How to Play the O'Carolan's Concerto on the Irish Fiddle

Hi there welcome to onlinelessonsvideos.com I'm Ian Walsh and you just heard a sample of the beginning of today’s lesson which is called O’Carolan’s Concerto. It’s in the key of D so we’ll start off going over some basic fiddle technique that you are going to use in this tune. We’ll focus on two things today’s, vibrato and triplets. You just hear those triplets in the second part of this tune for the most part so lets get started with operlan Concerto in the key of D. All right now so get all tuned up we have the A string here, the D, the G, your E so when your close there we’ll get going with a little review of triplets we’ll using this in the second part of the tune so remember a triplet and a good way to work over it is to play the A and the E here you have the A string, your E string play those two notes and follow it up with a triple like this nice and slow. Okay you can alternate by adding in a note there if you pant to put your fingers into play for more warm up and you can play alternate between the A here and the A here. Everything sounds in tune you're starting to get that triplet played slowly, you're starting to speed it up and you're going to hear that crunch more and more. When you hear that crunch that’s from pushing down you're applying pressure to your bow when you hit that triplet the actual three notes when you get that crunchy sound that’s not a bad thing it’s a good thing that’s what you want in triplets.

You want to play if fast you can really hear that come out so lets skip forward now and look at some notes in the middle of the second part where were going to have these triplets. The notes here a just a little tricky you're going to play a D and go over to an A okay so this is five notes away from each other good way to do it is lay the D the array should be laterally, it should be perfectly straight across so you just roll your finger when you get to your act. Here comes the triplet let me show you the sequence of notes first the D to the A, the C to the A and the B to G. Let’s try that again those notes are G A C A D G here’s where the triplet comes in and start by playing slowly like I'm going to show you right here. Again, one more time and when its played just a little bit faster at the rate of this tune that’s played in the beginning sample you have okay so it’s a good way to get warmed for a tune like this is going some of your triplet exercises lets go back to the beginning and start off with the tune.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services