Fiddling cellist, Renata Bratt, presents breakdowns, rags, waltzes, reels, songs, and stomps. American fiddle music is fun for cellists at all levels. Arranged from easy to intermediate, this book contains Appalachian dance tunes, Texas-style contest tunes, old-time, and bluegrass music with an authentic cello accompaniment for each tune. From first position with simple rhythms through fifth position with syncopated rhythms, learn or reinforce left-hand technique with extensions, shifting, and fast passage work. For the right-hand, fiddle tunes use string crossing, rhythmic bowing patterns and an ever-changing use of slurs and accents to create compelling rhythms. Join in with fiddle-style players, learn new styles and enhance your playing. Includes access to online audio.

New cello students nearly always start in first position aided by finger tapes or guides for accurate finger placement. As they advance, they are expected to learn to shift out of first position, but the focus is on the movement of the shift rather than on note locations or pitch accuracy. In this book, author and versatile cellist Halley Feaster introduces a step-by-step approach to understanding each position, leading to thorough comprehension of the cello fingerboard and a more confident and well-rounded player. Together with its engaging video component, Cello Position Handbook shows advanced beginners and intermediate students what notes are available in each of 12 positions. Short exercises and excerpts are provided for practice in each location, ultimately enabling fluid performance without excessive shifting. On completion of this volume, students will be familiar with what notes are available in each position and be able to move comfortably between them while expanding their repertoires. Includes access to online video.

From the author’s preface: “This book was conceived four years ago, almost to the day, at a time when I was teaching fiddle and mandolin in New York City. It was my idea then, with my students in mind, to compile a book of the most often played, most important and most interesting fiddle tunes from the various Celtic and North American traditions. The tunes were chosen by cataloging a large number of recordings by tune title. A tally was taken to find out which had been recorded most often. This established a foundation of material that could not be left out. To this list I added the names of other pieces which had not been recorded as frequently, but which I knew were played regularly and with respect. I admit to sprinkling the collection with a few lesser known tunes which happen to be personal favorites, but I am sure they will hold their own when placed next to the old war horses of the fiddler’s repertoire. . . . Although I started out with my students in mind this book has turned out to be the book that I’ve always wanted and I hope that it will serve the advanced player as well as the beginner.”

Meticulously collected from recordings, square and contra dances, fiddle contests, jam sessions and individual fiddlers- this book is meant to provide a snapshot of what American fiddlers were playing and listening to in the latter part of the 20th Century. As the vinyl record format disappears from the marketplace, a great deal of recorded fiddle music will no longer be available. In this book, Stacy Phillips shares the fruits of some timely collecting for all fiddlers to enjoy. Bowings, fingerings, and guitar chords are provided for each melody line.

Celebrate the winter season with these concert-ready arrangements influenced by a variety of folk traditions such as Celtic, old-time, bluegrass and Scandinavian fiddle. This collection of time-honored and original melodies is written with a modern string crossover twist to keep both the listener and performer engaged. All tunes are arranged by the Wires String Duo, including their original piece “Campbell Street”. The audio is a stereo recording of each of the arrangements inside this collection. Includes access to online audio.

Canadian fiddle music receives the credit and recognition it deserves in this lively collection of tunes from virtually every province and ethnic group in Canada. Originally published in 1990, this project is the result of generous donations by numerous fiddlers and fans of fiddle music. In addition to the preservation and popularization of this folk music form, the contributors shared these common goals in this endeavor: composer recognition, folk music revitalization in Canada and abroad, acknowledgement of the violin and its own origins in the development of fiddle music and its place in Canadian society, note reading and chording, and to pay tribute to many great fiddlers. This revised edition features contributions of 200 of the best tunes from the first printing as well as 200 new tunes. They consist of hornpipes, strathspeys, polkas, waltzes, calypsos, reels, clogs, two-steps, jigs, airs, breakdowns, schottishes, marches, rags, and laments. A bibliography and the background of each composer is included.

