Sekrit Project: Revealed!

I've been hinting on and off about this for awhile now, and getting recording equipment, and yadda yadda making preparations. And then I went and worked out melody lines for a couple of songs instead of writing this post, which is a pretty good indication that I'm procrastinating due to sulking over technical difficulties. (We'll get to that in a bit.) So, fuck that, here it is! I'm gonna do 52 weeks of fiddle, learn 52 tunes, and you all get to come along for the ride because I'm recording this shit and putting it up on SoundCloud.

That's the what. The whys and hows are a little more complex, but not by much. Let's start with the whys! Most of you are aware I'm a long-time musician, but what you may not be aware of is that I have twenty years of classical violin training under me. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, I know, why the hell is this chick playing fiddle instead? Because it's what I want to do. Because I was, frankly, never going to be a good enough classical musician to make a full-time job out of it with a symphony orchestra. Because I don't play well with the backstage politics on those anyway. But mostly, mostly that very first one: it's what I want to be doing.

However (you knew that was coming, right?), there are problems. Classical music has a fairly easy to discover, fairly standard repertoire for solo instrument, followed by a similarly standard repertoire for ensembles of various flavors. (Ask me how I feel about the Borodin string quartet and you will be treated to five minutes of rapturous squee.) Fiddle music is a lot harder to find that for; I have somewhere in the range of 5-10 books of tunes and while there are a good couple dozen that overlap between any two books... well, see the restrictions there. Any two books. The best way, of course, is to go out and listen to infinite recordings and live music and learn from the living tradition, but that can be both difficult and expensive. And, too, for an introvert like me there's the hidden cost to consider of dealing with people nonstop if I'm taking lessons, going to sessions, going to concerts, etc. It can be hard to hit the right balance.

Classical music also trains you to perfectionism even if you're not already prone to it. I was, just in case that hasn't been made abundantly clear already. The trap I fall into with fiddle music is playing my current repertoire over and over and over again to keep it fresh and under my fingers, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it prevents me from learning new tunes.

So I needed a kick in the ass. I've been doing public accountability in a variety of forms for years now; most prominently with language learning, where I post my German lessons every weekday morning on my personal journal. Why the hell not do something similar with learning fiddle tunes? It won't be every weekday - but now we're getting into the hows.

I do not yet have a working recording system setup. The equipment I originally ordered isn't playing nice with Windows, Audacity, or both, and a question in to the Audacity forum has yielded jackshit. I don't, as a result, have an actual launch date, but I really wanted it to be this weekend, because what better time to launch this kind of a project than on St Paddy's Day? Still, the second I do get the equipment working I plan to start the ball moving with more than a long-winded blog post.

The intent: record a new fiddle tune every week, sight-reading out of one of my books. First take, no matter what comes out or how slow I take it or how much I swear on the recording. (There will be probably be swearing on the recordings. You have due warning.) The week after the first recording for a tune, re-record it, having spent the week hunting down recordings and practicing that tune. Probably not just that tune, but devoting focused practice time every day. Thus, the first week of this project you get one tune; all subsequent weeks you get two, last week's and the current week's. Rinse and repeat 52 times or until I get bored, whichever happens second.

You are all, of course, welcome to join me in this madcap adventure through reels and jigs, airs and waltzes. If you play, do your own recording! If you have a recording you think I should listen to, tell me. If you have a specific tune you want me to learn, tell me that, too, though I reserve the right to give you side-eye for Orange Blossom Special and similar. When I get a firm launch date on the project itself, I assure you you will be able to hear me without benefit of internet connection.