How to Play the Gospel Fiddle Lessons

Hi and welcome to OnlineLessonVideos. I’m Ian Walsh and I’m going to teach you a tune on the fiddle today called “Be thou my vision”. I’m going to play it and teach it to you in the key of E-flat, although this tune can be played and I have heard that they play it in a lot of different other keys. We’re going to learn it in E-flat, so here’s a sample of the lesson today, “Be thou my vision.” [Music Playing] So playing in the key of E-flat can be a little tricky. They can get the notes to sound properly in tune sometimes. So let me show you, using your middle two strings, drop from your normal one position here into a flat position [Demonstration] where you’re playing the E-flatted and then you’re also going to be playing the B-flatted. [Demonstration] Play them together as a fifth and it should have a pretty close sounding tuning [Demonstration]. Now from there, use that as your base. And you’re not really going to use the open notes here so you walk a scale from that E [Demonstration]. So that’s a full step from the one to the two. A full step from the two to the three and then you have that half step for forefinger and you follow that pattern on the A string too. So here it is. [Demonstration] And then back down [Demonstration] Some of the other notes we’ll use a C and a B-flat, and that’s how we start the tune. So here is the beginning of “Be thou my vision.” [Demonstration] Okay, now if you leave that first finger down on the E-flat, you can get this, the nice double stop here so you play B-E-E then play your G and then a C and the B, creating that double stop. So at the beginning of the tune [Demonstration] and from there, we walk up again. [Demonstration] Okay. And we’re going to hang out for a long note on that G, so that’s [Demonstration]. Now, if you still have that first finger on the A string as well as the D string, you can play a double stop. [Demonstration] Let me show you what that sounds like. [Demonstration] Okay, so that thickens up that note a little bit. Let’s try that again. [Demonstration] Okay, let’s continue on.