Liberty...it's all about speed.  Or about LIBERTY. 

Welcome to the second of my INTERMEDIATE-LEVEL mini-lessons!  I hope you find these enjoyable and maybe a little enlightening.  Let's talk about SPEED.   "Speed kills...but you get there faster!"   That,  was a bumper sticker that my son Patrick (now a firefighter-paramedic, ski-patroller, pre-medical student, and MR. SAFETY), put on his first very own car, just to yank my chain, so to speak. 

Here's a picture of two-year-old Pat when we visited the local fire station.  Prophetic, huh?  (I sent it one of his partners, who put it up at the fire station.  Revenge for the bumper sticker.)

Fiddle tunes...what are they?  Well, they can be many things.  Generally, they're tunes that were made up a long time (or not so long) ago by people who like to play in bands that have fiddles in them, generally for old-time dances.  Many have been handed down generation to generation, changed along the way, and a few have become universal favorites.  You hear them played everywhere you go.   Those tunes are commonly called "chestnuts".  

One that many autoharpers like to play is "Liberty".  Nobody knows who made it up, but it's probably popular because of those first four notes.  They're a SIXTH apart, and there's something about that interval that makes you feel good.  

Here's a PDF file of the tune.  (If you don't have the Acrobat Reader, you can go to www.adobe.com and get it for free)

I wrote it out using the V7 chord, so that it would be easy to play.  If you want to play the IV and V chord respectively, it will become cleaner-sounding at slow speeds.  

Here, I'm playing the melody slowly just (mostly) as it's written in the music, pushing down a chord bar for every note I play.  Sounds sweet, but sort of boring, I think.    However, it's a good file to practice along with, in order to get the tune under your fingers.   You can even slow it down more, until you learn the tune.  

Now, if I'm not worried about old-time-music police, I can have some fun with this tune, even at quite a slow speed.  Here, I decided to "swing" it a bit.  You may debate about the taste of this piece, but I found it fun to play that way. 

But, after all, this tune was "written" (or more appropriately, not written) for fiddle bands playing for dances.  Old-time dances generally go about 104-112 beats per minute.   So, here it is, at the lower end of that, about 104 BPM.   You might notice that I use "open noting" here with the diatonic 'harp locked into the key of D.  (If you don't know what diatonic open noting is, you'll need to have a good long workshop or lesson on diatonic playing...give me a call and I'll do that for you).  Here, I'm playing it at a speed where I can still comfortably play most of the notes generally agreed to be in the tune, and I think it sounds kind of pretty.   

Now, once in a while, I find myself  in a jam (usually among BLUEGRASSERS) where folks want to play this tune way to fast for dancing.  A good fiddler or banjo player (and some guitarists) can play the tune faster than any dancer can dance to it.   What do I do then?  SIMPLIFY!   Here's a version at about 120 BPM that's kind of like an impressionist painting.  You get the general idea of the tune without all the notes.   A few players (Ron Wall and Mike Fenton come to mind) can do a clean and credible rendition of all the notes at this speed, many others make a mess out of it with thumb lead,  but all I can do is hit the high points.  It'll do in a jam!  

I hope you have fun with this tune, and welcome your comments at cathy@larkpoint.com

Cathy