Foot Movements While Playing the Fiddle for Beginners

Video Transcript

Hi! I’m David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. I’m going to play and talk about the bowing and rhythm of the reel. Roughly generally speaking overall reels are in what some people would call duple meter: they’re either 2/2, 2/4, 4/4 or common time, or sometimes cut time. Our fiddle traditions are full of reels: Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh, French Canadian, Cape Breton, Appalachian, they go on and on. There’s a characteristic rhythm to the reel which I think is especially fun to explore in music from Canada. It’s using the feet for percussion and having a foot tap on beats 1, 3 and 4. And I use the heel and the toe. And why am I focusing on this before playing a tune? I think that there’s something to be said for getting some sort of a muscle memory for the experience of the rhythm; and since it’s related to dance music, the feet are actually a pretty good place to focus on. So, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4, heel, toe, foot, heel, toe, foot, heel, here’s the beat, here’s the beat, here’s the beat, 3 4 1 3 4 1 and also right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right and it’s hard to do that talk and play all at once so I’m just going to use my feet and play.

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