Reviews!

The first review is in, and it's great! The magazine Bluegrass Unlimited loved it. In their November, 2014 issue they said, among other things, "This thorough volume is a wonderful resource for the serious student of bluegrass fiddle." And: "This is the best book on bluegrass fiddle written so far in this century. Miss it at your own peril."

Read the complete review here.

Learning To Fiddle, Bluegrass StyleTuesday, April 22, 2014



Here's the first complete method book on learning bluegrass fiddle! It's a comprehensive introduction to the style with hundreds of written and recorded examples of tunes, riffs, fills and exercises!​



Cover


From the back cover: Learning To Fiddle, Bluegrass Style is intended for fiddlers and violinists who want to learn to play bluegrass fiddle. It is aimed at those players who have already mastered the basic techniques of fiddle and violin in first position – bowing, scales and intonation – and who can read standard music notation, even if only slowly.

Bluegrass fiddle contains a number of subtle techniques that often appear mysterious to the neophyte fiddler. This book methodically covers the major components of bluegrass fiddling: Bowing, bow control, and bowing patterns; scale and arpeggio fragments; learning how to extract a tune’s "signature"; slides; double-stops; and position shifting. Through the use of creative exercises derived from bluegrass fiddlers, it walks you through progressively more difficult techniques. And unlike other instruction books, Learning To Fiddle, Bluegrass Style will teach you how to create your own breaks by utilizing the components of the style!

Click hereto see some free sample pages and tunes from the book.

Click hereto download additional sound files, free fiddle tune transcriptions, and the errata sheet.

You'll understand how to use riffs and fills to complete the classic bluegrass band sound, how to play harmony, and how to approach improvisation. You will learn how to shift smoothly between first, second and third positions, and how to reach those classic bluegrass fiddle licks. You will learn about position and chord shapes that allow you to play nearly effortlessly in the most challenging keys. You'll learn how to "play the blues bluegrass style" in the keys of E and B. Every exercise and tune is demonstrated on the two included CDs, played both slowly and up to speed. Tune examples are accompanied by a full bluegrass band, first with a fiddle playing the break, then with a space reserved for you to try your own solos!

Throughout the book, Rossi offers encouraging conversational asides that talk about playing in a working band, his own struggles with the instrument over the years, and observations about music and performing in the real world.

About The Author
Neil Rossi is an award-winning fiddler and teacher. He formed the Spark Gap Wonder Boys, an old-time band that won the Union Grove Old Fiddler's Convention in 1970, and later recorded the first album for the then-brand-new Rounder Records label. He toured with the David Bromberg Band, and later played fiddle with a number of bands in Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. He now plays mandolin and fiddle with the traditional bluegrass band Big Spike Bluegrass and lives in northern Vermont.