The early decades of American popular music--Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, Enrico Caruso--are, for most listeners, the dark ages. It wasn't until the mid-1920s that the full spectrum of this music--black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and crude--made it onto records for all to hear. This book brings a forgotten music, hot music, to life by describing how it became the dominant American music--how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlor ballads, symphonic marches and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers--and how it became rock 'n' roll. It reveals that the young men and women of that bygone era had the same musical instincts as their descendants Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and even Ozzy Osbourne. In minstrelsy, ragtime, brass bands, early jazz and blues, fiddle music, and many other forms, there was as much stomping and swerving as can be found in the most exciting performances of hot jazz, funk, and rock. Along the way, it explains how the strange combination of African with Scotch and Irish influences made music in the United States vastly different from other African and Caribbean forms; shares terrific stories about minstrel shows, "coon" songs, whorehouses, knife fights, and other low-life phenomena; and showcases a motley collection of performers heretofore unknown to all but the most avid musicologists and collectors.

Intercepted e-mails alert Homeland Security to the possibility of a terrorist attack on South Florida staged from a Bahamian island. Rhonda and Morgan Early are again recruited by the Drug Enforcement Administration to monitor suspicious activity on Bimini, located just fifty miles from Miami. Ahmed Atta needs money to implement his plan to kill sixty-five thousand Americans. He busts convicted cartel leader Victor Torres from jail for one million dollars. When Rhonda and Morgan learn of suspicious activity on Bimini, they rush to the island to thwart any potential danger. Torres inadvertently assists the terrorists by attempting to avenge his earlier capture by Morgan and Rhonda. He snatches their son and lures them to his trafficking headquarters on Plana Cay with the intent to brutally murder them. Meanwhile, Ahmed Atta's brilliant plan to kill an unfathomable number of Americans proceeds unabated.

Play Me Something Quick and Devilish explores the heritage of traditional fiddle music in Missouri. Howard Wight Marshall considers the place of homemade music in people’s lives across social and ethnic communities from the late 1700s to the World War I years and into the early 1920s. This exceptionally important and complex period provided the foundations in history and settlement for the evolution of today’s old-time fiddling. Beginning with the French villages on the Mississippi River, Marshall leads us chronologically through the settlement of the state and how these communities established our cultural heritage. Other core populations include the “Old Stock Americans” (primarily Scotch-Irish from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), African Americans, German-speaking immigrants, people with American Indian ancestry (focusing on Cherokee families dating from the Trail of Tears in the 1830s), and Irish railroad workers in the post–Civil War period. These are the primary communities whose fiddle and dance traditions came together on the Missouri frontier to cultivate the bounty of old-time fiddling enjoyed today. Marshall also investigates themes in the continuing evolution of fiddle traditions. These themes include the use of the violin in Westward migration, in the Civil War years, and in the railroad boom that changed history. Of course, musical tastes shift over time, and the rise of music literacy in the late Victorian period, as evidenced by the brass band movement and immigrant music teachers in small towns, affected fiddling. The contributions of music publishing as well as the surprising importance of ragtime and early jazz also had profound effects. Much of the old-time fiddlers’ repertory arises not from the inherited reels, jigs, and hornpipes from the British Isles, nor from the waltzes, schottisches, and polkas from the Continent, but from the prolific pens of Tin Pan Alley. Marshall also examines regional styles in Missouri fiddling and comments on the future of this time-honored, and changing, tradition. Documentary in nature, this social history draws on various academic disciplines and oral histories recorded in Marshall’s forty-some years of research and field experience. Historians, music aficionados, and lay people interested in Missouri folk heritage—as well as fiddlers, of course—will find Play Me Something Quick and Devilish an entertaining and enlightening read. With 39 tunes, the enclosed Voyager Records companion CD includes a historic sampler of Missouri fiddlers and styles from 1955 to 2012. A media kit is available here: press.umsystem.edu/pages/PlayMeSomethingQuickandDevilish.aspx

Definitive history traces the genre's growth and diversification from its 19th-century origins through its heyday and modern revival. Discusses 48 major composers and 800 rags. More than 100 photos.