Play the Queen of the Rushes on an Irish Fiddle

[Demonstration]

Okay, that concludes our lesson today. I hope you enjoyed this tune. I particularly like playing tunes on the fiddle that are in the key of D modal or have this natural C in it. So, I hope you enjoy playing this tune in the future. Stop by the website again on OnlineLessonVideos.com and there will be plenty more music coming out. So, check out some of the samples and if you want to buy some of the lessons. I’m Ian Walsh and I’ll see you next time.

Before we get going on these tunes, let’s review a common technique that’s used in this tune and that would be the grace notes. A good way to practice grace notes is just with no fingers yet or no fingered grace. You can just practice them on an open string. So, I picked the D string since this tune is in the key of D and we’ll just bow it. What we’re going to try to do is use our third finger here, this one and we’re going to lightly smack the string, really not connecting and making a note but just hitting the string and grace in it, hence the name, the grace note.

So, we’ll try and you want to hit this. They can be tricky to start. Usually the trickiness comes with your hitting a note and hitting too hard so, the tricky part is being able hit the string and then pull off or click real quickly away from it. So, it should sound like this.

[Demonstration]

Just like grace notes and you can run through and they get a little bit trickier when you have to change the finger that’s doing the grace work like on your second finger, you still use your third finger for the grace note but when you get to that third finger and you want the grace, say a G note on the D string, you have to use your pinky generally, a little less—than the other finger. So, I’ll show you what that looks like. If you just go up, some of the notes on the beginning of the D scale while gracing.

[Demonstration]

So, just getting new to playing these grace notes. They’re going to be all over this tune. So, let’s get started with the beginning notes. If you have the notes in front of you, you should be able to follow along pretty easily. We start with an A and we play.

[Demonstration]

Okay, so that’s our first section, it’s F, E, F, D. From that D we continue moving. We continue playing notes in a rest yet. Walk up to the G and then you play G, F, G and then E, D, E. So, let’s take a look at that section.

[Demonstration]

Okay, so now we’re rest yet, these notes are all clamped together and then we go back. We we're back around to that similar pattern again, the F, E, F. So, we play and then D, E, D. So, everything’s kind of in a series of three notes here. And then you have this piece right here, it plays from the F to A back to the F and then walk down to the D.

[Demonstration]

Let’s pause and rest there.