BLUEGRASS/IRISH FIDDLE MUSIC FOR UPRIGHT BASS

[bassiszen]

I'm trying to find Bluegrass/Irish/Celtic Fiddle music for the upright bass. I would like to play the fiddle/lead parts on upright. I'm working on my reading, bowing, and want to incorporate it into the bluegrass that I play (show the fiddle players what it's like to play with some balls). It would be great if I can find it in F clef, because I'm retarded and can only read one clef at a time. Have any suggestions?

[xwtb]

The handwriting on the wall: Learn to read treble clef! But if you must have this stuff in bass clef, lotsa luck finding it already written. Your best bet might be to get Band-In-A-Box and use its transposing function to recast the treble clef fiddle part into bass clef. Many of the more common fiddle tunes can be found as BIAB files. Or you can enter them via mouse, or convert from MIDI files.

You're in for a real workout. Great project for polishing your technical chops, even if you don't get to where you can show up a fiddle player. And when you can bow Liberty or Cuckoo's Nest at bluegrass tempos, go back and pizz 'em, up to speed!

[MT Spaces]

Good Advice from Shawnee Kansas right there .

In the meantime ..... Listen to some of Jason Sypher's stuff here at TB ..... He arcos some nice fiddle-tunes.

Buy the Steve Kaufman's 4-Hour Bluegrass Workout ..... I think he has some bass-clef in there .... https://www.acoustic-kamp.com/hotlin...=bgwrk4hrcombo . If there's no bass-clef in those .... Heck .... Just a few ledger-lines different and you will have them nailed .

Those tunes are Irish / Celtic / Standard Bluegrass numbers that everyone should know. I only own a beat-up-old original Kay bow right now but I'm gonna get me a real-bow and practice This Winter.

[Jason Sypher]

I would learn the tunes from ear. You can get the notes from the page but the phrasing is often where a fiddler earns his wings. Bowing is extremely personal and will pretty much have to be learned on your own. The books just don't teach you the drive and the feel. It's not that they're not useful, they are, and learning treble clef will come in handy down the road, I guarantee it but get some versions that you like and start working them out on the bass. It's a labor of love but when it starts to come together it's really a lot of fun. I don't have any clips of fiddle tunes up on my myspace right now but you can check these out on my server....http://public.me.com/bassnote Once on the page click on "public". There should be some stuff there. Bruil is not really that much bowing but a cool tune played live. Frawleys is a duet with myself. Green Groves of Erin is a jig. Big Scioti you probably know. Winter It is Past is a duet with Susan McKeown. Good luck!

[bassiszen]

Hey Jason, your link isn't working. Is that the correct URL?

[Jason Sypher]

I've never been good at this mobileme thing. It should work fine now.

[flip18436572]

Originally Posted by bassiszen

Hey Jason, your link isn't working. Is that the correct URL?

It worked fine for me.

[shadygrove]

Here's some more from Jason on YouTube. Great stuff Jason! Love the shuffles and double stop/drones. You've really got that old-time fiddle sound in your playing.

Elzick's Farewell...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntpFu...eature=related

Washington's March...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlJuJFGkoJk&NR=1

Big Scioti...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4HSs...eature=related


Bassiszen... here's a link to a free download of the King Street Sessions Tunebook "more tunes than are good for you... over 1000 celtic tunes with suggested guitar chords. I've found a lot of the Carolan (aka O'Carolan ) tunes a good to place start.

Buffalo Bob's suggestion on the Steve Kaufman 4-hr Workout also looks good. I don't have it, but think I'll pick one up. A lot of those tunes get called at the fiddler jams around here, I need the practice, and it will be helpful for learning to have the tunes at different speeds.

I'm just starting out playing celtic/bluegrass/old-time fiddle tunes with the bow too. We have a good cello player in our old-time fiddlers group that I'll bow roots of guitar chords behind his melody and throw in a little bass run here or there and then he'll back when I attempt melody. It also helps if you've got some strong guitar and mando rhythm players to play with. You just have to tell them... "i've been backing you guys all night, now it's your turn" so they're not still all looking to you to keep holding down the beat.

edit: oh, and +1 to what Jason said about phrasing, drive and feel. The notes on paper can get you started, but it won't sound like "Red Haired Boy"

[LeslieD]

I agree with Jason that it's best to learn by ear. I just didn't have the time or patience to do that (and most of the time I can only learn part of the song by ear). So I wrote out parts for a few of my favorite fiddle tunes and ones that laid well on the bass (some tunes just don't work that well). Easy ones to start with are Road to Lisdoonvarna and Swallowtail Jig. Also John Ryan's Polka (you might remember that that's the tune that the group Gaelic Storm played in the movie "Titanic"). One of my favorites is Shenandoah Falls by Jennifer Wrigley (a friend of mine has it posted on his fiddle tune website: http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm).

