Thank you, Oliver, you are too kind.

My ear is better than my playing, unfortunately. LOL  I can tell where I am off, and not all of it is intentional.  In some cases it is intentional, since some notes as they are sung by a voice will be a few cycles high or low for the sake of the feel.  Some modern pop music that has been auto-tuned to the point of being bland saccharine dreck gives a good example of how absolutely perfect intonation can feel lifeless.  I've been starting to intentionally come in slightly above or below some notes and "bend" the note to the right degree of tune to try and get the feel that a singer would get as they come up to or drop down to certain notes.  I know it is what I will need to do to get the sound I want, but my technical skills on violin/fiddle have a ways to go yet for that.  That the pressure and speed of the bow somewhat affects the pitch of the note is still throwing me.

One of my teachers, the head of the music department at the local college, used to try and claim I had "perfect pitch", but I do not.  What I have is a fairly good "relative pitch", meaning if I hear a note that is in tune, I can tell if other notes are correct or not in relation to it.  People with real perfect pitch will not be thrown off by a reference note played out of tune, but I am.  That may sound like a nice thing to have, and while I can't complain about it in the long run, right now my playing sounds pretty slapdash to me.  LOL

A duet?  Sounds like an interesting idea, at least a little ways down the road.  I'd have to warn you that right now my sight reading for violin are pretty elementary, though.  I've mostly only worked sight reading with scales, and most melodies I am playing by ear.

But thank you for your kind words and encouragement, Oliver.

Well, it hasn't been a whole week since my last post in this thread, but I wore off another of the "noob tapes" this morning.  (And I do kinda use the remaining two tapes as a sort of security blanket when I venture up into 3rd and 4th position)

Here's what I was working on when the noob tape broke.  One bad thing I will say about tape.  It leaves a little bit of sticky residue you have to clean off.

Kevin M. said

Someone didn't listen! <—— Fixed it.

And week 6 is down and gone.

I have some news on the "noob tapes" that I sort of have mixed feelings on.  My wife and my daughter brought to my attention that 2 of the tapes have fallen off.  Yeah, I know, I wore them off.  But they'd kinda like me to replace them because they occasionally pick up my violin to try a few notes when I leave it lying for a bit…  

Hmm.. Now, on the one hand I was glad to see the tapes gone.  But on the other hand, I don't want to discourage their interest in the instrument.  I have a little previous experience on fretless instruments, but they don't.  I told them I'll have to think on it for a day or two.  LOL

This week's musical victim is an old traditional sort of a love song from the 17th century or earlier called "Blow the Candles Out".  Since one of my personal musical goals with violin is to get good enough at it to use it in recordings, I worked up a backing track with acoustic guitar.

Now, I play by ear, mostly.. But knowing that some folks like a score (and lyrics are always good in case someone doesn't happen to just know the song offhand), I found a score for it here:  http://www.8notes.com/scores/3828.asp

My own arrangement/interpretation is maybe a bit different, I haven't checked.  I learned it by my wife (before we were actually married) singing it to me (which is probably the best possible way to learn a love song), since she had learned it for a madrigal singing group she was in.  So I worked up a simple acoustic guitar accompaniment, so we could do the song together and also I've worked up interpretations/arrangements for it with almost every instrument I learned to play. 

Without further ado, here it is (complete with squeaks and nicks)

(sorry for the big black box, FM, but I am not seeing the tabs or screen you showed earlier in the thread) <—- I got it for you – Fiddlerman

NV:  http://www.8notes.com/scores/3828.asp

I play it a step higher than that score though, since I prefer the sound of the guitar in Em/G for the song.

I think the period on this piece is late Renaissance, just a bit before Baroque period.  But that is just when someone wrote it down, I agree it does have a bit of Medieval sound to it.

Thank you, Mad_Wed. 

With a song from centuries ago, I don't think there is any way to be sure what it sounded like originally.  The bad part of that is we will never know what it sounded like back then.  The good part is that nobody can prove that a version we do is wrong.  LOL 

To me, from the lyrics, it always seemed a love song or a song of reminiscence/remembering.  So I try to do it slow and wishful.