Starting after a break (Kitty's Wedding)

Today we're going to be talking about starting up after a break , and I don't mean a break like a solo . Sometimes a solo is called a break , but after you take a break from playing the fiddle , some things to think about in coming back to it , returning to it . There's the mental part of this and there's the physical part .

So I don't know why another person may have taken a break . We all take breaks for different reasons . I certainly took a long break the very first time I could , which was actually after my senior recital in college , my senior year , so I must have been 20 or 21 . And that was sort of the first time in my life when my teacher didn't care if I practiced .

I was already had fulfilled the requirements for graduating and I didn't have any parents telling me to practice and I took a long break . I did come back to it . I took breaks after I had my children having a new baby and there were a few times when I took breaks , I guess you would say due to depression or grief getting a little personal there , I guess .

But often when I've had sort of sharper emotions of anger , I will play more music because it can help me process . But when I have been more in states of numbness or just vaguely sad , sometimes I will just avoid playing or almost just forget about playing music , forget that it's there .

I had students who have taken breaks because playing the fiddle can be frustrating and challenging or because they move or their life changes . They go to college , they start another instrument or have another interest .

I've even had colleagues , very accomplished players , who just went on to other things in life and stopped playing music altogether , or mostly If you are coming back to the instrument , and it's been a while . There's a few things that I have done with students who have been in this position . Some people like to play very familiar music .

So whether it's really old if you grew up playing Suzuki , getting out the old Suzuki books and playing really simple tunes that you remember really well from there . Some people like to play out of the hymnal play hymns that they grew up hearing in church , or even just very easy fiddle tunes that they knew and they played when they first started out .

It could be that you do something different that you've never explored , whether it's something you're drawn to musically , or new music that's related to something that's going on with you right now .

You live in a new place , exploring the music from that region or , if you're falling in love or falling out of love , looking for music related to that , you could try writing your own music always an option , and some people , when they come back to the instrument , want to try tackling a new skill .

It's like this is the time I'm going to really learn to read music or get my vibrato down or learn to do chops or just a new tune or a piece to work on . I did ask this question on Facebook and , in terms of the mental side , a lot of the advice was to not expect too much of yourself at first . Yeah , just to be gentle with yourself .

And forgiving the fiddle can be challenging , because when you're first starting out at something , you're so focused on how to do it that you're maybe not listening as carefully to the sound that comes out , and in some ways that can be kind of a blessing .

But if you're coming back to it and you played a lot when you were younger , you probably know what it used to sound like and so you want to be forgiving of yourself if it doesn't sound like that when you first start out . I find one of the things that goes for me pretty quickly .

My right arm stays okay , but my left hand will go out of tune If I take a couple weeks , a couple months off . The longer I take , the more my tuning suffers .

I have to force myself to pay attention to it and to work on it , but also just trust that it's going to get better the more I play and I'm gonna get my my tuning back to how I like it to sound In terms of physically starting up the instrument again .

Whatever you could do to manage pain or tension not all of us have this , but many of us do Stretching I roll my back on a foam roller . Gosh , if you don't do this and you have pain in your back , I would check it out . It has been a game changer for me .

If I could afford to go and get a professional massage every day or every week , I would , but I can't . I'm a folk musician , but I have my cheapo foam roller and I lie on the floor and my kids laugh at me and I roll back and forth and make little noises when I find a part that hurts and then I kind of wiggle on that part for a little while .

I get a lot of release from that and it really , really helps my back in that I do so much hunching over the laptop and playing violin and driving children around Stuff that puts a strain on my back . You want to stop . If you're feeling tension and pain in terms of your wrists , your elbows , your fingertips , building up your calluses slowly .

Try to be aware of when you're hitting the edge of pain that's not just a little discomfort but something starting to hurt and make sure you stop . Then Come back to it on another day . I build my hand strength with double stops .

This might just be a classical thing , but I'll tell you what Double stops playing two fingers at once , two different strings will make your hand stronger . They're very challenging and they will improve your tuning because they're hard to get in tune .

So that is one of the things that I play a lot of when I'm trying to bring my technique back from a lower level to a higher level , I'll play a lot of scales and double stops . If you're working on your tuning , just go slow and careful . You can use a drone if you want .

If you're working on your bow , if you're hitting other strings and kind of squeaking a lot , try using less bow and going a little slower . And if you can play something that you know you don't have to read music for and just watch your bow , see what's going on with it .

Take a look at it , either right from where you are , from your eyes , or in the mirror , where you can see what's going on . Don't be afraid to experiment . If you had a teacher a long time ago and you don't now , it's not necessarily a bad thing .

Now there's no one to tell you oh , you have to do it this way , you have to do it that way you really can experiment and try to see what feels good in your body . There's a lot of different ways to hold and play the fiddle and , even though I talk a lot about how I think the best ways are , there's no right way of doing things .

I think the best thing you can do for your body is to try to develop the awareness to feel when something feels good and isn't placing a lot of tension on your body , that's going to help a lot . Our tune for today is a hornpipe Kitty's Wedding . I guess there's a jig the Ships in Full Sail which is also called Kitty's Wedding .

It's not the jig , this is the hornpipe . It's Irish , played in County Claire , also played in West Virginia and all the way up to Cape Breton in Canada . Wow , it just gives you kind of a scope of the reach of the music from Irish immigrants in North America . It was published in O'Neill's recorded in Off to Dublin album in 1966 .

In County Claire this tune is normally played third in the set after Sonny Murray's and the Home Ruler . We played it in the middle of the set . We did Home Ruler first , then Kitty's Wedding and ended with Harp and Shamrock .

This isn't really a thing in old time but for Irish musicians and I'm of course still feel like I'm kind of an advanced beginner at Irish music , but there are these sets that people know .

A lot of times it was a traditional set of tunes , three tunes normally that were played in a certain area and musicians learned them there and traveled around , and so people just got used to playing these three tunes always in the same order or these days .

A lot of times it was maybe on a famous album for a musician and everybody loved the way the tunes sound on that album and so then they will still play the tunes that way .

Sometimes I play one of these tunes in a set and then everyone will just run into another tune that I didn't even know was coming and it takes me by surprise , but it's because that's a tune that everyone always plays after the tune that I was playing .

There are these well-known sets and I guess playing this hornpipe after Home Ruler , which we're gonna do next week , is a really traditional way to play this . Right now we'll just do it on its own . You ready ? 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 .