What is the Scratch to Gigs platform?

The idea of this platform came from the motivation to make high quality videos and supporting content to help beginner thru advanced fiddlers improve their fundamentals. I want to create an environment where those who may be opening the case for the very first time might meet and converse with folks who are ready to lead gigs on fiddle and beyond. My two most important goals as a teacher are to help you forge connections to other fiddlers, feel comfortable while playing, and to guide you toward becoming your own teacher. Once you’ve “closed the loop,” of identifying your own goal and have the resources to gather and process the material to meet that goal, then the world of fiddling opens up to you.

What we will cover

I often get very similar questions related to making it sound fiddley, playing up to speed, bow control and getting great sound. I believe everything is really all connected in music, so as you build your fundamentals, everything will start to come together all at once. I will start off by building out all of my information on basic physics and comfort oriented concepts that help you make friends with the fiddle. If you need a tidbit to use right now, like right now, then my advice would be to (a) go learn to use a metronome skillfully, and (b) start visualizing your own success.

Since I have had practice honing down my descriptions of each of these basics concepts, I would like to be able to point a student to my “best version” of each of these lesson organized by theme. I think a good place to start will be thorough videos with lots of playing, organized around a theme or central question. You’ll be able to watch me model certain techniques and can practice along to the video as many times as you like!

Inside the crystal ball

In my dreams, Scratch to Gigs is a lot more than just a databank of my personal teaching material. Over time, I will also create spaces to get together and share what works for all of us as we take our fiddle journeys together. I will start small group classes at different levels and aim to bring people together onto “teams” that will keep taking lessons together and build camaraderie. Also, a near-term goal is to create a Scratch to Gigs discord forum, which will help us categorize and make our collective knowledge “searchable,” and enable responses to each other’s questions faster with a higher degree of validity and confidence than can be found elsewhere.

Why I almost quit in 2010

Throughout my childhood and adolescence playing violin and fiddle, I developed very bad habits that amounted to a ton of stress and debilitating neck and shoulder pain. That makes one tend not to want to practice, and with violin playing being such a personal experience, dealing with pain makes one think, “there must be something wrong with me if I can’t do this,” and then doing it again feels that much harder. Well… we all couldn’t be more off.

What saved my playing forever

When I got to college my private teacher Bayla Keyes saved me – at our first lesson she identified that the pain in my neck stemmed from locking my knees. To unlock them (and my whole body in turn), she sent me off to the practice room to repeat long-bow open strings for 15 minutes a day, while kneeling down on the floor (can’t lock your knees that way, buddy). That opened my eyes that fiddling is really a very athletic activity that involves connections throughout the whole body. Nothing works in isolation. Day by day, the inflammation worked itself out of my body and I became comfortable enough to play again. As a teacher, that’s why I focus on fundamentals at all levels. Out of my own experience, I have been able to help dozens of students at all levels work with their instrument and bow, and form that powerful connection that pervades throughout music and makes it feel so good to play. Oh, those of you still reading may be curious to know, I graduated college with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Linguistics … not violin performance. Now I’m here. Things change.