Slow practice vs. rhythms (Ne'er Shall I Wean Her)

Today we'll be talking about rhythms versus slow practice , two big ways to improve your playing to learn a specific tune better , to get your playing up a level and , of course , play faster something we're talking about this whole month in January . On the Fiddle Studio podcast .

I'm going to tell you from my perspective as a fiddle teacher and when I'm watching a student and giving them advice for how to get to the next level for speed , for playing really accurately and really cleanly , when to slow down and use slow practice and when to use rhythms For slowing down . If it's out of tune , it requires slowing down .

You have to add the thinking back . In Last week I was talking all about how to bring the thinking out of your playing . But if your tune is out of tune in your left hand the fingers where they're going then you really need to slow down . You can put a drone on if you can't tell whether it's in tune or if you tend to get distracted .

I developed over many years of teaching violin the ability to ignore when things are out of tune , because sometimes I just need to work on other stuff with my students and not be correcting their tuning all the time . So I can get distracted and just not noticed when things are out of tune . When else to slow down ? If you can't play it , rhythms won't help .

So if it's a really complicated finger pattern would often use different strings or different placements on the strings , a mix of low and high fingers . Until you can play it , you need to go slow to learn what it is . I use slow practice in fiddling for ornaments .

It's funny the first thing a lot of classical players do is they'll take the ornaments out and for fiddle it depends . I love to teach more intermediate advanced students the tune with the ornaments right in there . But we tend to need to do it slow to fit them in with the timing correctly and then speed it up from there .

If you already know the tune without ornaments and you're putting some in especially if it's big like turns , ornaments with a lot of stuff going on it helps to sort of slow way down , put them in rhythmically the way you want them to sound , right where you want them , and then speed the tune up once you've got it slow .

But you like the ornamentation and kind of the feel of the tune . If you want to practice using more bow , if you're working on your tone , you got to go slow . We talked about that and in the recent podcast the Biggest Mistake I See . So when to use rhythms , this is another way to bring your thinking out of your playing .

Just a quick review of what rhythms are . They're usually used for reels For classical players . They're used in any kind of run or fast passage of rapid notes that are all the same , whether they're triplets or groups of two or four . Notes for passage work for reels , for fiddle . You can change up the rhythm and play the whole thing .

Instead of all the same length note . You can play it long short , long short , long short , long short , long short and then go back and play the same thing short , long short , long short , long short , long short , long . So you're changing the rhythm and some people like to really play around with this .

They might make the first note in the group of three long , long , short , short , long short , short and then make the second note in the group of three da da , da , da , da , da , da da .

It's a little tricky for me to wrap my brain around , but whatever pattern you're doing , if you can play something but it's not moving that quickly , if you're thinking of slowing you down or just you don't have the muscle memory in your hand yet you just haven't played it enough , or you're trying to get over the hurdle to just bring the level of your playing

up faster , you can use these rhythms . They also work great if you're playing as a little uneven or you're having some trouble coordinating between the left and the right hand . It really solidifies things and it allows you , because it makes the tune so solid , to go much faster .

The trick is to take the long notes as slow and long as you need them to practice the short notes really quick . You know I'll really encourage students to do these long notes where their brain catches up and then do the little short changes for their short notes .

Any conservatory you go to walking through the practice room hallway you'll hear people using these rhythms . They really are a key to playing quickly and cleanly at the same time . Four slowing down If you can't play it , if it's out of tune , fitting in ornaments or practicing using Marbeau and for rhythms to clean it up . Get it faster . You can use that .

Our tune for today is called several variations on Neer Shall I Wean Her or I-Neer Shall Wean Her . It's also called Mrs O'Sullivan's and the clearest explanation I got of this is that when it's played in A people call it Neer Shall I Wean Her and in B minor it's Mrs O'Sullivan's . I also saw it under a third name .

Folks mentioned seeing it in Scottish collections as the Irish girl . I did find a little blurb about this being collected in 1967 by Brendan Bretnach from Molly Meyers Murphy , and Molly Meyers Murphy had been a student of Tom Billy Murphy . So Molly Meyers Murphy married Tom Billy's nephew Will Murphy and learned from him .

They live near Cork and she apparently didn't have a name for this but said that I-Nair Shall Wean Her was the name they used in Cork . Anyway , you can find it in various albums . Let's see Air Fix , an album from Ross Ainsley and Jarlath Henderson . Also Christy McNamara's album , the House I Was Reared In , so you can look for it there . 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 see you back next week with another tune for you . Have a wonderful day .