Using this collection

It is my humble opinion that too many people are relying too heavily on simply reading tunes out of books. When they approach fiddling this way, they seem to miss out on the essence of the rhythm and phrasing that are crucial to sounding like real old time fiddling, sounding rather stilted to my ears. Listen, listen, listen and than listen some more, before you try and play the tunes! You will remember them better and have a better sense of where to go with your own phrasing and variations. Plus, you will glean so much more in terms of the subtlety of style expressed. Better yet, as Brid suggests, seek out your local, traditional old time fiddler and watch, listen, study, jam, imitate and then play the tunes your own way.

One trick I’ve found when working from the written page is to play a short phrase and then put the fiddle down, blur my eyes a little as I scan the notes on page while singing the tune in my head. Then run it through your head (your “inner fiddler”) without reference to the paper.

Choice of tunes

These are mostly tunes I’ve learned from old time fiddlers from the broader northwest whom I’ve met at contests, campouts and travels hither and yon. I tend to focus on dance tunes because that is what I know best. Some of you have asked why I don’t feature more songs with words to sing, Texas contest tunes, Irish, Appalachian, New England, Cajun etcetera. Simply put - there are plenty of song and tune books available for those areas of music and I’m happy to leave that to someone else. We have such a deep heritage in the Northwest of fiddling, I feel more compelled to do what I can to document and present these riches. (For Texas tunes, see Pete Martin’s fine works on Benny Thomasson.)

Changes from the original Newsletter publications

I’ve kept changes in text and transcription to a minimum except for obvious typos and errors and, in a few cases, to provide additional information that has arisen. Some of the transcriptions were changed to be more closely alligned with the particular recordings used for this cd. Most were left alone; so some will, as is typical, be a little bit different than the recorded version, but they still represent one way that I (or the source) played the tune at some point in time. Use your ear and your imagination to create your own adaptation of these tunes.

Good luck and have fun.

Stuart Williams