DISCOVERING ROCK VIOLIN;
A ROCK VIOLIN BOOK
MENU TO FIDDLE STYLES:
EXPLORING JAZZ VIOLIN
by Chris Haigh
THE FIDDLE HANDBOOK
by Chris Haigh
OFF THE WALL (CD)
By Chris Haigh
Where did it all go wrong? You started out on the violin with dreams of string quartets, recitals, playing violin concertos before a hushed and reverent audience. And now here you are playing in a band, plugging in your violin and making an unholy racket, with not the slightest idea of how you’re supposed to go about playing rock music on this most unlikely of instruments.
Guitarists began with a clear goal ahead of them, with a pantheon of ‘guitar Gods’ as their role models and to help them, there are shelves groaning with guitar tutor books and DVDs. Violinists, on the other hand, mostly stumble into a band almost by accident. If you’re lucky, you may have an album or two by Jean- luc Ponty or Sugarcane Harris to listen to, but by- and-large you’re making it up as you go along, working out by trial-and-error the things that guitarists, or most other instrumentalists, take for granted. So the bad news is that no one is going to tell you what or how to play, there is no rule book for rock violinists and basically you’re on your own. The good news is that no one else in the band, or indeed in the audience, can tell you that you’re ‘not doing it right’.
This book aims to fill that gap and whilst it’s certainly not a rule book, it is an aide to mastering a whole heap of approaches and techniques for playing rock on the violin. Working on the assumption that you have the basics of the instrument, can read music and know a bit of theory, it will guide you in easy steps through everything you need to know about how to play rock music on your fiddle. First of all you need to learn how to follow a chord sequence and play simple rhythm parts. Then, using the appropriate scales, to construct melodic lines, counterpoints and hooks that will compliment what the rest of the band is doing. You need to get to grips with pentatonic and blues scales, as well as modes. Then you get on to riffs, improvisation and rock soloing.
CONTENTS:
1: The Bare Bones The Chord Sequence; Double-Stopped Harmonies ; chord shapes for the violin; The Violin as a One Man Orchestra Unexpected Chords; the violin as a horn section; Sean Mackin (Yellowcard); Mik Kaminski (ELO); Bobby Valentino; Mackenzie Gault (Flobots); Helen O'Hara (Dexy's Midnight Runners)2. A Tonic for the Troops: The flattened 7th; the flattened 3rd; the minor pentatonic scale; rock riffs; the power chord; the Hendrix Chord; finger patterns; the higher positions; Don Sugarcane Harris; Nigel Kennedy; John Sevink (Levellers); Toni Marcus (Van Morrison); Allen Sloan (Dixie Dregs)
3. The Blues; the major and minor blues scales; the 12 bar blues; blues riffs; slides; repetition; the harmonica lick; Papa John Creach (Jefferson Starship); Nick Pickett (Fleetwood Mac); Jim Lea (Slade)
4. Chords, melody and modes: diatonic chords; "safe" notes and "wrong" notes; altered chords; dissonance; unexpected chords; the mixolydian mode; eastern mysticism; David Cross (King Crimson); Dave Arbus (The Who, East of Eden) ; Andrew Bird; L Shankar; Ric Sanders (Soft Machine)
5. Soloing; artificial feedback; harmonic overtones; the pick slide; glissando; rock vibrato; working with a singer; working with another soloist; phrasing ; Rachel Barton Pine; Tracy Silverman; Barry Wickens; Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan) Jerry Goodman (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
6. Progressive rock; complex time signatures; the Canterbury Scene; Prog in the rest of Britain and outside. Eddie Jobson (Curved Air, Roxy Music, UK) ; Anna Phoebe (Jethro Tull); Geoffrey Richardson (Caravan); Simon House (Hawkwind); Ray Shulman (Gentle Giant); Graham Smith (String Driven Thing); David LaFlamme (It's a beautiful day) ; Robby Steinhardt (Kansas) ; Ben Mink (Rush) Akihisa Tsuboy (KBB)
