Fiddle Studio
The glasses clink and the talk and laughter grow louder. In the corner of the pub, musicians sit and play traditional dance tunes that make your feet want to stomp and slide. Join fiddler Meg Wobus Beller as she brings you along into the world of fiddling and traditional music, from bow-grips and double stops to Old-Time tunes and Irish jigs.
Fiddle Studio
Harmonizing on the fiddle (Stoney Steps)
Let's talk about playing harmonies on the fiddle. How can you get started with learning and playing harmonies and how do you get better at coming up with them on the fly?
Our tune this week is the Irish single reel in D, Stoney Steps.
Reach me at meganbeller@fiddlestudio.com.
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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 the tune Stoney Steps from a session at the Art House Bar in Baltimore, Maryland. The tune Stoney Steps from a session at the Art House Bar in Baltimore, Maryland. Hello everyone, I hope you are well. Today we'll be talking about fiddle harmony playing harmonies on the fiddle. I didn't really grow up playing any harmonies on the fiddle or harmonizing really on any instrument except vocally. My mother grew up in a family she had five sisters and they would harmonize. So I heard my mom and my aunts harmonize a lot growing up and my parents also sang in a folk music club. There was a lot of harmony. So I was doing that from a pretty early age and I think it helped me a lot get used to harmonizing later when I started to do it on the fiddle. I mean single note melodies are wonderful but in my opinion when you add a harmony onto that, it can tug at the heartstrings, add a little more feeling into the music. I don't know that it's feeling in the music, but you can feel more. I will feel more from a harmony will really make me kind of wake up to the music and be like whoa, you know, it grabs me, which doesn't always happen with just a single note melody. If you're just doing harmony all the time and there's never a change in that, I think it's not as attention grabbing as if you kind of go back and forth and sometimes it's the melody and then sometimes this harmony comes in. It's really beautiful Harmony. Of course are notes above or below the melody that mostly follow the shape of the melody. So I've taught students to harmonize shape of the melody. So I've taught students to harmonize and usually the first thing I teach them which is what I started out doing for the fiddle, even though I harmonized in singing for fiddling I would generally learn a harmony note by note.
Speaker 2:If you can learn a tune, you can learn a harmony. Harmony is just like a tune. It's a little easier than learning a tune if you already know the tune because it sounds kind of like the tune, only a little bit higher or a little bit lower. It is a little harder than learning a tune because it might not make as much sense as a tune, because you may have to adjust sort of the shape of the melody to fit in with the chords. You can work out a harmony slowly. I mean, there's been dozens of times in my life I've had to say to someone, to a friend or someone I'm playing music with, can you go through that really slow, note by note, so I can work out a harmony? And when I was younger I would write it down because I'd be afraid I would forget it and you can check those notes against the chord. You can't always just go two notes away. You have to. Sometimes you have to be three notes away or four notes away to help it fit with the chord.
Speaker 2:A different way to come at it is to learn and get comfortable improvising, whether you're thinking about the theory or not. If you learn to play inside of chords and scales and you know a melody, you can play within those chords and scales and riff on the melody and the shape of the melody and that's going to get you harmonizing as well. The more harmonies that you play, whether you're reading them off a page or working them out, whether you're reading them off a page or working them out, writing them down or just memorizing them or experimenting with them the more you do with harmonizing it really does get easier and I've seen a lot of people work on it. I've had students who have gotten better than me at harmonizing and some students who have learned a few. And they have those. They know them, they'll bring it out, you know, for playing Calliope House. They know that Calliope House harmony and they'll play it, but they're not necessarily comfortable like improvising harmony on the spot, which is that's tricky. I'm not always comfortable doing that either. If I'm on a stage, you know, and it has to sound good the first time.
Speaker 2:When to use harmonies, hmm, I love using harmonies with two fiddles. I mean, I harmonize these days a lot of singers and other instruments, but if you're playing with two fiddles and you trade off, you can do some harmonies. Then I also have another podcast on playing backup, where I talk a little bit about harmonizing and then I also talk about other things you can play that are not harmony, different kinds of like backup rhythms or long tones or sort of soaring above different ideas for you. It's very fun to learn a harmony. I have a little fiddle class right now and we're going to do a performance and one of the tunes is the wren, a couple kids who haven't done any harmonizing before, have learned the harmony for the wren, and when they start playing it and you just see everyone's eyes light up, the sound of it with the harmony is more exciting and really sounds great, gets the kids very excited.
Speaker 2:Our tune for today is the Stoney Steps. This is an Irish tune that most folks associate with Matt Malloy. He played it on an album and he called the album the Stoney Steps. So people think about the Stoney Steps, they think about Matt Malloy. I pulled a little. What did I do? I pulled a little quote of his about the album from the internet, but I forgot to ask Charley how to pronounce the Irish. So I'll be kind of paraphrasing it.
Speaker 2:He talks about where he comes from, County Rose Common, and that he had learned his music from his father, Jim, who came from County Sligo. His father played the flute, as did his uncle, Matt. They learned from their father and so on. So yeah, very long line of flute players coming down to Mount Molloy. He says the area of North Rose Common and South Sligo was and is very rich in fiddle and flute music. Then he adds nothing else mind, and most of the sources mentioned come from this area. So the sources for the tunes on his album Michael Coleman, James Morrison, Johnny Henry and the McDonaghs. Well, that's about it, so you should look up his version. It sounds fabulous. You can also find it on the album At their Best Sean McGuire and Roger Sherlock. Yeah, so this is a nice little tune. Stoney Steps, here we go.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2:You can find the music for today's tune at fiddlestudiocom, along with my books, courses and membership for learning to fiddle. I'll be back next week with another tune for you. Have a wonderful day.
