Hey Reader, Today is the last day to enter the fiddle giveaway. Entries close tonight. Saturday I draw a name. Sunday I tell everybody who won. 👉 Enter the giveaway → You can enter more than once, by the way. Share your link with a friend, share it on Facebook, subscribe on YouTube — each one adds entries. The referral link is the big one. It’s all on the entry page once you’re in. I’ve been playing it all week I keep picking this fiddle up when I’m supposed to be doing other things. It...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, We’re giving away a violin. Not a cheap one. A handmade one. Michael, one of our own PED members, started out on guitar. Then he picked up fiddle. Then — because apparently one instrument wasn’t enough of a project — he started building violins. He’s made a bunch since joining, and we’ve already given a few away... I’ve been playing this one. It sounds great. It’s beautiful. And it’s easy on the eyes, which matters more than we like to admit. 👀 I demo it a bit in this YouTube...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Some people ask this question in their seventies. Some ask it in their thirties. A few years ago I wrote a post about this. The comments were more convincing than the post. “I always wanted to play the fiddle but with family and career always put it off. When I retired I picked up a fiddle and never looked back. Actually I surprise myself with my progress.” “I agree totally with the ‘never too late’ theme. Just turned 66 and started trying to play my fiddle in my mid-40’s when my...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Something came up over and over during the Chord Backup Bootcamp, so let's talk about it. Don't read all the chords at once. When you first look at a song with chord symbols over it, the temptation is to take the whole thing in. Every chord, every change, all at once. I've tried this. It isn't reading. It's just looking at a page really hard. So do what we already do with fiddle tunes. Chunk it. 1. Play each chord by itself. Just one. Get a good sound out of it before you ask it...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, Most people try to fix their whole bow at once. That's a lot of things to think about while also, you know, playing the fiddle. So here's a smaller idea. One habit. Five minutes a day. Improve Your Bowing With One Daily Habit The 5-Minute Daily Bowing Routine: Pick, Drill, Record. Pick one thing. Just one. The bow stroke that's been mocking you. Drill it for five minutes. Laser focus. No noodling, no "let me just play a tune real quick." Five minutes on the hard thing, then put...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, When beginning fiddlers start to learn chord backup, I recommend learning a few simple chord shapes for D, G and A, and then learning a bunch of songs with those simple chords. But once you start going to jam sessions, you'll have to figure out a lot of other chords on the fly. This week's lesson shows you how... How to Build Any Fiddle Chord Here's the whole idea: every chord is built from its scale. Play the scale, grab three notes — the 1st, the 3rd, and the 5th — and that's...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, I’ve been working on something I’ve wanted to do for a while. The Ultimate Online Fiddler’s Resource Guide — and it’s out today. The internet is full of fiddle stuff. Some of it is incredible. A lot of it is hard to find, scattered across YouTube rabbit holes, random forums, and blogs that haven’t been updated since 2009. I’ve spent years accumulating these — lessons, tools, communities, tuners, backing tracks, notation resources, teachers worth knowing about. And I got a lot of...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hey friend, Before sheet music, before tab, before any of it — people learned tunes by ear. You heard a song, you sang it, you found it on your instrument. That's the whole trick we're working on this week. Sing Then Play Here's a thing that took me too long to figure out: if you can already sing a tune, you're halfway to playing it. Your voice already knows the melody. So use it. Start by playing the scale for the tune. Then listen to the whole song once, just to soak it in. Sing or hum the...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, Transposition is one of those skills I keep coming back to in my own practice. And it’s one of the first things I push students toward once they have a tune in their fingers. The reason is simple. Playing a tune you already know in a different key forces you to really hear it. You feel it differently under your fingers. It sticks in a new way. And when someone at a jam calls a tune in an unexpected key, you want to have the tools to handle it. This week we’re digging into how to...
5 months ago • 3 min read