Resources

Read My Thoughts On…

How to Learn
How to Learn by Ear
Making Technology Your Friend
Practice Drones
Practice Strategies
Recommended Recordings

External Links to Useful Tools

Online Tuner
Learn Music Theory
Slow Down Recordings (online tool)
Music Reading Flashcards

Other Free Online Lessons

  • MandoLessons – Weekly lessons by my awesome bandmate Baron Collins-Hill. Geared to mandolins but easy to pick up on fiddle too – just tune out the bits about fret numbers and pick direction.

Tunes, Databases, Information

  • TheSession – Irish tunes, discussion, recordings, and information about sessions
    TunebookLive! – sheetmusic, ABC, and midi of thousands of tunes from around the world. Here’s a link direct to the search page. This site also contains some useful ABC tools, including the ability to paste in ABC from somewhere else and get an image and a midi file.

New England Traditional Music Resources

  • DownEast Friends of Folk Arts (DEFFA) promotes traditional music and dance forms in Maine, publishes a print and online monthly newsletter of events in Maine, and hosts the DownEast Country Dance Festival in Topsham, ME in March.
  • Maine Fiddle Camp in Montville has two weekend and three week-long camps.  Not just for fiddlers! Guitar, banjo, mandolin, whistle, flute, accordion, cello! Great food, great tunes, and great fun for a heck of a good price.
  • Acadia Trad School in Bar Harbor has a week-long camp in July focused on Irish, Old-Time, and Acadian/Québecois styles. The faculty includes many internationally renowned artists.
  • New England Folk Festival Association (NEFFA promotes traditional music and dance and hosts the NEFFA festival in Mansfield, MA in April.
  • Sing Out! Magazine’s Festival Listing can give you information about other festivals and camps around the US.
  • The Country Dance and Song Society, CDSS, promotes traditional music and contra dance, square dance, English country dance, sword dance, Morris dance, and so on. They are based in Massachusetts but serve a wide geographical area. They have a great variety of books and CDs in their store and also run a great set of summer music and dance camps.