Therefore, I am issuing a 7 day 10 minute practice challenge! I got this fabulous idea from the wonderful Michelle Stewart. Michelle, who is also from my home town of Sydney Mines, is an incredible bodhran player and teacher who has an extremely successful online teaching site: bodhranexpert.com. Michelle is also learning the fiddle and last September on her blog she issued the 10 Minute a Day Practice Challenge.

I am going also going to take this challenge- who is taking it with me?! If we can do it for 7 days then we can do it everyday! I will also be announcing this on my Facebook fan page and will keep you posted on my progress. I hope you will do the same!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kimberley-Fraser/19084671957

Some ideas for making the most of your practice time:

Leave your instrument out of the case- Keeping your instrument handy and ready to use provides a lot more incentive to practice than having to dig it out of the case.

Listening and observing is also practice- If you don’t have time to physically pick up the instrument, get some listening time in while driving, doing the dishes, etc. Or if you are working on the computer, take a 5 minute break to watch your favorite player on youtube. Make note of a new tune you want to learn or take good notice of their technique- bow hand, fingering hand, etc.

Visualize the tune you are learning- Again, if you don’t have time to pick up the instrument, take 5 minutes when you catch a short break to visualize playing through a tune or just part of a tune that you are working on. Picture every fingered note and bow stroke, slur, etc. If the mind can do it, the body will be sure to follow soon enough

Make a clear, focused plan- Instead of just playing through a tune, take the 10 minutes and pick a phrase that is particularly troublesome and loop it. If you play piano or some other accompaniment instrument, pick a chord pattern that is difficult and loop that. You may choose to work on issues in bowing, coordination, intonation, etc. For example, if a 16th note passage is giving you trouble in a tune, try spending the 10 mins doing an exercise like I’ve outline in this video:
http://www.kimberleyfraser.com/sessions/archives/video-blog-coordinating-our-bow-and-fingers

Please join me in this challenge and let me know of your progress! Who is with me?!

What I find fascinating about this tune is that it is pretty much the same tune as the ‘New Copperplate’ from the Irish repertoire. That tune is in the key of G major with the melody containing C naturals while the pipe version of Caber Feidh is in A modal with C#’s. Even though the tune starts on the G chord, the tonal center is A.

I first heard this tune from the playing of Mike MacDougall who was a great Cape Breton fiddler from Ingonish. Both Mike’s father and grandfather were pipers and this piping influence is very evident in his style and repertoire.
Here is a clip of Mike playing this tune from documentary that was aired after he passed away. (this particular tune is played around the 1:35 minute mark).

This reel, Spey is Spate by the great Scottish composer James Scott Skinner, is a great example of tune containing arpreggios. Not all tunes contain as many blatent arpeggios as this, but most contain a significant amount of chord shapes whether as a direct arpeggio or hidden with some passing tones. It’s in the key of D major. The main chord shapes a tune in this key will spell out are

D major:  D F#  A

E minor:   E G B

G major: G B D

A or A7:  A C# E (G)

Before looking at the tune for chords, acquaint yourself in the key of D major by playing through the arpeggios I outlined above. Listen to the mp3 of the tune. Do you hear these chords in the tune?

Let’s work through the first four bars of the tune:

In the first bar we have a straight ahead D major arpeggio. In the third bar, we find the notes of the Em arpeggio. And in the fourth bar, the notes of the A7 arpeggio. After practicing these arpeggios and getting used to the sounds and shapes of them, see if you can find them in the rest of the tune.

Please let me know how you get along!

Hope you enjoy! What are your favorite traditional music clips on youtube?

A clip of the Rankin Family playing on the Ann Murray Special in the early 90s.

A clip of Natalie MacMaster with Tracey Dares on piano also filmed for a television show in Scotland

Buddy MacMaster with Maybelle Chisholm on the piano at the Broad Cove concert 1984

Harvey Beaton dancing at the Broad Cove Concert 1985

Featuring John Morris Rankin and Howie MacDonald from the 1986 Mabou Ceilidh

An old clip from the Glendale concert featuring a dance called the Scotch Four. The dancers are Kelly (Warner) MacLennan, Rodney MacDonald, Ashley MacIsaac and Melody (Warner) Cameron. Wendy MacIsaac is on fiddle and Stephanie Wills on piano.

Kyle MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils. This is one of the few videos on youtube of just Kyle playing with his brother Shemas on piano. Kyle was my first fiddle teacher and still remains very much an idol.

Ashley MacIsaac playing on the Rita MacNeil show in the mid 90s.

