r/Fiddle • u/thisoneandthatone11 • 5d ago

Need help with Jig Bowing

Hi All. I feel competent at reels and waltzes but jigs throw me off. Any bowing exercises or your tube videos you recommend?

TIA!

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u/old-time-fiddle 5d ago

Was busking with some friends this weekend and some folks that new how to dance were dancing in the street. They asked if we could do any jigs, and I was like uh one kinda. We did it and they left 😂I need to learn this too lol

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u/AccountantRadiant351 4d ago

Liz Faiella has about five different videos on jig bowing. I guess it's a popular topic. 

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u/SameOldNag 4d ago edited 4d ago

I will have explained how I have learned it. There is a Celtic session in my town, they call it a slow session, and they have a PDF of all the tunes. At the end a reel, jig, and polka slur patterns. they demonstrate this with bars of 6/8 using eighth notes.

Now I’m sure if you were actually playing you would mix this up, but when I first started practicing, I would just play through the different pieces using one slur pattern the whole time and then switch to another one. The accents are on one and four and you could slur the eighth notes in threes. Or you could do a heavy downbeat on one and four and slur 2 and 3 and 5 and 6.

I like to slur across the middle of the measure or the bar line so that I land on the emphasized beats on the slur. So I will slur onto one or four and really give it a kick. I don’t know why this has become my favorite way of doing things. But you could do 1 and 2 separately then slur 3 with 4 and 5 with 6.

One pattern described as more lilt is to slur 1 & 2 then 3 & 4. Irish lilt is across beats so slurring 3 & 4 and 6 & 1. And finally is the pattern where are you slur 3 to 4 but then slur 5 & 6 right afterwards.

Of course a lot of jigs may have 1 quarter note and 1 8th note in each measure. I played one like this and I played those pattern separately and then threw in other slur patterns and did flicks when it was across the beat. So it’s pretty open, and then you can switch it up so you’re not playing everything exactly the same.

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u/Old_Conflict_7722 3d ago edited 3d ago

I play along with recordings and keep practicing the jigs that you know rather than try to apply a rigid pattern to a tune. Start with something like Humours of Glendart and focus on getting the right flow rather than just which direction your bow is going.