Fiddle Progress Report – April 2024
May 1, 2024
It’s a new month and that means another progress report for fiddle practice. I’m happy to say that I continued to remain consistent by practicing every day again last month.
My progress has been slow, but I think consistency is the key here as I know spending more time working through tunes to get them right is better than trying to speed through them. It’s just so hard to sit there with the same songs for weeks sometimes, because I want to keep moving on. But I’ve been patient!
During April, I played the following EEI tunes:
- #86 – Ode to Joy
- #91 – Lightly Row
Lightly Row was a full-on focus of the 4th finger, which I’m doing a bit better with, but can always use practice. So, while the tune wasn’t difficult in general, the 4th finger was tricky, and I spent my time with it.
In fact, it was only today – May 1 – that I decided it’s time to move on to the next song in EEI – the Can-Can. I feel like I’ll spend a bit more time with this one, but I could surprise myself. Let’s see how I do the next time I check in!
I’m also still playing a side-tune from the AFM. I moved on from Shortnin' Bread to Camptown Races. Having been a tune I practiced in the past, I picked it up pretty quickly and feel like I will certainly move on to the next song before the month is over. I’ve been practicing it about a week and a half so far, so I feel like I have at least another half week before that happens.
There’s nothing here in practice that really sparks a lot of excitement right now as I’m mostly just working on tunes and keeping consistent. I might change that up by re-introducing the Skye Boat Song sometime soon. That was sort of my enjoyment piece, and I think I could probably pick it back up easily. But let’s see how I do on the tunes I’m facing this month first.