Fiddling Demystified - the book and the workshops - teaches Donna Hébert's method for teaching and playing in multiple fiddle styles. For sight-readers, she fills in the style points for each tune and also plays it for you slow and fast both on the CD and at workshops, breaking down right hand bowing licks and left hand ornaments into manageable lessons for teachers and students. Donna teaches rhythm and style motifs for each tune, setting each one authentically in its native dialect.
Donna Hébert: With more than 60 tunes arranged for strings from Irish, Scottish, New England, Canadian, Québécois, Appalachian Old-Time, Cajun and original sources, Donna Hébert presents many layers of learning for orchestra players or fiddlers. Listening first before looking at sheet music, students learn more than melodies, mining the tune for chords and harmonies, bent notes and ornaments with the left hand and dynamic shadings with the bow that bring the tune alive. Students learn to read chord charts and apply specific bowings to create new rhythms on each repetition of the tune. Violists and cellists learn to voice and bow fiddle melodies on their instrument and to find the backup and alternate lines and harmonies along with the violins. We choose some tunes voiced on the A-D-G strings so they are native to the viola and cello.
Renata Bratt : In Renata Bratt's workshops, cellists learn the same fiddle tunes as the violinists, with idiomatic bowing styles and left-hand techniques. Cellists also delve into accompaniment styles including bluegrass bass, playing with just the root and the fifth, newgrass cello sounds including playing bass notes with chops, harmony with root, fifth and tenth with the bow, and how to finger major and minor chords. Cellists also learn simple but effective improvisational techniques using the pentatonic scale as well as different rhythmic grooves include one and two measure-long riffs.
Jane Ezbicki, 2006 President of the Massachusetts String Teachers' Association, hired Donna and Groovemama in 2006 to work with the Wayland MA High School Orchestra and remarked, "Donna and her colleagues changed the way my students and I think about fiddling. They actually helped us to feel confident enough to turn our music over, close our eyes and play independently."
Adjunct fiddle instructor at Amherst College, Donna has been recognized by New England arts councils, NPR, Smithsonian-Folkways Recordings and the independent recording industry for her fiddling and cultural contributions. Teaching workshops for universities, conferences, dance camps and ASTA chapters, she also directs Fiddling Demystified Camp, a five-day August fiddling intensive, and The Great Groove Band of school-age folk musicians every year at the Old Songs and Philadelphia Folk Festivals. A Franco-American fiddling master, she has worked under state arts council sponsorship with apprentices from Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. With the Vermont Folklife Center and fiddler George Wilson, she also co-directs The Beaudoin Project, preserving, documenting and presenting the music of Louis Beaudoin and his family with new generations of Beaudoins.
Says Dr. Alan Jabbour, Director (ret.) of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, "Donna is an outstanding performer and a world-class teacher of the art of fiddle. I consider her at the forefront of the developing field of fiddle pedagogy."
Workshop descriptions . . .
Fiddling Demystified for String Players - A rhythm-based right-left hand system of learning that cracks the codes of fiddle styles so you can figure out what the old fiddlers are doing. Overview of Northern, Southern, Celtic styles. Participants learn tunes and bowings by ear for a jig, a reel and a waltz. 4-5-hour workshop. Solo, with Groovemama and cellist Renata Bratt. First day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
Harmony Demystified - learn the chord triads and alterations, progressions for major, minor and modal tunes, the universal key, how to read and follow a chord chart. 5-hour workshop, solo, with Groovemama or cellist Renata Bratt. Second day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
Improvisation & Grooveswapping - learn to drum new rhythms over a melody as we swap one meter or rhythm for another over the same tune. Students learn to follow a chord chart, finding complete progressions using two-note combinations. As we build on these combinations, it simplifies our process of improvisation. 3-4 hour workshop, solo, with Groovemama or Renata Bratt. Third day of Fiddling Demystified residency for string programs.
Fiddling with a French Accent - (Instructional DVD available Summer 2007) Learn the driven-bow syncopation that characterizes French-Canadian and Franco-American fiddling along with the crooked tunes (l'airs tordus), cross/open tunings, taper du pieds or seated foot-tapping, turlutter (lilting the tune with the voice) and the joyful repertoire and rhythms of Donna Hébert's Franco fiddling mentors, Louis Beaudoin and Gerry Robichaud. 3-5 hour solo workshops and teaching with George Wilson at Beaudoin Project events. Some events feature Donna Hébert with her Franco fiddling friend, colleague and tunesmith Daniel Boucher. Recognized as a master Franco-American fiddler by the CT, RI and NH arts councils, Donna includes her apprentices in teaching events whenever possible.
