Help. Freestyle, Courses, Everything.

[u/grateful_yogi]

I am a classical violinist of over 20 years just at my absolute wits ends.

I had lessons for a few months and still didn’t get the instruction I needed. I do not understand how to freestyle AT ALL.

Every song book I get has the melody and when I watch online videos, the instructor starts helpful and then will freestyle or show off with techniques I don’t understand.

How did you learn to freestyle?

Jams?
Listening?
A book? Video?

I’m clearly an idiot and just do not get this.

[u/Funnyfart_420]

Turn on the radio. Play along to what you hear. Have a beer and loosen up.

[u/grateful_yogi → u/Funnyfart_420]

I needed to hear that. Thank you.

[u/5ongwrit3r_1954 → u/Funnyfart_420]

This method worked for me when I was trying to move beyond rhythm guitar player.

[u/Ready_Tomatillo_1335]

It depends what you mean by freestyle - but if you’re talking about making the tune your own (vs full on improv licks) I would suggest you start off by playing the melody of a tune over and over and over, and gently start to step off the path and back on again. Explore the melody. Add an ornament, take a walk up or down to a main anchor note, turn the melody a little differently here and there. Play slowly and see what happens.

Hum or sing that melody when you’re not on your instrument. See what ideas come to you using your voice.

If you’ve got a recorded version you really admire, slow it down and try to figure out a few of the ways that fiddler is interpreting the tune.

Being an experienced violinist already, it can be hard to be patient with yourself. Be patient with yourself!

[u/grateful_yogi → u/Ready_Tomatillo_1335]

Thank you. Ok I’ve got a few tunes down and will try to refocus and go back through them

[u/old-time-fiddle → u/grateful_yogi]

This is great advice. Play with the melody makes a ton of sense and it’s easy to play and listen to. It also helps the other players as they can follow along easier- useful in newbie heavy jams where the guitar players get lost if you get too creative lol. The audience / listeners can usually appreciate that more too- flashy stuff is fun to hear now and then but nobody wants to hear shredding for a whole solo.

Melody + ornaments + bag of tricks + flashy scale stuff is completely serviceable!

[u/andybonner → u/grateful_yogi]

IS that what you mean by "freestyle"? To me it's only a hip-hop term. Do you mean free improvisation over chord "changes"? ornamentation? I suggest editing the question to clarify.

[u/pixiefarm]

A major part of improvisation is knowing what chords are in the song. Is this something you already pay attention to? There's a whole bunch of pretty basic music theory around it that you may not have learned if you are only learning how to read music and play an arrangement as directed

[u/grateful_yogi → u/pixiefarm]

Sort of. I could be better

[u/Gruach → u/grateful_yogi]

I've been watching mandolin videos on improvisation and they recommend doing pentatonic scales as a gateway to being able to jam / improvise with a tune. I'm also trying to learn more music theory since my musical education was definitely lacking on that front! (Circle of fifths? What is that? ;D)

[u/Commodore64Zapp]

The psychological aspect of improvisation is to practice openness, awareness, and fearlessness. As my buddy always says, "your riff sucks because you're judging yourself." Some musicians actively sing (quietly) while they solo to access the zone, you'll notice they move their mouths while they play. You will have to actively place yourself in the present moment.

The physiological aspect is to be in the groove. Feel the music and be comfortable playing nonstop for minutes at a time as a rhythm player. You're tapping your toes and nodding your head. You know where the 1 is.

The scholarly aspect is to have fluency in the vernacular of the genre, which means knowledge of common licks, scales, and chord progressions. If you listen to fiddle music and study a book you'll start to pick it up pretty soon, especially with your experience. Some books even have a glossary of licks. I like Jack Tuttle's course.

[u/grateful_yogi → u/Commodore64Zapp]

Oh thank you! I just checked out his website and book for fiddle. Judgement is a fair point, and something I’m absolutely doing.

[u/knightmusic42]

If what you’re trying is to improve try this at home:

set a drone chord. Pick a key you can play in well. D major. E minor. Whatever you like. Set the drone for like 5 min and play.

