A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument , most often a violin . It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music . Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional ( folk ) styles, which are typically aural traditions —taught " by ear " rather than via written music.
24-444: Seth Bernard Lakeman (born 26 March 1977) is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who is most often associated with the fiddle and tenor guitar , but also plays the viola and banjo . Nominated for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize , Lakeman has belonged to several musical ensembles, including one with his two brothers, fellow folk musicians Sam Lakeman and Sean Lakeman , but has most recently established himself as
48-491: A "mini-festival". Among the wedding guests who also made performance contributions were Cara Dillon , Steve Potter, Steve Knightley , Cormac Byrne , Patsy Reid and Mad Dog Mcrea . Fiddle Fiddling is the act of playing the fiddle, and fiddlers are musicians who play it. Among musical styles, fiddling tends to produce rhythms that focus on dancing, with associated quick note changes, whereas classical music tends to contain more vibrato and sustained notes. Fiddling
72-669: A backing group on a tour of Portugal . After the tour the five musicians became a permanent group and called themselves Equation . The group were signed in a record deal with Time Warner in 1995. After three full albums ( Return to Me in 1996, Hazy Daze in 1998, and The Lucky Few in 2000), and tours in the UK, Europe and the United States, Lakeman left Equation in 2001. He joined his brother Sam and Sam's wife Cara Dillon and appeared on Dillon's eponymous debut album, which featured Lakeman on fiddle, guitar and vocals. The album won two awards at
96-604: A bowed string instrument of the Byzantine Empire and ancestor of most European bowed instruments. Lira spread widely westward to Europe; in the 11th and 12th centuries European writers use the terms fiddle and lira interchangeably when referring to bowed instruments. West African fiddlers have accompanied singing and dancing with one-string gourd fiddles since the twelfth century , and many black musicians in America learned on similar homemade fiddles before switching over to
120-528: A guest appearance on spoons. Lakeman's primary musical instruments are the violin, the tenor guitar , the banjo and the viola . Lakeman was married in 2012 to his longterm fiancée, Hannah Edwards, at Withiel , near Wadebridge in Cornwall. During the church service, the bride's 90-year-old grandfather, who is a Cornish bard , read a blessing in Cornish . The wedding was described by Lakeman's father, Geoff, as
144-480: A new single "Lady of the Sea" in early August 2006. This record went gold making it one of the biggest selling traditionally based folk records ever in the UK. His fourth solo album, Poor Man's Heaven , was released on 30 June 2008 with an accompanying tour. It introduced a rockier edge to the folk of the previous albums. It was also the last album to be produced by Sean Lakeman and it was awarded silver levels of sales in
168-563: A solo act. Seth Lakeman grew up with his two brothers, Sean Lakeman and Sam Lakeman , in the village of Buckland Monachorum in West Devon , England. He began playing music with his parents and brothers at an early age. As the Lakeman Brothers , the three brothers released their debut album Three Piece Suite in 1994. Later that same year they were invited by two Yorkshire based singers Kathryn Roberts and Kate Rusby to join them as
192-504: A three-stringed variant of the viola —known as the kontra —and by double bass , with cimbalom and clarinet being less standard yet still common additions to a band. In Hungary, a three-stringed viola variant with a flat bridge, called the kontra or háromhúros brácsa makes up part of a traditional rhythm section in Hungarian folk music. The flat bridge lets the musician play three-string chords. A three-stringed double bass variant
216-433: A variety of shapes and sizes. Another family of instruments that contributed to the development of the modern fiddle are the viols , which are held between the legs and played vertically, and have fretted fingerboards. In performance, a solo fiddler, or one or two with a group of other instrumentalists, is the norm, though twin fiddling is represented in some North American, Scandinavian, Scottish and Irish styles. Following
240-428: Is also open to improvisation and embellishment with ornamentation at the player's discretion, in contrast to orchestral performances, which adhere to the composer's notes to reproduce a work faithfully. It is less common for a classically trained violinist to play folk music, but today, many fiddlers (e.g., Alasdair Fraser , Brittany Haas , and Alison Krauss ) have classical training. The first recorded reference to
264-456: Is also used. To a greater extent than classical violin playing, fiddle playing is characterized by a huge variety of ethnic or folk music traditions, each of which has its own distinctive sound. American fiddling , a broad category including traditional and modern styles Fiddling remains popular in Canada , and the various homegrown styles of Canadian fiddling are seen as an important part of
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#1732895159096288-508: The Levellers , who took to closing their set with a "fiddle off" between Lakeman and Levellers' fiddler Jonathan Sevink. Other support tours with Billy Bragg and Jools Holland brought Lakeman's music to a wider audience. In March 2006 Lakeman began a UK tour to promote his new album Freedom Fields which was released on iScream . Produced again by Sean Lakeman , he signed to a new major record label, Relentless Records , promptly releasing