A few years back I REALLY REALLY wanted to learn more fiddle tunes on the bass, but I just couldn't play them fast enough. So...I started playing an actual fiddle. The funny thing that happened is that I was able to really learn some tunes on the fiddle and got them so solidly in my head that I could start to pick them out by ear on the bass. I think I only know about 30 tunes on the fiddle, but it really helped me be a better bass player. So now I go to jams with both a bass and a fiddle. If there's already a bass player at the jam, I can always play the fiddle.

[Jason Sypher]

I did exactly the same thing. Once I started to play the fiddle, fiddling on the bass became more and more clear.

[R Sturm]

My experience, too. I've played bass 15 or more years before even picking up a fiddle. Until then, I only played bass on the bass (which may very well be the best thing to do, although it is not the most imaginative), plus exercises.

But after I became an an ok fiddler, playing fiddle tunes on the bass became more natural, it can be fun, and it is certainly is a fun way to improve your technique. There are a few fiddle tunes that lie reasonably well on the bass (the aforementioned Road to Lisdoonvarna is one, Angeline the Baker), but most are awkward on the bass. The transfer is much easier if you can first get them to sound right on the fiddle before trying it on the bass. Fiddle tunes are easy and don't take much technique, so you can focus on the important stuff: rhythm, phrasing, bowing. But moved to the bass, the notes may become more difficult, sometimes extraordinarily difficult at standard speed (we're talking cut time at 120, so you have 8 notes per second on a hoedown). Jigs are obviously easier than reels or hoedowns because of the tempo. Most promising are tunes with a restricted range, bagpipe tunes are good, some Breton tunes, whereas most typical fiddle tune get too hard. I haven't successfully transfered more than 1/10 of the fiddle tunes I play to the bass. Jason makes it look easier than it is!

Maybe we should start another post where collect good bass fiddling links. Haven't seen any other than Jason's (and a bad experiment of mine in cross-tuning). Or maybe that means time to record or few new ones.

[Jake deVilliers]

Ashokan Farewell is pretty natural on the bass. Let's face it, if I can bow it, anybody can!

[LeslieD]

Yes, Ashokan Farewell works fine on bass as does a number of other waltzes (Southwind comes to mind--it's in the Fiddler's Fakebook). I agree that it's awfully hard to play most fiddle tunes as fast as it's typically played on violin, so I mostly stick to jigs, waltzes and stuff like Angeline the Baker & Old Joe Clark. I don't have an extension on any of my basses, so it seems that most of the D fiddle tunes are a problem. On occasion I've cheated and modified the tunes so that it works, but it never quite sounds right. And yes, Jason makes it look way easier than it is!

One of the more frustrating things I've discovered is that I can often play (on bass) either the A or B part, but not both. When I jam with my bluegrass band, I'll let them know which part I can manage and I'll take a break for only that part and the fiddler will play the other.

[R Sturm]

Originally Posted by LeslieD

I don't have an extension on any of my basses, so it seems that most of the D fiddle tunes are a problem.

How about the old-timey DADA bass tuning:
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiddlefe.../7/EtxcO04Egek

But below the (regular) D string, it just becomes too rumbly to be very musical.

Waltzes, and similar slow tunes are easily manageable, they transfer well, sound fine, are rewarding to play (but aren't that flashy or exciting).

But when I go to the standard old-time/bluegrass warhorses, it drops to 1 in 10, tunes like Arkansas traveller, Cherokee Shuffle, etc. And I'm just talking about a plain jane version, not a contest version. I'm at 0 for those, can't even transfer any of these variations of Grey Eagle (maybe Jason could)
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiddlefe...11/4RAPSWKOMg0

[LeslieD]

Originally Posted by R Sturm

How about the old-timey DADA bass tuning:
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiddlefe.../7/EtxcO04Egek

But below the (regular) D string, it just becomes too rumbly to be very musical.

