A couple of tools which have been really handy for me in managing the monthly virtual jams are OBS Studio and an Airturn BT200S-6 bluetooth foot pedal. Here’s how I’m using them: In OBS, I’m creating two scenes. The first …
I couldn’t quickly find a good tutorial on how to use the loop controls in Anytune, so I made a quick one. It turns out YouTube disabled their annotation tool a few months ago, which is a pain, because I’d …
Ryan’s Mammoth Collection was published in the 1880s and later republished (by someone else, without crediting the original publisher or author) as “Cole’s 1000 Fiddle Tunes” in the 1940s. It contains 1050 tunes (although some of them are almost certainly duplicates …
Fiddle Hell is “an informal gathering of fiddlers to meet, jam, learn, and have fun.” It’s named after the Saturday night jam session, which looks to be a large room full of (mostly) fiddlers all playing together. Here’s a sample: …
There are a number of utilities to help you learn music from recordings by slowing them down while maintaining the pitch. The one I’ve been using recently is Anytune, an iPad app. The free version has degraded audio quality after …
Old-Time Festival Tunes, by Dan Levenson This two-volume set is available for clawhammer banjo in one volume and fiddle/mandolin in the other. Both books contain the same repertoire of 117 tunes, in a “basic” and “advanced” arrangement in standard notation …
The Portland Collection, by Sue Songer and Clyde Curley The Portland Collection is three books (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) and three companion recordings collecting contra dance tunes as played in and around Portland, OR. One of the recordings, …
The Complete Fiddle Tunes I Either Did or Did Not Learn at the Tractor Tavern, by Gene Silberberg From the preface: “This collection contains the tunes in the original Fiddle Tunes I Learned at the Tractor Tavern and 93 Tunes …
English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish Fiddle Tunes, by Robin Williamson I played violin in middle school, and was signed up for lessons with a classical violinist who taught many fine orchestral violin players. She was clearly scandalized when I brought …
The New England Fiddler’s Repertoire, by Randy Miller et al. This book of contra dance tunes as played in New England was one of the first two books of fiddle tunes I bought. I wish I still had my first …