Fiddle musings

I just had a lesson with the amazing Irish fiddler James Kelly. I consider myself a reasonable fiddler - not the greatest, but not the worst either. I have good tone, I know a few hundred tunes, I can get through a set of tunes without getting lost, and I can play for several hours without being stiff or in pain the next day. William and I lead sessions regularly and have been doing so for several years; to be able to lead a session, you have to have your act together and we are pretty good at that.

But, I don't have the kind of detail I need, and this lesson proved it. We spent the majority of the time working on my playing at a very small level: slowing down rolls and triplets, changing bow strokes to let the rhythm come through, softening my bow arm so I'm relaxing into the ornaments instead of tightening up in anticipation of them. At the very end, we got into actually playing a tune so that I could start applying some of what we had been talking about. I am not going to completely change how I play but I am going to be doing more exercises than tune playing for a while. I want to be in control of my playing and be able to make it come out the way I hear it in my head, and that's going to take a lot of thinking, a lot of listening, and a lot of work.