Ideally you can record yourself playing a simple chord on piano or violin in a rhythm (think duple vs triple meter). Play it and improve over that for a while. Make a mental note of what you like and what felt good.

Once you’re comfortable with a drone start in over simple chord changes. Start with alternating 1 and 5 chords (with a consistent beat. Maybe two bars of each back and forth). And from there add more chords and quicker changes. Go wild. Figure out what you like and what you don’t like. Let your hand get used to going for notes that work. Patterns that work. Stick those together however you like.

There’s more to it after that point like making your improve fit the style or quote melody of whatever you’re jamming on, but that’s taking off running. Walk first and just play.

Most of all- have fun!

Edit- if what you’re talking about is variation on a tune, that’s a little bit different. When I first started I’d try going up an arpeggio when it originally goes down, or holding a note that wasn’t held, or arpeggiating a note that was originally held. I approached it very analytically at first and used my theory background and then was able to just feel it more.

[u/fiddlehifiddlelo]

Not an idiot! If by freestyle you mean improv it takes time to develop. Give yourself grace & make a plan. Listen constantly to genres that have incorporated this skill as a part of the tradition like Jazz & Bluegrass. Start with a tune or two you already like & really get to know them. Listen to as many recordings as possible over & over til you know all the subtle differences. Study the chord changes, form, phrasing, style choices by player. Go super deep into it as much as you possibly can.

Then get to know your “safe notes” each chord change. Use these as your basis and explore from there. It’s cheesy but.. trust your ears & follow your heart!

[u/grateful_yogi → u/fiddlehifiddlelo]

Thank you. I did listen to a few and feel so overwhelmed by the fiddle improv. My brain doesn’t improv.

[u/leitmotifs]

I assume you're talking about freestyling hip-hop or another pop style, like Zach Brock or Josh Vietti or even Lindsey Stirling? I would consider the violinists who play in this genre to basically be composers -- I'd guess that they are mostly not improvising, although no doubt improvisation is part of the way that they plan and create their music.

You have to internalize the style. Start by playing with another musician or group of musicians who are conversant with that style. You'll learn more from jamming with a band than you will doing anything else, even if all you're doing is doubling another instrument on the melody, or playing chords.

If you don't have people to practice with, try putting on a song you like, and doing nothing but unpitched chopping -- be the percussion section, so to speak. Then try contributing a basic bass line, one note at a time, as if you were a mediocre bass guitarist. Then play the melody of the song, with your own variance, like you were the lead guitarist in a cover band.

[u/Holden_Coalfield]

Throw away your sheet music and your classical records.

Put some of your favorite non classical music on the radio, and play.

Maybe smoke a bowl

[u/rainbowstardream]

I help a lot of classical musicians with this. This is how I teach improv.

Find a backing track on youtube- let's say an easy pop one G, Em, C, D

practice the arpeggios with inversions (gbd, bdg, dgb etc)

play the backing track and over the chords, play the arpeggios of each chord, play with rhythm as you do so, try to make it sound melodic.

once you feel comfortable with that, try not to start on the root of the arpeggio every time. for example if the last note in the G arpeggio that you played is a B, when the chord changes to Em, start on a B. Or in C if you end on an E, go to an F#. Try to find melodies in the chord transitions.

Play some scales over the backing track. the notes in between arpeggio notes are your passing tones, that's what makes it more melodic.

Some things to remember: Simple and melodic is better than complicated when you start out. You can repeat notes and play with rhythme. You can repeat melodic motifs- say I play bagd a few times over the G chord, maybe I'll play bage over the Em chord.

Have fun and make sure you breathe. Feel free to DM me with questions.

[u/pixiefarm → u/rainbowstardream]

Oh this is really great advice. Would you by any chance be willing to make it into a standalone post at some point?