A great clip of Jerry Holland, Carl MacKenzie, Dave MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIssac from a concert at the Rebecca Cohn in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Although it is such a part of the style today, the development of this strong marriage of the fiddle and piano is relatively recent in the history of Cape Breton fiddling. Until the turn of the 20th century, the fiddle was mainly unaccompanied. There are stories of people using knitting needles to tap out rhythms on the strings as the fiddler played. Fiddlers were also known to have doubled up to play for dances creating more volume in a time before amplification. They often times played in what was known as ‘high bass’ tuning to create more sound (A E A E). Step dancing and Gaelic mouth music (puirt a beul) were other forms of accompaniment, as well as playing alongside a piper.  By the end of the 1800s, the pump organ was introduced in Cape Breton and this is where the style of piano accompaniment began. There is a great story of ‘Little’ Mary MacDonald using the pump organ to accompany herself as she played the fiddle. She did this by putting match sticks in between the keys of the organ to hold them down and pedalled with her feet to create a drone accompaniment.

By the 1930s, the piano became the main instrument for accompaniment. The style developed organically, deeply rooted within the Gaelic music tradition of Cape Breton while absorbing influences of other styles of music along the way - primarily jazz- with each generation. In its early days, the style’s harmony didn’t venture too far away from I IV V chord progressions. Pianists often played the melodies of tunes with the fiddler. This is not so common today. Over the years, pianists incorporated more complex harmonies that closely followed the melodies of tunes. This included incorporating complex bass lines. Mary Jessie MacDonald, ‘Little’ Mary’s daughter, is largely credited for introducing this aspect into the style. It is said that she learned this by watching the left hand of jazz pianists.

While other styles of Celtic music accompaniment have incorporated modern harmonic concepts, it is the complex rhythms of  Cape Breton piano accompaniment that make it unique. It was born out of the rhythms that unites all the idioms of Cape Breton Gaelic music – the language, song, piping, dancing and the fiddling. Step dance rhythms are very much heard in the style. Just as an example, let’s look at the basic jig rhythm. While other accompaniment styles emphasize the on and off beats in 6/8 time, each individual beat can be heard the basic jig rhythm in Cape Breton accompaniment.

This is exactly the same rhythm of the basic jig step found in Cape Breton step dancing. The supporting foot provides the 1 and the 4, while the heel and toe tap out the beats of 2,3 and 5,6. Have a look at this video of a square set and listen to the sound of the feet correlating to the rhythm of the piano.

It’s the organic nature of the how the Cape Breton piano style developed that fascinates me. I think it’s amazing how it has united modern harmony and old gaelic rhythms to create a truly unique voice in the Celtic music world.

It may not seem important but tapping your foot to the music that you are playing and feeling it in this way may actually improve your playing- at least the rhythmic aspect. It can even help nail down melodies more solidly. I’ve seen this improvement with many of my students, sometimes almost instantly. Tapping the foot helps you understand what notes fall on the beat. This is particularly helpful if you are having trouble with keeping time. When my students understand the melody in relation to the beat, they tend to remember the melody better. The beat becomes a reference point and changes perception of the melody when it may not make sense.

Strathspeys tend to be particulariy tricky rhythmically for those who are not used to hearing them. Tapping the foot becomes especially important when learning this tune type since the rhythms are so complex with dotted 8th notes and 16ths as well as 16th note passages and triplets. For example, if in a strathspey you have a run of four groups of triplets, it can be easy to make them sound like a big blob of notes rather then 4 distinct groups of triplets if the first note of each group is not emphasized. Tapping your foot on the start of each triplet will helps solidify where the beat is in this run and the natural emphasis will most likely come through in your playing.

Don’t worry if you initially have trouble coordinating your foot while playing. It may take a while to feel natural. Start with small phrases. For example, if it is a passage of four groups of triplets that you are working on, make sure that first you understand which note your foot will fall on. Then maybe start by coordinating your foot to the first two groups of triplets, then try adding the next one, then the next until you can tap your foot to each beat of the passage.

Once you get the feel for this, you will experience playing tunes in a completely different way.

It was a great night for me to hear great tunes with the wonderful local musicians I grew up learning from. I walked away very much appreciating the wonderful music tradition that exists throughout Cape Breton. Not that I didn’t appreciate this before, but after being away from it for extended periods of time, I don’t take it for granted!

If you ever visit Cape Breton and are looking to play some tunes and hear great music, I highly recommend taking a trip to Rollie’s Wharf in North Sydney.

- 6 video lessons
- An E-Book
- MP3s of piano exercises
- 6 assignments
- Detailed personal feedback

Please email me if you have any questions!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jlV00ncAII