Photos

Good morning everyone today is part 6 of my Grass Valley Bluegrass Festival series. Here we have a class giving lessons on how to play the fiddle, which I would love to learn someday. At the same time you can get your fiddle fixed or customized or purchase one too.

Below is a little information on Bluegrass Fiddles.

Have a great Tuesday everyone...........Buddy

Bluegrass fiddle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the 1940s Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys revolutionized American string band music by incorporating virtuosic instrumental solos and a “high lonesome" vocal style. Bluegrass fiddling burst into national view during the folk revival of the 1960s with the first televised documentary Bluegrass Roots: On The Road With Bluegrass Musicians shot in the Mountain of North Carolina. Old Man Bascom Lunsford took center stage at the Asheville Mountain Music Festival, itself a trail blazing event. which (also the first such event). It is aptly described by a publicist as "the hard scrabbling, dirt road real people sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago." Other trends have brought renewed interest in bluegrass fiddling: major mainstream performers have recorded bluegrass albums, and the Coen Brothers' released the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? in (2000), with an old-time and bluegrass soundtrack, and the Down from the Mountain music tour.

History and development:

Kenny Baker is perhaps the most famed early bluegrass fiddler; he met Bill Monroe and cut a record with the Bluegrass Boys in 1957. Kenny Baker served more years in Monroe's band than any other musician and was selected by Monroe to record the fiddle tunes passed down from Uncle Pen Vandiver. After leaving the Bluegrass Boys in 1984, Baker played with a group of friends, Bob Black, Alan Murphy, and Aleta Murphy.

Distinctive of the style
Purists:

In an essay with the short title Why Old Time is Different from Bluegrass, Allan Feldman argues against the proposal of an "inclusive cover name that would bring old-time music, bluegrass, clawgrass and dawg music under the same umbrella in order to attract new audiences. The unfortunate trend in this country is to homogenize things. I think old time music stands against homogenization. Having thus staked ground out for himself as a purist, he continues that "he for one celebrates the fact that old-time music is not bluegrass or dawg music or new grass or even claw grass". Nevertheless old time influence is strong, even reflected in lyrics such as the reference to old time, actually Scottish/Irish Soldier's Joy, in Uncle Pen.

Techniques:

Bluegrass fiddlers combine from many genres and tend to be highly skilled with strong roots in fiddle rather than violinist traditions. As such, they can be seen to disregard the rules that violinists follow: they hold the fiddle the "wrong" way and don't necessarily use the chin rests, shoulder rests. Kenny Baker is famous for a "long-bow" style which is reputed to add a smoothness and clarity to the music. Notes are often slid into, a technique seldom used by Celtic-influenced stylists outside of bluegrass. Double stops and open tunings are used adeptly as is the full panoply of technique from jazz players such as Stuff Smith and Joe Venuti as well as Western swing technique of players such as Bob Wills.