Hi! Welcome to OnLineLessonVideos.com. I’m Ian Walsh and I’m going to teach an Irish tune today on the fiddle. It’s called the Golden Eagle and it’s a horn pipe. We’ll play it in the key of G.

I’ll start off by playing you a sample of the tune along to a quick track that I’ve set at about 70 beats per minute. So here we go with the Golden Eagle.

[Demonstration]

Let’s begin by leading into this tune with some pickup notes. We’ll start on the C, this is on the A string here. You work up A, B, C which plays right next to your first finger pretty much right on top of it. So that could be our first note and we’ll start with the triplet here. So three notes and then we’ll go to the G. So let’s just cycle through that a few times [Demonstration]. Try sliding into your first note, the C and I’ll give it a little bit of an aggressive edge [Demonstration].

Let’s take a look at another section here, we go down to our B on the g string and we play. So we’re crossing three strings, pretty quickly there and I’m not doing anything special with my bow. I’m keeping my bow movement short and I’m working at the top of my bow but I’m not slurring any notes, I’m going straight up and down here. So from B [Demonstration], so those notes are B, D, G, B.

[Demonstration]

Let’s take a look at another section here. We start with the open D. This is a little bit easier, you’re only working across two strings and you’re using your first and third fingers.

[Demonstration]

Let’s take a look at another one. This is more or less a G arpeggio and it starts on the G on the d string and we play [Demonstration]. So again, you’re moving across three strings here ending on the e string on that G note with your second finger.

[Demonstration]

So let’s go back to the beginning here and we’ll look at that pickup note, the C, B, A down to your first note of the tune, the G. Take a look at the second little section. You go down to that low B and all the way up to the B again. Then we look here to the low D [Demonstration] and then finally we have that G arpeggio [Demonstration].

Notice I’m leaving my fingers down on the A string here. You can visualize two of the double stamps that are readily apparent here for the G. You can use a G with a D with your A and your E string or you can do the G and the B. Leaving your fingers down can be good practice for getting your fingers just on the individual strings.

Let’s put all of these together and see what it sounds like. I’ll count us in, one, two, three, [Demonstration] one, two, three [Demonstration]. One more time, one, two, three [Demonstration]

Let’s move on