Description
Self Guided Course
My complete 10-week Irish fiddle programme, on your own schedule.
This is the full course: ten weeks of structured lessons from me, described by IrishFest.com as “one of the great fiddle players of his generation.” You get everything I teach each week, minus the live sessions, so you can work through it whenever it suits you.
What’s included
- Full access to all 10 weeks of the course
- A 20 to 30 minute video lesson every week
- Two tunes each week with full sheet music
- Two private YouTube play-through videos so you can follow exactly what I’m doing
- Written notes and practice guidance for every class
- Email support, though there’s no guaranteed response time
Why learn with me
I’m from Dundalk, County Louth, and grew up in a musical family, my mother taught me the fiddle. I went on to study under the Sligo fiddler John Joe Gardiner and have spent my career specialising in the traditional music of Oriel and South Ulster.
I lectured in Traditional Music Performance at Dundalk Institute of Technology for five years, and my research there became my book The Rose in the Gap, a study of Luke Donnellan’s dance music collection. In 2018, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann presented me with the Gradam award for lifetime services to traditional arts, and I’ve picked up numerous All-Ireland titles along the way. My album Brighid’s Kiss was named Album of the Year by Irish Music Magazine readers, and Journeyman made The Irish Times’ top five albums of that year.
I’ve played alongside Planxty, the Bothy Band, De Danann and The Chieftains, and toured North America with The Irish Rovers. I teach every year at the Willie Clancy Summer School, run masterclasses across Europe, and travel regularly to the US, workshops at UCLA, tours up and down the East and West Coasts, and sessions with Irish communities along the way.
How the course works
It’s fully self-guided, delivered as weekly drip-fed lessons. Week 1 unlocks as soon as you start, and a new week follows every 7 days. Each lesson comes as a video with me, a full written description, and downloadable transcriptions of every tune covered. If you get stuck, you can ask me directly by email.
Your 10-week programme
- Week 1, Let’s Get Started with Your Bowing: the foundations of bow control, position and phrasing.
- Week 2, Finding the Flow in Your Jigs: slurring into the beat, single bowing, rolls and string crossings.
- Week 3, Exploring the Slip Jig: its distinctive rhythm, plus slurs, cuts and rolls.
- Week 4, Moving into Reels: applying your bowing to reels and repeating patterns.
- Week 5, Building Your Reel Bowing: cuts, triplets, rolls and phrasing in reels.
- Week 6, Recognising the Patterns: spotting recurring bowing patterns and using them in new tunes.
- Week 7, Bringing Your Bowing into Session Reels: applying it all to familiar session tunes.
- Week 8, Music from The Rose in the Gap: tunes from my own research into Oriel and South Ulster.
- Week 9, Giving the Music Space to Breathe: slow airs, expression, drones, cuts and vibrato.
- Week 10, Bringing It All Together: pulling every technique together and applying it beyond the course.
What you’ll work on
Bow control and phrasing. Ornamentation, the cuts, rolls and slurs that give Irish fiddle its character. Rhythm and timing that feels right rather than just counted out correctly. The regional styles that separate someone playing notes from someone playing music.
Is this for you?
You should already be playing fiddle or violin at an intermediate level. This isn’t a beginner course. From week one you’re working from notation and technique-focused material that assumes you can hold a bow and read some music. It suits players who want to work independently, at their own pace, without live interaction each week.
If you’d rather work with me live and get personal feedback on your playing, take a look at the Bow with the Flow Live Mentored Course.
