Julie & Julia Start a Fiddle Blog
If you saw the movie, Julie & Julia, and I recommend it, you saw the story of two inspiring motivations for success.
I have two inspirational hits from this film. One is the inspiration of Julia Childs. She was unfocused until she enrolled in Cordon Bleu to learn to cook French cuisine. That was the pivotal action of her life.
We all need some pivot to turn from just plugging along to really making a song out of our life. (Or a fiddle tune.) You’ve heard of “find your passion.” Julia Childs found hers. Everything followed from that.
The second inspiration is Julie Powell’s goal-intention-project of preparing all the recipes in Julia’s book in one year’s time and blogging about it. The ambitious, but doable project and the one year time constraint act as a wonderful motivational goad.
I did this a few years ago when I set out to play one hundred different tunes one hundred times each. To devote this much time to a tune about twice a week was a stretch, but not completely crazy. It raised my level of playing.
I’m choosing a similar project for the coming year. The winning idea is, Publish 100 fiddle tunes from my repertory online. Do this over the next year.
I’m off to a slow start while I learn to use Sibelius. I need to average two a week. Once I get rolling that will be doable. I expect to get caught up no later than March.
My first one, 10 Penny Bit, is an Irish jig in fiddle tab to start with. Only a few will be in this format. Most of them should be as close to my actual performance version as possible.
Since I am an improvising fiddler, the published version can only be a temporary snapshot.
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Stay with tabs. It’s better for novices, like myself, who really benefit from your teaching. Are you adding mp3’s?
Yes, mp3’s are going to show up. I’m thinking about your preference for tab. Only the tunes that go seriously into 3rd position my not be appropriate. Thanks for the feed back.
as a novice I am much better at reading notes for the violin. Tab always confuses me on the fiddle….I do read tab (and notes) for the guitar as well as the mandolin so its not that. I just think notes make more sense
I hear that occasionally. Most beginning fiddlers just want to play tunes.
The shortest distance to this goal is on the tab path.
As the beginner gets more ability, reading music becomes
a worthwhile skill to master.