7. Folk Rock; American Folk Rock; electric folk; folk forms and rhythms; tremello; drones; the Dorian mode; Irish folk rock; ornamentation, fingered and bowed. David Lindley (The Band); Dave Swarbrick (Fairport Convention); Peter Knight (Steeleye Span); Seth Lakeman; Tom Hobden (Noah and the Whale); Charles O'Connor (Horslips) ; Steve Wickham (The Waterboys) ; Eileen Ivers (Riverdance) ; Angus R Grant (Shooglenifty) ; Martyn Bennett
8. Country Rock; a brief history of country music; the Nashville shuffle; the Georgia shuffle; the double Shuffle; double stops; cajun fiddling; contemporary country; Rufus Thibedeaux (Neil Young) ; Charlie Daniels; Vassar Clements; Richard Greene (Seatrain); Martin Bell (Wonderstuff) ; Byron Berline (Rolling Stones); Doug Kershaw; Brantley Kearns (Dwight Yoakam) ; Glen Duncan (Travis Tritt) ; Larry Franklin (Shania Twain); Rob Hajacos (Garth Brooks);
9. Jazz Rock; modal jazz; swing; jazz fusion; latin jazz; following the chords in jazz; playing "outside"; playing in octaves; the'seagull";Jean-luc Ponty; Didier Lockwood; Michal Urbaniak; Joe Deninzon.
10. Heavy rock and metal; violin metal in Scandinavia, Europe and the USA;guitar style riffs; Pete Johansen (Morgul, Tritania); Olli Vanska (Turisas); Emilie Autumn; Lyris Hung; Anton Patzner (Judgement Day), Mark Wood
11.Other styles; effects and amplification; the violin in pop music; punk; art rock; amplifying the violin; electric violins; effects pedals; John Crocker (Cockney Rebel); Ric Gretch (Family); Jack Fallon (The Beatles); Nick Pynn (B•Wiched); Russell Senior (Pulp); Clare Lindley (Stackridge); Abi Fry (British Sea Power); Lili Haydn; Vicky Aspinall, Anne Wood (The Raincoats); Tymon Dogg (The Clash); Owen Pallet (Arcade Fire); Laurie Anderson; Mia Matsumiya (Kayo Dot)
PLUS....The top 20 best rock violin solos of all time, ever!
INTERVIEWS
The book was written with the help of interviews with many contemporary rock violinists including Mark Wood, Joe Deninzon, Tracy Silverman, Pete Johansen, Steve Wickham, Olli Vanska, Larry Franklin, Rachel Barton Pine, Anna Phoebe, Geoffrey Richardson, Nick Pickett and Bobby Valentino.
THE RECORDING
This rock violin book comes with 37 studio tracks on CD, including full pieces and short riffs, with and without the violin top line. There are also 121 mp3 tracks. Musicians on the recording are
Guitars – Hugh Burns; Bass – Dudley Phillips; Keyboards – Geoff Castle; Drums – Roy Dodds; Violin – Chris Haigh Engineering and mixing – Andy Ramsay (Pressplay studios)
author: Chris Haigh
An introduction to rock styles, technique and improvisation
Instrumentation: Violin
Publisher: Schott Music
Difficulty: intermediate
Edition: edition with CD
Language: English
Series: Schott Pop-Styles
192 Pages - Paperback/Soft Cover
ISMN: M-2201-3300-8
ISBN: 978-1-84761-26700
Order number: ED 13459
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HOW TO BUY "DISCOVERING ROCK VIOLIN "
If you're in the UK you can get it here by paypal for just £20.00 (including postage & packing)
Or you can send a cheque for £20 payable to Chris Haigh to 232 Sebert Rd, Forest Gate, London E70NP.
Non-UK residents, but in the EU, can order by adding £3 for postage. If you're outside the EU sorry, you'll have to buy it elsewhere.
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Chris Haigh is a freelance fiddle player based in London. His playing covers a huge range of styles, all played with commitment and authority. He has played on over 70 albums. He has two book published by Spartan Press; "Fiddling aroud the World" and "Any fool can write Fiddle Tunes", and "The Fiddle Handbook" is published by Backbeat/Hal Leonard. Exploring Jazz violin is published by Schott.