312-464: The 2002 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards . In 2002 Lakeman released his first solo album, The Punch Bowl , produced by elder brother Sean Lakeman which received wide critical acclaim including a review in fRoots magazine which said: "The songs don't just glide smoothly by.....they get their claws into you". Kitty Jay , Lakeman's second solo album, was released in 2004. This was also produced by brother Sean Lakeman in his kitchen. The title track of
336-633: The Bert Jansch Studio in Frome. 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Kitty Jay and following the 20th Anniversary tour in February there will be a standing tour in October with the band including long-time collaborators Benji Kirkpatrick , Ben Nicholls, Cormac Byrne and Alex Hart. The February Kitty Jay Tour opened with a sold out concert at Exeter's Corn Exchange on 20 February 2024. Lakeman's father Geoff made
360-556: The European violin . As early as the mid-1600s, black fiddlers ("exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles") were playing for both black and white dancers at street celebrations in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (New York City), and by 1690 slave fiddlers were routinely providing the music at plantation balls in Virginia. The etymology of fiddle is uncertain: it probably derives from
384-473: The Latin fidula , which is the early word for violin , or it may be natively Germanic. The name appears to be related to Icelandic Fiðla and also Old English fiðele . A native Germanic ancestor of fiddle might even be the ancestor of the early Romance form of violin . In medieval times, fiddle also referred to a predecessor of today's violin. Like the violin, it tended to have four strings, but came in
408-651: The Royal Albert Hall. Lakeman has previously worked and toured extensively with Robert Plant with his band the Sensational Space Shifters. After a limited vinyl pressing for Record Store Day 2023, The Somerset Sessions was given a wider release on Lakeman's own label Honour Oak Records in July 2023. The album features original, unreleased session recordings from Lakeman featuring Ethan Johns, Jeremy Stacey, John Smith, Nick Pini and Alex Hart that were recorded at
432-587: The UK. Lakeman's fifth album, Hearts & Minds , was released on 19 July 2010. Produced by studio veteran Tchad Blake Lakeman released his sixth album called Tales from the Barrel House on 18 November 2011. In 2014 the Word of Mouth album was released. In 2018 Lakeman released another album, The Well Worn Path . His eleventh studio album, Make Your Mark , followed in November 2021. The title track "Make Your Mark"
456-606: The album tells the story of Jay's Grave , a well known location on Dartmoor . The album was recorded for a cost of less than £300. The album reached silver status in the UK. That same year he collaborated with Devon singer-songwriter Steve Knightley and young local singer Jenna Witts on the album Western Approaches . A UK tour in Autumn 2005 followed his Mercury Music Prize nomination, after which Lakeman and his band (regularly brother Sean Lakeman (guitar), Ben Nichols (bass), Andy Tween (drums)), toured extensively with folk-rock band
480-658: The beat) could push their instrument harder than could a violinist. Various fiddle traditions have differing values. In the very late 20th century, a few artists successfully reconstructed the Scottish tradition of violin and "big fiddle", or cello. Notable recorded examples include Iain Fraser and Christine Hanson, Amelia Kaminski and Christine Hanson's Bonnie Lasses, Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas ' Fire and Grace, and Tim Macdonald and Jeremy Ward's The Wilds . Hungarian, Slovenian, and Romanian fiddle players are often accompanied by
504-638: The bowed lira was in the 9th century by the Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911); in his lexicographical discussion of instruments he cited the lira (lūrā) as a typical instrument of the Byzantines and equivalent to the rabāb played in the Islamic Empires. The medieval fiddle emerged in 10th-century Europe, deriving from the Byzantine lira ( Ancient Greek : λύρα , Latin : lira , English: lyre ),
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#1732895159096528-710: The folk revivals of the second half of the 20th century, it became common for less formal situations to find large groups of fiddlers playing together—see for example the Calgary Fiddlers, Swedish Spelmanslag folk-musician clubs, and the worldwide phenomenon of Irish sessions . Orchestral violins, on the other hand, are commonly grouped in sections, or "chairs" . These contrasting traditions may be vestiges of historical performance settings: large concert halls where violins were played required more instruments, before electronic amplification, than did more intimate dance halls and houses that fiddlers played in. The difference
552-424: Was likely compounded by the different sounds expected of violin music and fiddle music. Historically, the majority of fiddle music was dance music, while violin music had either grown out of dance music or was something else entirely. Violin music came to value a smoothness that fiddling, with its dance-driven clear beat, did not always follow. In situations that required greater volume, a fiddler (as long as they kept
576-565: Was playlisted at BBC Radio 2 . Sea Song Sessions is a collection of British maritime folk songs and sea shanties, performed by Jon Boden , Lakeman, Ben Nicholls, Emily Portman and Jack Rutter. The artists celebrated the release of the album in September 2022 with a run of on-board and harbourside performances which they sailed to and from by ship. Lakeman recorded on Van Morrison 's album Moving On Skiffle in 2022 and he collaborated with Public Service Broadcasting and performed with them at
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