"Eloi Leblanc - Grandfather of Acadien Fiddle"

Acadian Fiddle 

Artists by region & a very impressive tune list with notation!

https://www.acadianfiddle.com/ 

- Emily

Found a marvelous, old, traditional ACADIAN tune - it's the 1st of 2 tunes, pronounced in the video, but I don't know how to spell it (almost sounds like 'La Sala De'?)!  Has a Celtic feel to it, but definitely unique!  Performed by, "La famille LeBlanc" (New Brunswick). 

...the 2nd tune is also nice, can't look for sheet music (don't know the names), but the 1st tune is now on my "THE LIST" to learn. (lol) 

- Emily

I've been fiddling around today, playing tunes that are way too cheerful. (lol) 

One is by Don Messer (Down East Style) - "Old French" (aka. Rambler's Hornpipe). 

Here's a great tutorial from Julia Plumb (at Free Fiddle Lesson). 

And I've been meaning to learn "Reel de Montréal" - here's another great tutorial by Julia Plumb (at Free Fiddle Lesson). 

...enough Québécois happy for me, today! 

- Emily

@ABitRusty -

Copied your Critters & moved my French Canadian Critter tune posts to here. 🤗

Canadian Critter Tunes Thread

@ABitRusty -

Have you tried this tune?

Really nice André Brunet tutorial! 

La Belle Catherine is one of the most popular Québécois fiddles tunes you will hear. This version of the traditional tune is from the playing of Louis “Pitou” Boudreault, a great Québécois fiddler who’s music rose to prominence in the 1970’s.

- Emily

Ran across a nice little French Canadian tune, "The Grand Chain", shared by Bruce Bauman, who's surprisingly from a little place in the middle of Michigan (middle of nowhere) - where I actually lived for a year! 

'Reely' love both of those tunes - nothing difficult, just fun to play AND in Em! 

I forgot to add this free printable sheet music.

"Valse des Bois" Sheet Music by Richard Forest

One of the highlights of this April 2023 Fiddle Hell (for me) was discovering Laura Risk! 

LOVE that she's not only a wonderful fiddler, she's a teacher, historian & researcher of mostly Canadian & Scottish music! 

I thoroughly enjoyed her concert and "Québécois Fiddling in the First Half of the 20th Century" workshop!  There's something really infectious about her enthusiasm, makes me want to learn MORE! 

"Crooked tunes from Québec; Laura Risk & Voices of Music" - playing Baroque violins! 

Fiddlers have played for dancing in Québec since the time of New France, though it’s likely that all of the tunes played in the province today date from after the British conquest of 1760. Some tunes and dances probably arrived with the British military presence, others with Irish and Scottish settlers in the 19th century, and many as a result of the continual back-and-forth between Québec and the United States, particularly New England.

Fiddling in Québec was an entirely aural tradition until the 20th century, and the first substantial documentation of the repertoire was not in printed collections or manuscripts—as was the case in Scotland, for instance—but on hundreds of 78 rpm discs recorded and released in Montreal in the 1920s.

Fiddlers in Québec often put their own stamp on tunes and each has his or her own sound: some combination of bowings, ornamentation, timbre, and melodic and rhythmic variations on the melody. The three tunes on tonight’s program are all widely played in Québec nowadays and come from the repertoire of fiddler André Alain (1931–2000), from the village of St-Basile de Portneuf on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River.

All three tunes are “crooked,” meaning that their phrases are not the standard 4 or 8 bars in length. The melodic contour of the second tune is similar to that of a number of Scottish and Irish tunes. The third tune could be played “en vielle,” with the lower two strings of the violin tuned up from G and D to A and E. Tunes in this video: Deux reels en sol d'Andrè Alain Le Reel des voyageurs —Laura Risk