Is a Fiddle like a helicopter?

[LiveMusic]

I used to fly a helicopter. Airplanes, too. Learning to fly a helicopter is a quantum leap in difficulty. You know how sometimes people who are not pilots can be talked down safely when a pilot in an airplane becomes incapacitated? Ain't gonna happen in a helicopter. You are dead. (Interesting sidenote, though, is if you lose an engine in a helicopter, you might be better off than in an airplane, assuming the pilot is okay... he can autorotate to a semi-normal landing even without power.)

 

Anyway, back to fiddle. Is it REALLY hard to learn to play to not sound like Jack Benny? Do you think it's appreciably harder than other instruments or not so? Also curious if there are there digital effects that fiddlers use to "fix" bad notes. Like autotune. Probably not, just curious.

[myles_rose]

Originally posted by LiveMusic:

I used to fly a helicopter. Airplanes, too. Learning to fly a helicopter is a quantum leap in difficulty. You know how sometimes people who are not pilots can be talked down safely when a pilot in an airplane becomes incapacitated? Ain't gonna happen in a helicopter. You are dead. (Interesting sidenote, though, is if you lose an engine in a helicopter, you might be better off than in an airplane, assuming the pilot is okay... he can autorotate to a semi-normal landing even without power.)

 

Anyway, back to fiddle. Is it REALLY hard to learn to play to not sound like Jack Benny? Do you think it's appreciably harder than other instruments or not so? Also curious if there are there digital effects that fiddlers use to "fix" bad notes. Like autotune. Probably not, just curious.

LiveMusic ....

 

I have about 1160 hours in MD-500 types, and hours in Agusta A109E's. I think that it was easier to learn the violin, at least I can play some basic sounds. I do fly though, a bit better than I play "fiddle", so that may say something.

[Botch.]

Ridden in a few choppers, never flown one.

 

BUT I've got who knows how many hours on fiddle. When I took it up I thought putting your fingers down in the right place, without frets, would be the hard part. I was wrong, learning to make that bow move is the hard part (I've also never been able to get a decent vibrato, but I'm signing up for some lessons to work on that). What style of music are you looking to play?

[LiveMusic]

Originally posted by Mr. Botch:

...What style of music are you looking to play?

I like a lot of stuff (and am writing similar stuff) to bluegrassy or country/rock type stuff. If anything describes what I like to see myself leaning towards as far as the style I'd like to move into, it's a combo of John Mellencamp and Steve Earle.

 

In fact, I've always loved bluegrass; I think it's fun music. But if nothing else, country-rockish for sure.

 

I also really dig some Cajun music.

 

I used to diddle around with a banjo years ago. That wasn't that difficult for me since I play guitar and I'd like to get that sound for some songs. I'm going to look into buying one or a banjotar type thing. Eventually, I'd like to add harmonica for sure. And fiddle would be awesome if I could pull it off without spending the next five years practicing. I know a guy here that is incredible. Wow, that would take YEARS to get that good. Such TONE. But just to be able to fiddle even some, that would be really cool. After all, this IS Louisiana.

[patrick_dont_fret]

How about bluegrass rock? That's fun stuff, too.

[where02190]

Lacking a decent regular player for my own material, about 3 yrs ago I took up fiddle. If you have a musical sense of stringed instruments, it's nto that hard. And it really is all in the bowing technique. Practice gets you positioning, but the bow is what really takes concentration. Pressure and position, while trying to read or concentrate on a memorized piece, is difficult, but liek everything else, if the talent is instilled in you, you will get it eventually.

 

3 years later I will actually play in front of some close friends when we jam. I had a great teacher....

[gtrmac]

Jack Benny was an accomplished violinist. Flute is supposed to be more difficult than violin. As with helicopter flying, playing the violin requires a lot of practice. At least you will live if you make a mistake on the violin, usually. This is not true with helicopters I've heard. Autotune is a cop out.

[T. Ehl]

how do chopper pilots in military combat situations deal with knowing how to distribute weight in the chopper when they take on a random assortment of a load of soldiers does that not throw off the balance attitudinally or is that only a concern in smaller helicopters in chinnooks do they have a separate throttle and blade control for both engines what is the maximum payload for a fully unladen swallow

[dave251]

I had the "opportunity" this past spring to convert some acoustic fiddles and build three solid body instruments for a local family stage show. The "centerpiece" of the show is eight fiddles on stage at once...talk about an intonation nightmare. So, the oldest couple of kids and I set out to cure the situation by putting frets in the things. It essentially cuts out an hour of intonation practice every day.

 

The downside is, the equal temeperament tuning...you have to tune like a guitar or piano now, rather than being able to play with perfect intonation; which to my ear is one of the beautiful aspects of the bowed stringed instruments. Anyway, changing a violin to a viol(frets) can be done, and can work quite well.

 

Then all you have to do is worry about the bowing technique.

 

The fiddles below use a Barbera bridge with a "strapjack" preamp. Sperzel machines on a bolt-on fir neck with a cocobolo FB.

 

http://www.electrocoustic.com/newimage/fiddle%20trio.jpg

[D_dup3]

One big difference (to me) would be that your violin crash landings would be less bloody...