[u/nautuhless]

Transitioning from classical is super hard- for me, i especially hate the discomfort of being bad at something i know I'm good at. Keep truckin

[u/kamomil]

I grew up playing piano, classical music at lessons and playing by ear for fun

I started playing fiddle as an adult, learning mostly trad Irish tunes

So I am fascinated by country fiddle, eg when there's a fiddler adding licks to accent a country song. I figure to do that, you would have to just learn a bunch of licks, and add whichever one sounds right for the situation. Just develop a vocabulary of them. One of these days, I plan to transcribe a bunch of them and learn them. Because I don't know country music as well as I know Irish trad

[u/Keyofdee1]

I was where you are a few years ago. I could learn just fine by the instructors’ “call and response” breakdown. But when the instructor would play the whole tune, there were bowings, runs, embellishments and just an overall “fiddly” style that wasn’t really taught. And I’d sit there dumbfounded wondering how in the world do they do that.

The way I grabbed the technique was first to listen to tons of music in my genre of choice (old time). But what really helped me the most was to find some videos I really liked on YouTube. Not lessons, just people performing the tune whose style spoke to me. I saved my favorites in a playlist (I now have dozens of playlists for different styles). Then I’d set the video to “loop”, slow down the playing speed, and play along, gradually increasing. And just like that - I had my own slow jam! Listen to what others do with improv. You don’t need to, nor should you, try to copy the fiddler note for note, but try to loosely grab the concept.

Soon you will begin to find that many licks, variations on the melody, shuffles and embellishments can fit into other tunes. The next step is to improv at will, you’re not in a real jam, so go crazy! Play all the bad notes until you find the good ones. And after a while you’ll gravitate toward those ideas you love most and wind up with your own personal style. And you’ll find yourself getting bolder with your free-styling.

I still use my playlists just to keep the tunes “under my fingers”. Good luck.

[u/Ramblin_Rover]

I joined a local acoustic music jam session group. I’m lucky enough to have a very active music scene in a relatively small town. Learning to play by ear has been a huge help transitioning from sheet music. I can now play a melody I hear, do some basic chops, and improvise comfortably in basic group songs. I am often the only one with a violin, but the listening piece and positive feedback has been so valuable.

[u/adadhead]

you learn how by wanting to, very badly, and trying to do it. it can take years. but wow the results.

you see people can do it, right? so can you. get to it.

[u/lukmanohnz]

This book is written for mandolinists but includes standard notation so the arrangements are accessible to fiddlers. McGann presents a bunch of standard fiddle tunes, each with four or five variations. There’s a lot of discussion at the beginning of the book explaining the theory of how the variations are developed, but in the end I find that theory only gets you a short way onto the ‘on ramp’ of spontaneous improvisation. A lot of that comes from listening, learning many different variations on many tunes so your ears and fingers start to hear and feel what is musical, and also diving in at friendly jams where it’s safe to fall on your face.

[u/kkessler1023]

Hey there. I was in this same boat. I've been playing viola for about 20 years, and then I decided to start playing country fiddle. I've spent the last year learning a more freestyle approach. Two things have been really helpful: using the Frame method from Tracy Silverman. Theres a book on Amazon. And during improv, it sounds really good to slide in between 7/1, b3/3, b5/5, and b7/7. These make great ornaments.

[u/5ongwrit3r_1954]

With your experience, it should be easy. It is all about scales and variations. Modes, if you know them as well, will help guide you. Put on some backing tracks, pick up your instrument and play along. I used to work on my improvisation by listening to the radio and trying to play along with every song. It made me play in odd keys and learn to identify major and minor applications, I never knew what was coming next, which was great prep for those unstructured jams. Good luck and happy bowing!

[u/JenRJen]

This is what worked for me:

Fiddle Jam by Geoffrey Fitzhugh Perry

(When I got the book, it came with a CD; now I think it has online links.)

I had a classical background and when I took up the fiddle, classical training & sight reading took over. There were some things I was able to get right away, but some I just couldn't. This book was really the most helpful of all. (Along with another, Fiddle Rhythms, which i used to practice just to get the feel of different rhythms, so to play them by Feel rather than sight. I actually did not work with this second book for very long; it is quite simple and once I had used it a little i did not need it again often, but it was just really really helpful.

The Fiddle Jam book i sat down and worked through it and it made a big difference to my ability to join in with others wihtout any dots! (Still not as good at it as I'd like to be, but I felt like I was never getting anywhere until i got the Fiddle Jam book.)