Violin & Fiddle Playing Styles

Video Transcript

"Hi! I am J-Adam Smith of Violin from the Heart and Fiddle Team USA, talking on behalf of Expert Village. I’m going to talk to you a little bit about classical violin versus fiddle. Now, of course, me personally I would call myself a fiddlenist, which you have heard the word in the past talking with you. I would like to bridge the gap between the two styles, but there is a difference in the styles and some people will be more driven to classical and some other people might be more driven towards fiddle. Fiddling, obviously, is a lot of fun to play. Really fast, really quick, very percussive and very repetitive. They like to repeat themselves a lot, which is cool because they are having fun. They do not want to be, from my opinion, they do not want to be bombarded with stress of the violin. They just want to have fun and jam with it. Classical violin, the technique of it really, really is important, so it takes a lot of practice just to get that technique down. So if I am playing…kind of stuff. It’s very fast but also very important to understand that in classical violin, there are lots of things such as strong bows, long bows, technique, left hand development, right hand development, to be able to play the right. Now, with fiddle players, they would like to have, a lot of times, the bridge shape down a little bit and to make the action closer. The action I am talking about is between the fingerboard and the strings here. By shaving down the bridge, you’re going to bring this action closer to it and it’s going to make it easier to play for the fiddler. They like them to be low so that they can do double stops, which is…, 2 strings at 1 time while they are playing simultaneously. This is a little bit about difference between fiddle and classical. Of course, I’m a fiddlenist named J-Adam Smith and I will catch you next time."