Articulation on the Fiddle (Dusty Miller)

I'm excited to talk to you today about articulation . Now articulation is in music . So I looked up the musical definition on Wikipedia and it wasn't that helpful . They said articulation is a musical parameter that determines how a single note or other discrete event is sounded , determining the length of its sound and the shape of its attack and decay .

It's attack and decay , hmm , okay . So on the violin , articulation is , I guess they said in a not very clear way in that definition it's about the beginning of the note and the length of the note . I'm trying to think of how articulation would affect more than that , but it's pretty much the beginning and the length .

The way we teach it to kids , the way I teach it to kids as a Suzuki teacher at first , I just teach them to move their bow back and forth . You know they're playing whatever they're playing .

Boil them , cabbage down , twinkle , twinkle , little star their bow's on the string , get them to leave it there on the string , not be pulling it up and off the string and moving it back and forth . Just move it for each note , change directions . Then I teach them staccato . So that's the first articulation In the classical world .

They often use the Italian to refer to the types of articulation In the classical world . They often use the Italian to refer to the types of articulation . So staccato is making a note short , and so I teach the kids to stop their bow . So they're playing and they stop .

It's not really that much about the beginning of the note , it's more teaching them to stop staying on the string in between their notes . Then we teach them legato . So legato is a lot like how they were sort of playing to begin with , but legato , making the notes long and smooth and connected .

We get them to slow their bow down to connect the notes even more and try to make it real smooth between the notes so that there aren't any spaces . So now they have , hopefully kind of a regular autopilot way of playing and then they can play staccato , stop their bow , they can play legato , slow their bow down , connect the notes really well .

Then we teach them the accent . So that's digging in at the beginning of the note for a very kind of explosive ka , getting an explosive sound . And in classical technique there are more kinds of articulations . You can get into spiccato and bouncing your bow and all kinds of things , what it means to have a line and a dot .

So you've got the marking for legato and for spiccato a dot . So you've got the marking for legato and for staccato . There's sort of a long note with a little space in between . For fiddle we don't use most of that . Yeah , you're not stopping your bow and you're mostly not making it legato either . There are some fiddlers who play without articulation .

I was talking last week about studying up on fiddle contest winners and some of them play real smooth kind of Texas style without a lot of articulation . Bluegrass some bluegrass fiddlers I hear articulation in most fiddlers playing . Nobody actually taught me this about fiddling .

My dad , who had gone to Pinewoods and to old songs , learned from some of the old timers there and he taught me to do an accent on two and four . You know (speaking) , make those notes louder , make that explosive accent , grabbing the string there , using more (speaking) from some fiddlers .

I did workshops with Brian Conway and Becky Tracy who taught me about ghosting notes . So that was when you barely play a note , sort of the opposite of an accent , where you play a note much less , and so that's a way to bring attention to the other notes . Basically , in a jig you might play dot and (speaking) and those n in the middle , (speaking) .

But when I started teaching fiddle , especially to classical players , I felt like something was missing from their playing and I would call it being scrubby . So I would teach them to be scrubby . Then if they were playing fiddle and it was really smooth and it didn't sound very rhythmic , I'd say , oh , you need to make it more scrubby . Remember to be scrubby .

Use your k-k-k-k-k-k . What I mean by this is it's a grabbing of the string at the beginning of the note . So a little bit like an accent , but smaller , because it's kind of every note I'm using like a d-d da for a lot of the notes , and those are all instances where I'm grabbing the string with my bow .

So I'm not just la , la , la , la , la , moving my bow back and forth , but I'm digging into the string to make almost a little plosive like explosive sound , a buh or duh or cuh at the beginning of the note and doing that over and over again , up bows and down bows .

I'm not using a lot of bow for this and it makes it sound for lack of a better word scrubby . If you're trying this at home , different strings take a different amount of force to get a little consonant on the beginning of your note . So if you're talking about the lowest string , the G string , you're going to have to grab it harder Then for the E string .

You don't want to be putting tons and tons of weight over and over again into the E string . It's not going to sound as good . You use it rhythmically . You use it to keep the beat . You're playing for dancing and you're playing them a tune and you're also keeping the beat for them . That's the whole reason I'm doing it .

So you got to use it really rhythmically . It's common to slur some of the notes and it's common to slur some of the notes . So now you've got a few notes that are slurred or ghosted so they're not showing up in your rhythmic pattern .

And then you've got your other notes that are scrubby , or you're grabbing them , getting that little attack at the beginning of the note , and those are keeping the beat for you . Yeah , experiment with that scrubby sound . I don't know , you can .

Once you learn it you can use a lot of it or you can just use a little bit of it , but it's a nice thing to have in your toolbox . This tune that we're going to play today is Dusty Miller . I guess it has a lot in common with Miller's Reel . I play a New England version of Miller's Reel and they have some things in common . I's Reel .

I play a New England version of Miller's Reel and they have some things in common . I don't know . The A part's pretty different . So I grew up playing Miller's Reel . I guess this is you know . I learned this tune from my friends and they got it from the old-time fiddlers' repertory , from a book by RP Christensen Repertory from a book by RP Christensen .

He got it . I guess he transcribed it from the playing of Bob Walters . It's a tune in A but I guess Bob played it in standard tuning and there are a lot of versions of Dusty Miller

. Holy cow , if you look up this tune you will find a lot of different versions , but this one is it's close to Dusty Miller . That was recorded for Victor Records on the Texas Fiddler Captain MJ Bonner and Eck Robertson's version , which is maybe the parts are switched , but more similar to Bob Walter's .

The one that we're doing switched , but more similar to Bob Walters , the one that we're doing , is from he's from Nebraska , so it's a Midwest tune . I guess we were playing Midwest tunes that night , so we're going to go ahead and play Dusty Miller . Here we go Thank you for listening .

You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom , along with my books , courses and membership for learning to fiddle . I'll be back next week with another tune for you . Have a wonderful day .