Champion Fiddler, Inspired Performer
Crafton Blues is what I would call a country blues tune. It mostly fits the blues chord structure, but it’s not what most people would consider bluesy. Crafton Blues is a popular fiddle contest tune of choice. Here Matthew plays a Texas-Style fiddling arrangement of it that he is improvising on the spot. Because he [...]
You don’t hear House of the Rising Sun on Fiddle very often, but I’ve never been held to those kind of conventions. If you would like to learn to play fiddle tunes like this one, and… If you are looking to study with national caliber musicians like Matthew Hartz and Vi Wickam And [...]
Leather Britches is a great old breakdown, and one of the classic breakdowns in the key of G. I hope you enjoy this video of Matthew Hartz playing the heck out of it. If you would like to learn to play fiddle tunes like this one, and… If you are looking to study [...]
Shortnin’ Bread is an old time breakdown that was popularized in the Texas Fiddling Tradition by Orville Burns, one of my favorite breakdown fiddlers. It really has that bump, like an angry rooster strutting around a barnyard! If you would like to learn to play fiddle tunes like this one, and… If you [...]
Soppin’ the Gravy is a popular old-time fiddle breakdown. Here Matthew plays a Texas-Style fiddling arrangement of it that he is improvising on the spot. Because he is improvising around the melody, rather than just around the chords, this type of improvised fiddling is often called controlled improvisation. If you would like to [...]
It is great when I get to have a great musician in town to make some music with, and it’s even better when that musician is also working on a project with me. This is the first in a series of 6 videos that Matthew and I made together to announce the launch of our [...]
Wow!!! This is it. It’s my last post of Fiddle Tune a Day. I feel a little bit emotional thinking about this project coming to an end. This has been such an amazing year. I have had so many opportunities to make music with amazing people. I’ve been thinking about what I would play tonight [...]
When it started getting close to the end of the year, I started thinking about what tunes I had to include in my daily fiddle tune series. AND, Listen to the Mockingbird is one of those tunes that needed to be a part of the series. When I was a teen, it was one of [...]
A couple of months ago (for Halloween), I recorded The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It makes sense that I would record it. Devil Went Down to Georgia is one of the most popular, and most requested fiddle tunes of all time. What most people don’t realize is that the main melodic theme in Devil [...]
Redeemed is a beautiful old waltz. In recent years, it’s become a fairly common waltz in the open division at fiddle contests. It is my understanding that it’s a hymn. I haven’t done the research yet, but there is one thing I do know – It’s a very pretty melody. Oh, and it’s in Eb, [...]
