Michael John Sanchez

They say that practice makes perfect, and playing the fiddle is no different from other disciplines. Your fiddle playing will improve if you work on various drills and techniques during your practice sessions, including setting up your instrument and preparing to play, maintaining proper posture, positioning your fingers correctly, practicing left- and right-hand techniques, and establishing good bow movement.

With so many things to think about when playing the fiddle, how do you know whether you're practicing everything the right way? The following checklist will put you on the right path. It's split into six sections and includes the purpose of each technique. There are 30 techniques here, so it's important for you to focus on only one section at a time.

Playing fiddle involves all kinds of cool techniques, such as slides, grace notes, turns, and drones. Understanding how to do these techniques is one thing, but making them sound good is another. Check out these tips to help you improve your sound. Slides To improve your slides, it's important to have a relaxed left hand.

Everyone who first decides to learn fiddle is highly motivated in the beginning. But how do you keep that spark alive to progress and build skill? It's easy to fall into certain traps and find yourself stuck in a common practice slump. The following list gives you some tips on practicing most effectively and will help you maximize your potential: Keep your fiddle in plain sight.

Understanding chord structure is very helpful for improvisation. The following list shows a range of chords with the three letters that make up each chord. All these notes are safe notes and work well if you play them while the specific chord is being played. The beginning of a chord (typically played by a guitar) is the best time to play any of the notes that make up the chord change.

If you play using sheet music, you'll most likely run into "musical road signs," or symbols that make you jump to various parts of the music. The purpose of these road signs is simply to avoid repeating large chunks of the written music and thus allow for much more music to fit on a page. Following are the most common road signs you'll see when following along with sheet music.

Practicing isn't always easy, especially if you don't have the right mind-set in place. If you follow the steps outlined here, you'll improve both your technical ability and your musical ability. What to do to prepare for your practice session Make sure your fiddle is in tune. Find a place that's quiet, with no distractions.

Making use of your bow hand index finger is one of the most useful concepts to master to play the fiddle— and the hardest. When you’re transitioning, or changing directions with the bow, you only use your index finger. The actual transition should have nothing to do with the other fingers or muscles. Using your index finger on your bow hand is what lets you play fast and efficiently.

Using the small muscles in your arm is important when you play the fiddle. Because you use your shoulders and big muscles for a lot of things, your instinct is to use them to extend your arm too. Unfortunately, doing so causes irritating sounds like bow squeaks (a most unpleasant sound!), bow bouncing, and other problems.