New Fiddle Instructor – Megan Lynch Chowning

[Casey Willis]

Great news, Fiddlevideo subscribers…I’m excited to announce that Megan Lynch Chowning will be joining the Fiddlevideo instructor team in 2020!!!

Megan is a 7-time National Fiddling Champion and will bring some serious Texas/Contest-style expertise to the project. She also has a strong Country and Bluegrass background and will be teaching a course on Bluegrass fiddling including the Nashville number system.

Megan will be in the Fiddlevideo studios in June of this year…feel free to post tune suggestions and/or questions you have about playing Bluegrass fiddle in this post. She may choose to teach a tune you request or cover a question you ask!

Learn more about Megan here.

Cheers!

C

[uncleted]

She is good!!

[dwagner]

Wow. Nice to have another great fiddler on board.

[Morris]

Whoohoo!

[Casey Willis]

Bumping this thread to give folks an update. Megan was unable to travel to the Fiddlevideo studios in 2020 due to the pandemic. Not to worry…Megan is still very excited about joining the instructor team!! She has a ton of great ideas on how to teach bluegrass/country improv. And of course, she’ll be teaching a bunch of Contest-Style and Bluegrass tunes.

We hope Megan will be able to travel to the FIddlevideo.com studios to record her first set of lessons later this spring (pandemic permitting). We’ve had a few tune requests for Megan roll in on other threads and via email (listed below). Feel free to chime in with any Bluegrass or Texas Style type tunes you would like Megan to consider recording/teaching when she makes it to the studio. It’s going to be great to have her join the project…she’s an amazing player and an outstanding teacher!!

-East Tennessee Blues
-Deep Elum Blues
-Southern Flavor

OK…what other requests do we have??

[Casey Willis]

Adding a couple of requests which came in via email to this thread:

-Fine Times at Our House
-Grigsbys Hornpipe

[Casey Willis]

Bumping this thread up to see if anyone has any more requests for the latest instructor to be added to the Fiddlevideo website. I spoke with Megan a couple of days ago, and we’re sorting out times/schedules. Looks like she may visit the Fiddlevideo studios in late July of this year…

[Casey Willis]

Update – Megan’s first session for the project will be end of July/beginning of Aug this year. Excited to get her onboard!

Here’s a recent article on Megan from Strings Magazine: https://stringsmagazine.com/keep-connected-with-fiddler-and-educator-megan-lynch-chowning/

Cheers!
C

[thistle13]

Exciting!
I was just watching her great video on transitioning from classical to fiddle.

[Mark Llewellyn]

I joined on July 5th after seeing her name advertised on youtube with you and I’m looking forward to her lessons. She is my fiddle hero and I followed her to Weiser.

[Casey Willis]

Great to hear, Mark. We’re finalizing her list of tunes now, and I look forward to releasing the first batch this fall, sir.

She’s also already scheduled to be back in the studio for a couple of days in September, so we’ll keep adding to her lessons!

[Mark Llewellyn]

I have a question. How do you memorize a tune. I can read music, but the music that I play doesn’t stick in my head. I will play the tune onto a recorder and then learn it note to note to get it in my head. But the best contest fiddlers have so many tunes memorized, which first had to be technically worked out before getting memorized. I’m so envious of you and Casey, the Clarridges, Natalie and Leahy to name a few, but there must be a method you great fiddlers practice to cover so much ground in so short a time, relatively. But I’m getting worried about my age now, and want to stuff as many tunes into my memory as possible, and then have some time to play them. My goal is to learn 3 sets as played in a contest and have them to playing level in a year. I claim I was first in Weiser in 93′, because I was the very first fiddler of the contest at 8:00AM Monday morning., LOL. But I’ve never made the first cut and always played my best three tune in my first round (only round), but I’ve always felt I was a participant and supporter of the contest. Someone has to be last, although I did reach 21st one year and missed the cut by 14 points. I love all of you contest fiddlers, because I know how hard you all have worked to be tops, but Megan you’ve always been my fiddle hero.

[Megan Lynch Chowning]

Howdy Mark!
I have to say, I’ve always been the type to memorize tunes in sections, usually two bars at a time. I actually talk a lot about this technique in my tune videos that will be here on this site within the next few months, yay! But I also hope you realize, we contest fiddlers don’t always know as many tunes as you might think. I know it seems intimidating but we usually work really hard on a few rounds and then have another group of tunes for which we know the basic melodies and and the chord progressions and we just play around with those, starting simple and adding things as we get more comfortable. I think that you might expect that we have memorized all of the things we ever play, but it’s really more that we memorize the simple stuff and go from there. So proud of you for staying motivated and I hope you enjoy all the stuff I have coming up here.
Cheers, Megan

[miltonbrownlow]

Clarinet Polka possible lesson

[Casey Willis]

Good call, Milton. That’s one that came up in conversation last session. I’ll mention it to Megan in her next session!

[Austin Lindsay]

Kitchen Girl 🙂

[Casey Willis]

I’ll add it to Megan’s list, Austin…she may know it/choose to teach it.

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