Creating a Tune Bank
PASSING ON TraditioNS in the DIGITAL Age
For years, I’ve learned and passed on tunes in the way fiddlers often do: jam session, masterclasses, contra dances, workshops, private lessons, house parties, listening to records… Lately, I’ve found myself dabbling in another arena, one I never thought seriously about for teaching.
Social media.
Well, that’s not entirely true. The pandemic saw a swell of fiddle tune videos, my favorites being the “365 days of fiddle tunes” series presented by Scotsman Fergal Scahill and my friend, Canadian Patti Kusturok. I enjoyed those series and often sent the links to my students, the #madstopfiddlers, for inspiration around tunes we were working on at lessons, but thought these would fade after musicians went back to work in person.
#TheFiddlersPOV by Gretchen Koehler
As an educator, I try to keep up with technology, or at least become familiar with what my young students are into. My teenage son at the time was having fun with TikTok, which I knew nothing about (or even cared about.) With his encouragement though, I started thinking about creating my own page. I didn’t like the idea of adding more digital clutter, so I thought of something my students might find useful.
I knew I wasn’t interested in the fuss of being “camera ready,” and loved my idea of shooting only my fingers on the fingerboard to show my double stops, slides, and fingering choices from the fiddler’s point of view. #thefiddlersPOV became my new, fun project.
I know in the world of “click bait” you need some sort of “hook,” so I came up with the idea of nail polish (which I do anyway) and colorful backdrops (tablecloths, scarves and blankets from around my house.) My goal was to learn my way around TikTok and post 20 tunes before I stopped this silly project.
I got a chuckle one day when I had to click on #thefiddlersPOV to remember how a tune went!! This is actally quite handy! I decided to branch out and post my videos on YouTube Shorts and Instagram, thinking maybe a handful of players would find them useful, too. I was overwhelmed with positive feedback on all platforms and found myself giving playing tips to players in the comment section. These interactions with my viewers made me wonder if this endeavor was more a little more valuable than I first realized.
Then, players from around the world showed up. I could not believe how many times I had to push “translate” to read the comments in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, and more! The skeptic in me wondered if the robots had taken over my feed, but it was wonderful to click on these profiles to find fiddlers, as well as violinist from a host of different global string genres.
On these platforms, I sent my tradition farther than I ever imagined. Tunes like Buck Fever Rag reached almost 100K views in 2 months. I found myself explaining to a fiddler from Spain about the Canadian fiddle tradition from which this tune came. I liked that musicians from different genres were excited about folding new tunes into their repertoire. I liked that the school orchestra kids where I was a one day guest fiddle instructor would have something to connect with after I left the building. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I am delighted by the idea of interrupting someone’s doom scrolling, even for just a minute, with a fab little tune with my nails on point, lol.
Don’t get me wrong, I still favor “in-person” tune swaps, but I am happy to send a series of 40-second video clips into the digital world from this fiddler’s point of view.
Happy scrolling,
~Gretchen
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