The “Jig of Slurs” is tune that I feel it is perfect for expressing the joy that many of us Scandinavians feel in spring. The worst thing about our long winter is not the cold, but the darkness. Days are so short, and at the end of winter we feel weak and tired, like plants who have grown in darkness. And then, when spring finally arrives, it feels like being reborn!
And “Jig of Slurs” is such a joyful tune, so I feel that it is appropriate to play it in the merry month of May 🙂
It was in a fit of galloping spring madness 3 years ago that I, at the mature age of 54, got the silly idea into my head that I just had to learn to play the world’s most lovely instrument, namely the viola, even though I had never played a bowed instrument before!
I played piano and flute many years ago when I studied musicology (i.e. I am not a trained instrumentalist), but as jobs for musicologist were sparse, I worked in the IT industry for many years, and didn’t have time for music. So it was not until some 5-6 years ago that I got the time and energy to play an instrument again, and then I started playing Danish folk music on soprano recorder, because this was a cheap and easy instrument to play, but neither the recorder nor Danish folk music really resonated within me, and then, as I said, 3 years ago I got this idea that the viola was the right instrument for me.
So I bought a relatively cheap beginners instrument, a Gewa Ideale of impressive 16.5 ” (I really didn’t know what I was doing!) and “Fiddle for Dummies” by Michael Sanchez and started practicing. Progress was pitifully slow in the beginning, because for a looooong, long time I could play no more than a few minutes a day; my neck would start smarting and yell at me to stop (and my shoulders weren’t too happy about it, either), but after 2 years and many, MANY hours of neck-restoring yoga exercises (I guess sniggering and stiff-neck jokes are ok here!), I was able to play up to half an hour once or twice a day without too many problems, and I could play simple, slow tunes; unfortunately, I have no recordings from that period.
A friend of mine (same age) had got an even madder idea: he wanted to learn to play the Great Highland Bagpipe! Listening to some of the tunes he practiced, I got interested in Scottish folk music and tried to find a teacher in Denmark, but that proved impossible. In August 2015, I stumbled on FiddleVideo.com and discovered that this is a great place to learn Scottish fiddling, so in October 2015 I became a subscriber and started practicing primarily Scottish grooves, grace notes, and tunes, and I have really learned a lot more in the past 8 months, both about Scottish fiddling and about fiddling technique.
And this is where I am now: my grace notes are definitely not (yet!) as fast and clear as I would like them, but they are beginning to sound right (I think). If I try to play “Jig of Slurs” at dotted fourth = 120 bpm, like Hanneke Cassel does in the performance video , it is too fast for me to put in grace notes, but at 100 bpm I can put in some flicks and rolls.
So obviously “Jig of Slurs” is really above my level right now, but anyway I post it as it is now, and then I’ll leave it for now and come back to it next spring and make a new recording that (hopefully) will demonstrate great progress 🙂
(And btw: I have a lot to learn about recording and editing, too, but I will keep practicing that as well)
I hope others will also publish progress report, even though they are still in the process of learning a tune; it is inspiring to hear what others are working on, and recording yourself and listening critically is a most helpful technique for learning! Working on a goal like posting a tune also helps me keep practicing.
So, imagine me and some friends a fine sunny afternoon of the merry month of May, when finally, after a long, cold, dark winter, it is again possible to sit outdoors on the terrace of the local inn “Asminderød Kro”, and the air is not only filled with the singing of the birds and the scent of many flowers; it is also nice and warm, and the beer is nice and cold (and plentiful!) and everybody is feeling exuberant and want to sing and dance and hear what the silly old girl, who started playing viola, has accomplished so far:
The “cello” is really me playing viola; I used a digital audio workstation to process the audio file and transpose it an octave down.
I used the following sounds from Freesound.org:
32868__oniwe__smallaudiencelaughsthenclaps.wav
72947__benboncan__blackbird.wav
163995__leandros-ntounis__crowd-in-a-bar-lcr.wav
.
