and you’re trying to learn a new technique or song, you need to spend as much of that ten minutes as possible learning that new technique or song.

  Look at the song you’re working on. What’s the hardest part? I don’t mean “the D#s” or “the time signature”; I mean “measures 4 through 9″. Let measures 4 through 9 be all you work on today. Really get to know measures 4 through 9–what’s happening there that’s throwing you off? How can you practice those six measures so that you feel totally confident with them by the end of this mini-session? Master measures 4 through 9 today, and the whole song will feel better tomorrow. That’s true even if you don’t play the song from start to finish today.

  Now, if you’re so worn out that you can’t motivate yourself to play at all if it means doing actual work, then don’t. Just pick up your fiddle and play something you already know. But don’t call it practicing. Call it recess. It’s still better than not playing. Just be aware that if you take the path of least resistance too often, you may find yourself on the plateau. And that can be a very demoralizing place.




• Practice improving your focus. Exactly how you approach this will depend on your worldview. If you have a formal meditation practice, do that for a few minutes before you play. If you need some inspiration, try this:

  Play a long, slow scale. I mean really long; every note should last 4-5 seconds, minimum. Really focus on every note as it’s happening. Notice if your brain is anxious to get to the next note, and the next, so you can complete the sequence of the scale. If so, bring your attention back to the note you’re playing now. Enjoy it while it’s here. Relax into it. Accept and celebrate that music is a series of moments to be fully experienced, not a task to complete.

  If this all seems too touchy-feely hippie to be relevant to the task at hand, consider this: the number one thing that separates truly advanced players from beginners is the degree to which they’ve developed their ability to listen. Think about how many times a day you encounter people who nod and smile when you speak, then unselfconsciously interrupt you or respond in a way that shows they have no idea what you just said. Musicians have the same problem because they are people and people have this problem. All of us can work to become better listeners and observers. But musicians have a particularly pressing need to learn to listen because it’s the only way to know if we’re doing anything correctly and in a way that fits with what others are playing. The only way to learn to listen is to create a space in which we pay attention to the part of us that pays attention–or doesn’t.

  This isn’t an exercise to do once; it’s an exercise to do all the time, throughout our lives. The minute we feel cocky about how great we are at listening, it’s time to do some especially careful observation about whether or not we are really hearing what we’re playing, what others are playing, what our spouses or children are saying, what the birds outside are chirping.

  “Hey, wait;” you may be thinking, “how is this meditation business going to get me through my practicing faster? It’s counter-intuitive, I agree. But here’s the thing: once you’ve taken two minutes, or five, to settle down and get focused, you’re settled down and focused. You won’t have to do as many repetitions of the passages you’re practicing, because you’re more likely to comprehend and perform them correctly the first or second time you try.

  And that brings us to the mother of all efficient practicing techniques:




• Slow everything down. If you’re making mistakes, you’re going too fast. You want to program things into your muscle memory accurately now, so that those programs will run properly later when you speed things up.

  Maybe next week you’ll have more time. Then, by all means, play fast! Play songs you’re not even working on right now! Do everything you can to have fun, for Pete’s sake, and remember why you’re doing any of this. But when you’re in efficiency mode, find the small project that will help the big project come together, focus your mind, and slow it down. Then find another small project tomorrow, rinse and repeat.