How does jamming help with your fiddle playing and how does practicing help your fiddle playing. We dive into this topic, exploring how each can help you improve on the fiddle and when one might be a little more useful to meet a specific playing goal.
Our tune this week is called Sleeping on the Floor, from the French Canadian song Ma Pallaissse by La Bolduc. UPDATE: I discovered Mary Bolduc's connection to this tune after I recorded the podcast, so the composer/collector note is an update to what I said in the podcast. Thanks!
Email me at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Music, Spotify, or Buzzsprout. Find me on YouTube and Bandcamp.
Here are my Fiddle Studio books and my website Fiddle Studio where you can find my courses and mailing list and sign up for my Top 10 Fiddle Tunes!
How does jamming help with your fiddle playing and how does practicing help your fiddle playing. We dive into this topic, exploring how each can help you improve on the fiddle and when one might be a little more useful to meet a specific playing goal.
Our tune this week is called Sleeping on the Floor, from the French Canadian song Ma Pallaissse by La Bolduc. UPDATE: I discovered Mary Bolduc's connection to this tune after I recorded the podcast, so the composer/collector note is an update to what I said in the podcast. Thanks!
Email me at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.
Listen and subscribe on Apple Music, Spotify, or Buzzsprout. Find me on YouTube and Bandcamp.
Here are my Fiddle Studio books and my website Fiddle Studio where you can find my courses and mailing list and sign up for my Top 10 Fiddle Tunes!
Welcome to the Fiddle Studio Podcast featuring tunes and stories from the world of traditional music and fiddling. I'm Meg Wobus Beller and today I'll be bringing you a setting of Sleeping on the Floor from a Genticorum by at Fiddle Hell. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we will be talking about jamming versus practicing. We are talking about jamming versus practicing. It would be nice if I had someone to debate this with. Which is better, going to jams or practicing at home? I don't, so I'm just going to debate myself. It's kind of what I do all the time. I have at times suggested more jamming or more practicing to students or to people who just reach out for advice. So when I was planning this podcast, I was thinking about that. I was thinking about, well, what are the times when I feel like more playing with other people will be helpful for someone's playing, and when would more playing by yourself be helpful for someone's playing? We're going to start with practicing. We'll talk about what practicing is good for, and by practicing I mean playing completely by yourself and listening to yourself. It doesn't necessarily have to be that you're playing scales and etudes and you've got your metronome on and you've got your drone on. It is playing alone and paying attention to the quality of what you're playing is what I'll define practicing to be. So the big strengths for practicing one is you can take your time. So this is pretty different from jamming, where you have to keep up with everyone else. You can take your time and think through what you're doing.
Meg Wobus Beller:I really saw this with one of my kids who thinks through things a little bit slower. They would go to their violin lesson and their violin teacher would be very frustrated that they weren't playing in time in tempo. And she thought she was a great teacher, but she thought that they couldn't feel the time, that they didn't know what the song was supposed to sound like. They didn't know how to play in tempo. My theory of the matter was I mean partly because I knew that this kid knew the music, because my kids hear a lot of music. I mean they're going around humming fiddle tunes and Suzuki songs all the time so I knew that they knew the music.
Meg Wobus Beller:I saw them work on it at home and when they went slowly and they would stop to think about what comes next, they could get the next note. It was sort of thinking, and then the finger would go to the spot and then they would continue and it would be correct. But when they were trying to be forced into a tempo they were starting to be a lot of mistakes and it was like, well, why can't you play in tempo? Oh, why don't you know this? Why are there so many mistakes? If you're flailing I certainly know what it feels like to keep up with a tempo Then you may want to practice at home and stop if you're not sure what comes next or if you're having trouble slow way down.
Meg Wobus Beller:So it just gives you the ability to slow down or stop to let your brain catch up, and I think it's useful, because if you don't take the time to think it through yourself, you're not like creating those neuro pathways. So, in addition to the ability to be sort of dragged along by the group, you also want to be able to do it on your own, even if it means stopping to think about, like, okay, I have to go to this string and use this finger After you stop and think about it and do it slowly by yourself. You're starting to practice that action, practice that thinking process and start to make it more automatic in your brain and in your hand in your playing. What was I talking about? Yeah, so one great thing about practicing is that you can stop and think while you're doing it. Another one is that you hear the honest truth of how you sound. So that's what I wrote down in my notes. It's kind of a harsh way of saying it, but when you play with other people, it can sweeten the sound of what's happening. I think that's great.