Waltzes, and similar slow tunes are easily manageable, they transfer well, sound fine, are rewarding to play (but aren't that flashy or exciting).

But when I go to the standard old-time/bluegrass warhorses, it drops to 1 in 10, tunes like Arkansas traveller, Cherokee Shuffle, etc. And I'm just talking about a plain jane version, not a contest version. I'm at 0 for those, can't even transfer any of these variations of Grey Eagle (maybe Jason could)
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiddlefe...11/4RAPSWKOMg0

I'm really lousy at using alternate tunings, but it would be incredibly helpful to have the low D.

Yes, the slower tunes aren't flashy. I've combed through the Fiddle Fakebook looking for tunes that would work on the bass, and only came up with 10 or 15 that I'd attempt. If you've got a lower D, you might want to try Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine (a march). It's not "flashy" but it would be easier to play it up-to-speed than the reels. Though they aren't the well-known old timey tunes, I've come across a few New England contradance tunes that work pretty well on bass. Tunes that come to mind are Dancing Bear and Old Grey Cat. I have a simplified version of Chinese Breakdown (which is a polka I think) that might also work on bass. One other tune I really like on bass is Jim and Judy's Wedding (a waltz). Most of these are on my friend's website, but unfortunately they are all in treble clef. http://www.me.psu.edu/lamancusa/tunes.htm

[xwtb]

I don't think a low D would help me a bit, seein's how my melodies disappear into the mud just below the open D string anyway (the more so with increased tempos, of course.) But I would really like to try a 5-string (bass) with a high C. That would take some of the frenzy out of those octave-and-a-half lunges from D to A that so many D tunes seem to want to do.

BTW, thanks RSturm and LeslieD for passing the word along about the King Street Sessions and John Lamancusa's site-- those are two fabulous resources.

[Jason Sypher]

I kind of have to agree about that low D. Hard to really make anything happen with that unless it's something really slow. There is the option of just gracing it once in awhile to give more depth but even still, my experience is that it gets too muddy. I have found that lowering the A string to a G can be useful for a G tune. It's proximity to the D and G string make it more usable. Here's something I just did for fun in the basement. It's not something I usually play because it's pretty tricky with all the shifting etc. I threw down a little guitar over it to give some harmonic definition.
Click on:
Jenny On The Railroad....in A
http://public.me.com/bassnote

[MT Spaces]

I posted some fiddle-tune cheat-sheets in someother thread ... I forgot Where ... Old Timer's Disease . Someone mentioned "Elzick's Farewell" .... My Brain came alive. Great Tune.

I played a Contra Dance 11/15 and had to learn Elzick's (sans bow) on-into John Sharps Tune as a medley. I sure had fun learning all those new-tunes. Pizz-only.

Here are my cheat sheets ... Maybe these will help somebody else. I know I posted them somewhere-else but I forgot where ....

[MT Spaces]

Originally Posted by Jake deVilliers

Ashokan Farewell is pretty natural on the bass. Let's face it, if I can bow it, anybody can!

Not Me Pal .... Teach me how when I see you next and get my Kay back from you. I still have Troubles with the friggin'-chords ... How do you expect me to saw-them-right with a friggin'-bow . Damn Canadians Anyhow .... Smart-Asses.

P.S. Jake Buddy .... Do you know Ook Pic Waltz ?? I love it .... I hate it. That one drives me crazy too . Practice it up and teach me (bow not necessary )... Next time I see you.

[Jake deVilliers]

Originally Posted by Bob Knebel

Not Me Pal .... Teach me how when I see you next and get my Kay back from you. I still have Troubles with the friggin'-chords ... How do you expect me to saw-them-right with a friggin'-bow . Damn Canadians Anyhow .... Smart-Asses.

P.S. Jake Buddy .... Do you know Ook Pic Waltz ?? I love it .... I hate it. That one drives me crazy too . Practice it up and teach me (bow not necessary )... Next time I see you.

Ookpik Waltz eh? I don't even play that on guitar!

The guy who wrote that, Frankie Rogers, passed away late this summer here in Vancouver. Frankie was a GREAT fiddle player and a hell of a showman - he claimed that 'Back Up and Push' was his tune 'Rubber Dolly' transposed to 'C'. All I know is that I was lucky enough to play with him a few times through the years.

He had an incredibly light, almost effervescent bowing style that really brought those slightly swingy tunes to life. We'll miss him.