The Basic Old-time Shuffles
(Please be sure you've reviewed the page How to read fiddletab before you work with this lesson)
I don't know about you, but my first introduction to the fiddle went something like this: "OK, here's the basic shuffle... Long, short-short-long, short-short-long, short-short-long. See, here's how it sounds with Boil Dem Cabbage Down..." It was an introduction that doomed me to years of trying to conform every tune I learned to this basic shuffle, and it wasn't pretty. In fiddletab, the basic shuffle looks like this:
The basic shuffle
(Click on any of these mini-tabs to hear a representative audio recording )
Notice that all these examples start ahead of the downbeat, or on the right-foot-tap. This occurs quite a bit in the Appalachian style, both at the beginning of a tune and between phrases. If I didn't include this lead-in beat the examples might sound rushed and unnatural.
I tend to talk a lot of trash on the basic shuffle, but don't get me wrong -- it is a basic and important building block of old-time bowing, no doubt. But please don't get stuck there like I did! Once you understand the basic shuffle, let's move on...
A first step to getting un-stuck is to learn to add a bow pulse to the "long" eighth notes between the saw-strokes. It looks like this:
The basic shuffle with bow pulses (P)
There are very subtle differences between these bowing variations, and be forwarned that it can be quite difficult to execute solid bow pulses at slow tempos. They tend to be easier to do up to speed, where the weight and motion and springiness of the bow do some of the work for you, once you've learned to hold your tongue just right. If at first you don't succeed, try it a little faster and see if that doesn't help.
Many advanced players tend to use bow pulses a LOT, and I think frequently they aren't even fully aware of them. When a masterful player does a bow pulse, it can sound for all the world like a change of bow direction (saw stroke), but it's actually just a small acceleration of the bow while it continues in the same direction it was already going. So this tab is identical to the one above it, except I've added a P for each bow pulse at the appropriate place over the long notes. One way to think about this is that where you once had two sixteenth notes followed by an eight note, now you're using the same bowing but what the ear hears is an even succession of sixteenth notes. It's a very useful accent to much of the phrasing you'll encounter in old-time fiddling, and someday it will click for you and you'll understand it, despite how difficult it probably is to figure out what the heck I'm trying to convey here. A major consciousness-raiser and turning point for me was using the Amazing Slow Downer to listen to Bruce Molsky playing Buffalo Gals at half-speed or less. He uses such pulses a lot, and I highly recommend this exercise if you really want to hear them executed well.
OK, now we're gonna work on what I consider another essential variation to the basic shuffle. Brad Leftwich calls it the "Tommy Lick" after Tommy Jarrell. I call it the "pushed shuffle" or the "syncopated shuffle." You'll hear this bow phrasing used extensively in Tommy's playing, and also by many others who emulate the "Round Peak" sound. It's basically a basic shuffle with a pulse, but the bow changes direction sooner than you'd expect in one or two places. It's quite "simple," but I wouldn't call it "easy." It took me many months to make this feel natural, burn it into my nervous system and get it up to speed. I think the less time you have invested in the basic shuffle (above), the easier it will be for you to learn this phrasing.
The "Tommy Lick" or "Pushed Shuffle"
Remember to click on the tab to hear it played. To help you visually understand Tommy's tweak to the basic shuffle, let's stack them all up for easy comparision:
Basic Shuffle / Basic Shuffle Pulsed / Pushed Shuffle
Let's back up and recall what the timing lines below the staff mean. In each measure, the first tall line is the guitar bass or your left foot tapping, and the second (darker) tall line is the guitar strum or your right foot or more importantly the backbeat. Notice in the first two tabs above, the bow always changes direction on the backbeat. OK, now compare the third tab to the first two... It's nearly identical, except in a couple of places the backbeat now occurs on a bow pulse. From a dry, analytical standpoint, one could define a Tommy Lick by saying that it's when the first backbeat of a measure is played with an up-bow pulse. If that makes your eyes glaze over, let's try a different approach.
In the middle tab, first measure (not counting the partial lead-in measure), find the doublestop located just above the first backbeat. Got it? OK, grab it with your eyeballs and slide it left one click. Or in other words, simply play that up-bow one sixteenth-note sooner than normal. That, in the smallest nutshell, is how you play the pushed shuffle, one of the fundamental building blocks of the Round Peak style. Once again, it is simple, but it isn't necessarily easy.
Here's an intermediate exercise that might make the pushed shuffle easier to grasp:
Pushed Shuffle Without Bow Pulses
Here I've removed the bow pulses so you can start with just the gross movements of the bow. Click to hear. Try burning that into your bow arm until it starts to feel natural, and then go back and play the first basic shuffle again until it's obvious where they are different. Got it? OK, now try it with the pulses:
Pushed Shuffle With Bow Pulses
Now here's a tiny tweak that may or may not make the pushed shuffle feel more natural to you. In the actual playing of advanced fiddlers, the pushed shuffle is frequently executed with a bow rock instead of the constant two-string droning we've seen so far. In tab it looks like this:
Pushed Shuffle With Bow Rocks
OK, now we have bow pulses AND bow rocks, let's keep them straight. The bow pulse is a small acceleration of the bow in the direction it's already traveling. The bow rock in the most basic sense is a change of strings in the middle of a slur (the slur being annotated by the curved line joining two notes as in the above tab). But notice a picky little detail as a close read of the tab will reveal -- the bow moves from the D string to the A string, but it never comes off the D string. So here, as in many instances in the Round Peak style, the bow is actually rocking from one string to two. Picky, but something to be aware of. If it's easier to come all the way off the low string at first, by all means do so and revisit this nit-pick down the road.
I imagine much of this is clear as mud, and I apologize for the limitations of the medium. I offer the lesson in this format in case you can actually benefit from this kind of presentation or analytical style. If it isn't working for you, please seek out some F2F lessons with someone who can show you what it means! Or at least get your hands on a copy of "Learn to Play Old-Time Fiddle, Lesson 2," in which Brad Leftwich teaches the Tommy Lick very nicely (among others).
Doug DuBois, 6/13/10
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Before working with my transcriptions, please be sure you've reviewed the page How to read fiddletab. Comments, suggestions and/or corrections are always welcome... write me at: doug at oldtimefiddle dot us