Meg Wobus Beller:I play a lot with my students, especially kids, especially beginners. I play with them to sweeten the sound, to sweeten the experience, to give them more opportunity to hear the kind of sound they're going for, and just to make it more fun and beautiful for them to play. They're playing, but they're hearing something that's sweeter than what they're producing on their own, because I've been doing this for oh my gosh, like going on 40 years, and it sounds better when I play with them. If you're looking for ways to identify things to work on, you need that for lack of a better word harsh reality. So, whether it's playing completely by yourself and listening to it, that way, sometimes I can't really tell what it sounds like when I'm playing by myself and I actually have to record myself and listen back. So it's sort of an extra layer of detachment and that helps. So whether you record yourself and listen or just by playing alone, you can listen.
Meg Wobus Beller:There are a lot of things that will get glossed over when you're playing with other people, but when you're playing completely by yourself and it certainly if you're playing by yourself for someone else, like a teacher or performance or in some way that makes you nervous you will become hypersensitive to your issues, and by becoming sensitive to them and being aware of them, that does allow you to start to make a plan to work on them. I guess the other thing I'll say about practicing is it gives you a chance to noodle around, to try things, to play a song that you like over and over again To do the kinds of things that help you. I use a ton of rhythms when I practice. My poor family they hear me play a reel slowly and then go through the whole thing dump, dump, dump, dump, dump and then do it Ducka, ducka, ducka, ducka, ducka, and they're like, oh, when will this end? Or do very slow reps or whatever is helpful for you that other people don't want to play with you. You can do that on your own. So good things for practicing slowing down, letting your brain catch up. What was the second one? Hearing the honest truth of how you sound, becoming aware of that and noodling, and also doing the kind of woodshed practice, repetition, metronome work, drone work, whatever helps you. That might not be what other people want to do in a session.
Meg Wobus Beller:The benefits of jamming. Let's move on to that. I mean, the first thing that comes to mind about jamming is just that people keep going. It keeps going and you have to try to keep up and if you get off you have to jump in. So jumping in is hard and it's a skill, and usually at a jam somebody else is starting the tune and you're going to have to jump in and in order to do that you have to either know how to start to noodle and pick up a tune as you go, or even if it's a tune you know, you have to know it well enough to just come in while it's still going on. If you think about picking up the pledge of allegiance in the middle, you have to know it pretty well to just pick it up from a random word in the middle and then recite the rest of it correctly. So that's kind of what you're practicing in terms of jumping in and then keeping up with the group. A wrong note goes by, you just keep going, you squeak, you just keep going. You're on the wrong string. You realize it. You just keep going. Usually, I guess, when you practice that's probably not the case. So the jam sort of requires you to do that.
Meg Wobus Beller:I guess the opposite of what I said about being aware of your sound jamming with other people will sweeten your sound. You know, if you, as long as you're not overpowering anyone, it's going to sound better and it will probably be more fun for you. More beautiful sounding. It's nice to do all the motions of playing your instrument and be listening to something really enjoyable. It's the same thing if you love singing in a choir. I mean, I've played in really big orchestras and there's like a dopamine rush that you get from playing and having your sound join a big, beautiful group sound. It's just great, whether it's a jam or a session or an orchestra concert.
Meg Wobus Beller:Jamming also helps you get reps in. I don't think I ever play a tune seven times in a row at home, but I do it in an old time jam. Getting in your reps. That's useful. I'm sure you all know what that's useful for Just burning the tune into your brain, the finger patterns, all of it. So when would you want to jam more? If you need more repertoire, jamming is a good way to do that, especially if you're good about getting your phone out recording tunes. You don't know If you need to work on your memory. Jamming is good for that because you're just like I said, getting your reps in helps your memory.
