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Cape Breton Deep-Dive (Oct 2022)

Style Fundamentals & CB Power Plays

UPDATES

  • Sign-up for the Oct 2022 course is closed. Please email me if you would like to sign up or be notified about future courses.


ABOUT THE COURSE

The Cape Breton Deep-Dive (CBDD) course is for players with a keen interest in the elusive Cape Breton fiddle style. The focus will be on fine-tuning CB fiddle-style fundamentals and investigating the more complex and idiomatic playing techniques which I call Cape Breton Power Plays.

We'll start with a base of fundamental CB building blocks such as:

  • Violin & bow hold conducive for down-bow push & up-bow power.

  • Ictus (pops & sizzles).

  • Grounded rhythmic steadiness (including triplet feel to strathspey rhythms).

  • Independence of right arm from head/shoulder/left arm.

  • Using the 4th finger and drones.

  • Body motion (spine flex) and footwork.

  • Transitions between tune types in a medley.

  • Balancing the occurrence of different rhythms, and between earth-bound & airborne bowing.


We'll also workshop many of the CB Power Play techniques, including:

  • Twiddles (flick, u-flick, warble, pull-in, pull-in pop, fingered-slide).

  • Cuts and cutting up a tune.

  • Unconventional bow connections (pop-slur, loop, straight-slur, pop-up, up-driven bow).

  • Percussive notes (stubbies) and syncopation.

  • Back-string substitutions.

  • Wild notes.

  • Condensed timing of 3- and 4-note flourishes.

  • String-rocking and whip-bow technique.

  • Bowing and rhythmic modulation.


Course repertoire will be available two weeks before the first workshop. In addition, we will look at a mystery tune from the Scottish/Cape Breton repertoire to see how to apply the CB techniques to "notes on a page." And as always, I will share audio and video examples from Tradition Bearers, and point out the various techniques and special qualities I hear in each one.

At the two included private lessons, you are welcome to bring your own repertoire to explore how to apply the course techniques in other tunes, or I can answer your questions and review anything from the workshops.


AUDITING OPTIONS

There are also two auditing options available, which don’t include the private lessons. They are:
$200 for fiddle players who are too busy in October but want all the resources to dive into later. You are still welcome to attend the live workshops if you can. You will have access to the edited workshop videos and all the resources for several months afterwards, and you can book private lessons later on if you’d like to work on the material in a more focussed way.
$150 for players of other instruments, or non-players. This is for you if you are curious about CB music, don’t play a violin-family instrument (or any instrument), but you still want to understand the inner workings of that elusive fiddle style.


COURSE FEATURES

  • Three 2-hour Zoom* workshops at 11am-1pm Pacific Time on:
    Sunday Oct 16
    Sunday Oct 23
    Sunday Oct 30

  • Curated “Annotated Listening” of celebrated and iconic CB fiddlers (Tradition Bearers), to experience various elusive techniques ‘in the wild’.

  • Two 30-minute private lessons (or one 60-minute lesson), scheduled between Oct 18 and Oct 28. These lessons can be in-person for those local to the Corvallis area.

  • Access to other exclusive resources, including an edited video recording of each workshop. These resources will be updated and expanded frequently during the course, and will be available to participants for at least 2 months after the course ends.

* Workshops and Lessons will take place on the Zoom platform. Please check that your Zoom app is updated. If you’re not familiar with Zoom, you can read about recommended Zoom settings at the Zoom instructions & tips page.


PARTICIPANT RATES*

  • $325 USD for first-time CBDD participants.

  • $300 USD early-bird rate, until Monday October 3rd.

  • $275 USD for returning participants.

AUDITING RATES* (see above for details)

  • $200 USD Auditing, fiddle player (no private lessons).

  • $150 USD Auditing, non-fiddle player (no private lessons).

* Sliding scale available upon request.


See Payment page for payment options.

To sign up, or if you have any questions, please email me.

Hope to see you there!

David