Double stops and drones (Tail Toddle)

This episode covers how Megan helps her students learn to play double stops and drones and presents a setting of Tail Toddle from a workshop with Jeremy Kittel at Fiddle Hell. 

The artist mentioned is Jeremy Kittel.

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Find the sheet music for this fiddle tune on the Fiddle Studio blog. Get more information about Meg's books, courses, and membership for learning to play the fiddle at fiddlestudio.com.

Keep in touch with Meg at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.

Transcript

Welcome to the Fiddle Studio podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Megan Beller, and today I'll be bringing you a setting of tale toddle from a workshop with Jeremy Kittel at Fiddle Hell. 

Hi everyone, I hope you're well. Today, I'm going to be talking about double stops, when you play two strings at once on the fiddle. First, we'll cover the difference between double stops and drones. In the classical world, drones aren't really a thing. If you're playing two strings, that's a double stop. 

In the fiddle world, we make a distinction. If you are playing a double stop, you're using two fingers. So one finger on one string, different finger on a different string, usually, and then playing those two strings at the same time, that would be a double stop. If you're putting your fingers on one string, and then just playing another open string at the same time, that's a drone, and drones are much more common in fiddling than in classical. 

Let's start with drones. The problem with drones is that the strings are close together on the violin. But our fingers are only supposed to hit one of the strings, the other one is supposed to be an open string. But the strings are close together. And it's hard to get your finger not to touch that other string. 

The easy way to drone if it fits the key is to have your fingers on a string, for instance, the A string, and then play the string below that would be the D string as a drone, you still have to learn to bow on a different string. I mean, playing two strings at once is a different arm height. 

So you have to use that arm height while your fingers are only on the A string. And probably if you've been playing fiddle for a little while, you have practiced having your arm at that A string height a lot. And so your arm is going to be resistant to going to a different height. While your fingers are on the A string, it really wants to be at that a string height. So you still have to learn that the hard drone. 

The hard drone is playing the string above, you have that issue with the bow and then you have to try to make the tunnel you need to try to get your fingers not to brush the string. And it's tricky. It will help if you make sure you're only using one, one finger at a time, that makes a difference. Easier to keep one finger from brushing the string, then three fingers, fingers got to be super boxy up up on their tips, cut your nails, get them way up on their tips. 

If your fingers are really big, it's not your fault. Fingers come in all different sizes. You can put them even farther from the string I've had students put their fingers on the D string, the fingers touching the A, they're playing the A and the E string, and the E string is droning and they get that tunnel because their finger is so far over. It's over on the D string. That went sort of down a rabbit hole there. 

When you're using two fingers, well that's challenging because it's hard enough to get one finger and tune on the fiddle, right. No frets. You know, check each finger individually put them together, you can listen for the overtones. I don't want to get into it too much here, but that's a great way to check a double stop where you have two fingers down. Look, it's something that is hard work and takes practice but it will make your overall tuning better. And in fact, when I am worried that I'm not playing in tune the first thing I do is get out my double stop etudes and I go through them. 

One other part of double stops we talked a lot about the left hand is the bow and people experience strange crunchy noises when they're trying to play double stops. This usually comes from the instinct that if you're going to play two strings, you got to press twice as hard. Don't do that. That is what is leading to the crunching. You want to use a regular amount of pressure and just find the arm height where your bow is angled to hit both strings. It's getting that correct arm height for the double stop and as I kind of covered earlier. 

Your arm is used to those four heights for E string, A string, D string, G string, it's going to have to learn three new heights, the E/A, the A/D, and the D/G. So if you're having trouble, just work on that, play just the E string. Tilt it up, play them together, go through your seven arm heights, warm up with that just an open strings, make sure you're not pressing twice as hard and then dive into your drones or double stops.

Okay, our tune for today is Tail Toddle It's a half length Scottish real in D major. I learned it from Jeremy Kittel at a session at Fiddle Hell. Jeremy Kittel is a very impressive musician. Great Scottish fiddler with great Scottish style also has a degree in jazz, multi genre player. I went to another workshop with him where he he talked about chops and I'll probably do a whole podcast on chops because that's a different kettle of fish. 

But in this chops workshop, he was showing us how you can learn once you get your chopping down you can sing over it and show us he sang the song Imagine he had a great voice and he's very good at chopping. He just had the whole room spellbound with this probably won't ever forget that moment just listening to him. Sing that song playing the backup on the violin while he did it really moving. 

Tail Toddle is a Scottish tune probably done pipes, fiddle. It's a very old tune found in manuscripts from the early 16th century, including the Sinckler where it's unnamed but got that Tail Toddle name pretty quickly. John Welsh put it in the Caledonian country dances the 1731 edition and called it Fiddle Faddle but I think later republished it and use the name Tail Toddle. 

There are Scottish words to it. They're kind of bawdy, it's, my father in law's a folk singer. He usually, he calls them bawdy songs when they're kind of dirty. So I'm not gonna really talk more about the words but you can go look them up. The tune is fabulous. And yeah, Charley and I learned this it's pretty straightforward easier than that French to last week. Here we go. 

Hey, thanks for listening, you can head over to fiddlestudio.com to find sheet music for this tune and more information about becoming a member of Fiddle Studio. I'll be back next time with another tune for you have a wonderful day.