We had a great start to the Autumn term, and welcomed new Level 1 students and Absolute Beginners to the North East Fiddle School. We were delighted to have Melissa Whitehead and Jim Boyle teaching alongside Stewart for the five-week block, which allowed us to run the extra classes.

This coming half-term (7th Nov to 5th Dec) we will be running classes at Level 2 and Level 3. Level 2 will have Melissa for Technique and Stewart for Style, and Level 3 will have Stewart for Technique and Melissa for Style. If you would like to book a place, please use the Contact page to get in touch.

Level 2
Stewart’s Style class theme will be Solid Structures. An understanding of how tunes are constructed is a key element to navigating your way around an aural tradition and acquiring repertoire. These workshops will explore a fundamental structure and see how it helps to learn tunes, join in with other musicians and create variation.

Level 3
Melissa has chosen 3 cracking tunes from a great collaborative collection Gruth is Uachdar by Donald Shaw & Charlie McKerron. As well as being great tunes, these will give the opportunity to look at some different ornamentation styles, as well as some string accompaniment techniques, such as pizzicato and smoothly bowed string parts.

We would like to thank Jim for joining us at the North East Fiddle School this half-term and wish him all the very best with the many projects he has on the go right now. We hope that soon there will be more space in the diary and we will be able to have him back to teach with us.