This summer I will be doing a first for me: going to a musical workshop camp! Specifically, I’m going to Fiddle Tunes!
“But Anna,” I hear you cry, “you’re not a fiddle player!” This is true! But I am a guitarist, and there are several guitarists that will be teaching at this camp. Most notably, André Marchand!
If you know anything about Quebecois music at all, you may know this man’s name. At minimum, if you know anything about La Bottine Souriante, you’ve very likely heard him. He’s a veteran of the genre, with a long history with La Bottine and later with Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer. He also has recorded with flautist Grey Larsen, is one third of the trio Le Bruit Court Dans La Ville (all of whom will also be at Fiddle Tunes!), and has recorded with a few of the other Charbonniers gentlemen under the name Les Mononcles as well.
While my blatant fangirling is reserved for Le Vent du Nord and De Temps Antan, my general musical respect for the Quebecois trad genre owes a lot to Monsieur Marchand. He’s an excellent singer–several of my repeat-play La Bottine and Charbonniers tracks are things he sings lead on. But he’s also a fine guitarist, and I feel I would be entirely bonkers crazypants to pass up a chance to learn from him.
Bonus: my pal Dejah will also be there, and she will in fact be acting as M. Marchand’s assistant, providing translation assistance to help jump the language barrier. And a bit of a musical barrier as well, since Francophones use a system of scales oriented around “do re mi fa so la ti do”–so what an English speaker thinks of as the key of C, a French speaker’s going to be calling the key of do. D becomes re, E becomes mi, and so on.
I am very much looking forward to tackling this. Not only for exposure to a different way of thinking about musical scales, not only for a chance to learn from a veteran of the Quebecois trad genre (and maybe get in a bit of practice listening to someone speak French), but in general to just be able to sit down with people who know what they’re doing and improve my general ability to play. I feel like I’ve gone about as far as I can on my own, as a self-taught guitarist who just likes to doink around with the instrument. Talking to skilled musicians and learning from them will open up all sorts of new and exciting things to practice!
I’ll also be taking my carbon fiber flutes and the good whistle, mind you–because if any all-melody-instrument tunes sessions break out, I want to be prepared to practice learning those, too. And there will be some organization of participants into bands, too! So maybe somebody will want a flute or a whistle. :D
These musical shenanigans will be taking place in the last week of June, and will be taking place out in Port Townsend in Washington–which is the other reason I want to go to this thing. It’s a camp I can get to by car. And since I won’t need to get on a plane, I can bring the General.
Because if I’m going to learn from a veteran of the Quebec trad genre, better believe I want to bring the good guitar!
SO EXCITED. This is going to be huge fun. Y’all may expect I’ll report on the experience in depth!
24 Replies to “Going to Fiddle Tunes!”
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How long will it take the fan-girling squee to abate enough to be able to absorb the learning??
*chortle* I’ll have it out of my system by the time I show up. ;D
Good luck with that. I suspect there will be a few minutes at least…. ;)
Hey, I AM on record as being able to coherently communicate with admired musicians if there’s musical instruction to be had. It worked when I was in on Andre Brunet’s workshop last year! And in this case I’ll have several months of advance warning to brace myself. :D
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See, I’m good with shorter notice. The long notice thing? Yeah, time for the fan-girling to kick in, though the time to make sure I expunge it quickly.
Well, it also helps that “HURRAY I’m going to learn something musical!” squee is not QUITE the same thing as “ZOMG admired musician” squee. They often intersect. But they are NOT the same thing!
I was able to stand up at a con and ask RDA a question without sounding like a complete idiot. Was able to carry on coherent conversations with each of the guests with whom I spoke that we on no not the advance notice listing. A couple of the shorter notice or surprise ones were a bit babbly.
This would be why I’d have a much easier time asking oh, say, Bob Hallett a musical question to his face than I would Alan Doyle. Mr. Hallett is not a clear and present threat to the stability of my knees. >:D
The con was in late August, we got our tickets early November the previous year.
For me, I’ve also had some practice the last couple years asking music questions of the boys in Le Vent and De Temps Antan too, and that does help. In the case of M. Marchand there will be a bigger language barrier to jump, but that’ll also be helped out by Dejah!
Alex Zahara and Cliff Simon were easy talks, they’re not the headliners, and less likely to have heard all the weird questions. Tom MacBeath threw me a bit, but after meeting him at a mixer, I was able to be coherent the next meeting. :)
But if I have to work to parse jumping a language barrier AND jumping across musical scale systems, that’ll also help, actually–engages more of the brain and distracts me from the squee. ^_^ And yeah, it does help in general to have a bit of practice at it, and to remember that hey, these ARE just people too, even if they do things you really admire the hell out of!
The language issue actually occupies enough of the brain capacity that it eases out some of the available room for fan-girling.
Great minds think alike and such!
My being pregnant helped a bit too. Talk about readily available ice breaking material.
It’ll help me to be armed with instruments, too. The general mental reminder that “I just paid good money to show up for this camp and want to make coherent noises on my instrument for this particular teacher” will do wonders.
Wasn’t far in, but looked further along. I was in mat clothing by 6-7weeks because of other issues. So at 12-13weeks, I looked like I was a full 4-5months.
So with the lead time on when the full event tickets sold out, the queries about “cutting it close on the pregnancy and the con and travel, eh?” Was a common question.
I can just bet!
Hubby and I joked that because we had the con tickets booked, it was pretty much a guarantee for being pregnant. We should have tried it a decade earlier.
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