Hold onto Your Socks.....

The kids are learning their new fiddle tunes for the upcoming year and beyond. Both kids have learned 2 new hoedowns, 3 new waltzes, and they already had new tunes of choices ...Runaway Fiddle and Fiddudulin....So you are going to love these new tunes, and they are difficult. Blue Valley Waltz is really beautiful. Gabriel has taken his tunes to a whole new level. He was so ready to lay the old tunes down and get some new ones....he sounds like a much more mature fiddler on his new waltzes...especially his favorite: "Crying Waltz" Scott Esty has been working with him on music skills that have universal application, but are originating in Fiddle. Eileen is teaching and editing the kids on the tunes, and Scott is helping Gabriel emmensely with the artistry. I wish I had a video of Gabriel playing Crying Waltz...and you will see why old tunes need to be shed like a snake skin, so the new shiney tunes can come out.

So anyway when I get a video of Gabriel playing this I'll post it...

But I did get a video of Isaaiah playing Crafton's Blues for the first time for Eileen and Jeff today. Gabriel is learning this tune too, it is challenging because there is no music....no written music....and Isaaiah and Gabriel hardly get any time with their fiddle teacher...they share an hour 2x a month. So they need to learn this from the recording...and I also have a video of Eileen playing it. So Isaaiah said that it is pretty difficult to learn from a recording or video when the speed is so fast. She had to push herself to learn a small chunk everyday from the video, by playing the video...and then humming the part she needed to learn next. Then she said she kept humming it while she felt around for the notes...then she played it over and over again until she wouldn't forget it anymore...and only learned one new chunk each day. Well she finished it..(its been a month)...and she ended up creating a new version. It sounded great...but Eileen wanted to make sure that she didn't take to much artistic liscence and change it so much that it wouldn't follow the chord structure that it needs to adhere to. So we called Jeff Walters in from the Garage where he was building bicycles to play it with Isaaiah this first time...check it out.