You Can Teach Yourself Fiddling Book

Product Number: 94430 
ISBN: 1562220039 
Publisher: Mel Bay Pub., Inc. 
Difficulty Level: Beginning 
Format: Book

With You Can Teach Yourself Fiddling, veteran Mel Bay author, Craig Duncan, has produced an excellent book for the beginning fiddler. Its 36 lessons teach basic techniques through specific exercises and traditional fiddle tunes. From holding the fiddle and bow correctly to playing moderately advanced tunes in double stops, Craig will guide you through each progressive step. Although it is not necessary to be able to read music at the start of this book, the author gradually introduces principles of effective note reading throughout. A unique feature of this book is that the same tune may appear in more than one lesson, increasing in difficulty with each recurrence. Each variation builds on the previous one and assists students in learning how to create their own arrangements. Even with some repetitions of the same tune, you'll find more than 50 popular fiddle tunes in the book's 80 pages. "Check points" and reviews keep you on track from cover to cover. The companion DVD/video covers the first 17 lessons from the book. 

CONTENTS

Parts of the Fiddle, Tuning the Fiddle, Holding the Fiddle, Left Hand Placement, Holding the Bow, Dotted Note Values, Time Signatures, Pick-up Notes, Keys and Scales, Double Stops, Endings or "Tags", Mixolydian Mode, Double Shuffle, and Jigs. 

Tunes, arranged in order of difficulty, include:

Mary Had a Little Lamb, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Liza Jane, Camptown Races, Buffalo Gals, Shady Grove, Shortnin' Bread, Oh, Suzanna, Cindy, Dixie, Wildwood Flower, Angeline the Baker, Soldier's Joy, Going to Boston, Skip to My Lou, The Girl I left Behind Me, Bile Them Cabbage Down, Old Joe Clark, Up Jumped the Devil, Mississippi Sawyer, Cripple Creek, Arkansas Traveler, Fine Times at My House, and many more. Some tunes are repeated in increasingly challenging variations.