Meg Wobus Beller:If you're working on style, I think a jam is a great place if there's good players and you can hear what they're doing and you're just sort of imprinting. It's like picking up the accent of the language you're learning. So you might go and speak to people in French to kind of practice your French, but you might listen to French radio or watch TV to just try to hear more of the correct accent. That would be like picking up style at a jam. And if you're mostly up to speed and you're trying to get over a hump, I remember my husband was mostly up to speed on his flute reels. He was able to like play along, but not. It was hard for him to lead or start a tune and I suggested I thought that more jamming would help for that. I don't know, it was my take on it.
Meg Wobus Beller:When would more practicing be useful? If you want to jump up a level in the quality of your technique or your tone or your sound, you probably need to do some solo playing and introspection, some practicing to do that. If you feel like you're hitting a plateau or a wall in terms of the sound coming out of your instrument or how fast you can play, practicing is going to usually be necessary for that. If you kind of have to know a lot of tunes that you've picked up at jams and you want to fully know them, you probably need to practice for that. If you want to be able to lead more or get up to dance tempo, yeah, I guess for goals. For a lot of goals, practicing is useful, but for a lot of general long term like picking up the accent, getting the reps in, making things into your subconscious so you're not thinking about them as hard, going to lots of jams is great for that. I don't know. If you have other ideas, let me know. I guess there's a comment section in YouTube so you can leave a comment.
Meg Wobus Beller:We are going to do. I'll prepare myself for this. I really wish I could pronounce French, especially French from Quebec. We're going to do a couple of tunes that I got from Fiddle Hell, from the band Genticorum, who I'll talk about in a minute. In researching these tunes and even in the names of the tunes there's a lot of French and just admit, I don't know any French at all. I'm sorry, it's hard with specific people's names or to find the pronunciation. I thought about just trying to call Nicholas or Yann and saying, can you help me with this pronunciation, but I was shy to do that. So we're going to go ahead and I'm going to pronounce the French wrong. But we have a goal to learn that. If I had to decide between being able to pronounce Quebec French or just be able to play French Canadian fiddle really well, I'd probably pick the fiddle, that's one of my goals, but first I got to do guitar.
Meg Wobus Beller:So this tune the English name they gave us was Sleeping on the Floor and I did see it. It looks like it's a song by Labotis Arion, which is a really fun kind of party trad band from Quebec. If you've you can look up the song it's. They have an album called Cordial, like the drink Cordial, and this song Ma Paillasse Sleeping Sleeping on the Floor. So maybe that's related to palette, like palette on the floor, and it has French words, which I will obviously not be attempting. We got it from Genticorum. So Genticorum is Nicholas Williams plays flute, an accordion and piano. Really great flute player. Charlie's a big fan.
Meg Wobus Beller:The Fiddler is Pascal Gemme and he is just awesome French-Canadian fiddle with the feet, you know, very fluid, lots of improv, really fun tunes, really fun. Smiley, lovely man. Really great to work with him in fiddle hell. I really enjoyed it. And Yann Falquet plays guitar. Yann, I knew Nicholas and Yann from years back in Rochester. They were in a band called Tuq that would come down and play the contra dance there. I think Yann lives in Vermont now but great guitar player. Lots of different styles. They sing French songs. They play French dance music. Definitely check them out. Genticorum, they're on band camp. They have like their music there and their merch you can buy.
Meg Wobus Beller:And the other thing I wanted to tell you is that Pascal the fiddle player has a website that's like an online compendium of French-Canadian fiddle tunes. So there isn't really something like the session for French-Canadian tunes and they're so fun. But you can go to his website, pascalgemme. net, and he's got a whole bunch and he puts up the sheet music and the sound files for free. It's really cool. I founded the website and just kind of had a field day with it. So we're going to play this tune for you and I'll use the English title, which is Sleeping on the Floor. It's really fun. Quebec tune, if it sounds to you a little bit like Cajun or Zydeco, french Fiddling went north and French Fiddling went south. So there are similarities that you hear between the French-Canadian fiddling in the Quebec area and traditional music up there and the kind of French-Louisiana fiddling, cajun, Zydeco from down south, even sometimes the same tunes or the same rhythms that kind of remind you of it. Okay.