Last month, guest contributor Michael Henderson shared his review of Clayton Haslop’s Beginner’s Circle DVD Course with the PartTimeMusician.com family. This month, Mike has generously agreed to share his first-hand account of Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book. Enjoy!
All the best,
Mark
Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book: A Review
Mel Bay’s Easiest Fiddling Book by Craig Duncan retails for $14.95 with the CD. It contains 23 songs arranged from easiest to hardest, starting with Liza Jane and progressing to Rubber Dolly. Along the way you’ll encounter Oh Susanna, Shortnin’ Bread, Buffalo Gals, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. It contains fingering charts for each tune to allow beginners who do not know how to read music to begin playing immediately.
All of the tunes are arranged in 1st position and are in the keys of Amaj, Dmaj, and Gmaj. Most of the songs are in 2/4 time. None of the songs have complicated fingerings. All of them were pretty easy to play with the left hand, partly because the G string isn’t used by any of the tunes.
A couple of paragraphs in the introduction explains the scheme for the fingering charts. The charts use a shorthand notation to indicate the string to play and the finger to place for the note. The notation uses dashes to indicate a longer duration for a note. I found this approach a bit confusing at first. I had to compare the letters and numbers to the score carefully to understand it. Once I did, though, I concluded that it would likely work for a new player to find the notes. The scheme falls short of my expectations, though, because it doesn’t address the rhythm of the pieces. For example, there’s no way to capture the difference between a quarter note and a dotted quarter note.
After playing through the book, I didn’t find the choice of songs very interesting. I had high expectations because when I was looking at the book in the store, I recognized most of the songs in the book. A few of them (Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Oh, Lord) were in my want list. Additionally, it had Oh, Susanna, Simple Gifts and Shortnin’ Bread. That made it seem like a good choice at the time. As I played through it, though, I found that most of the songs just weren’t that interesting.
My impression is that the book does not live up to the title of “easiest” and that it is not a good value. I was surprised that the author slipped accidentals into the second song in the book (Old Joe Clark). The fingering scheme has some shortcomings. The selection of songs is somewhat stale. There are a couple of songs that might have been interesting to play but overall, they’re kind of boring.
Finally, I should admit that I did not listen to the accompanying CD because I plan to return this book as soon as possible.
Michael Henderson is, in his own words, a “middle-aged adult who lives in Denver and started learning to play the violin in November of 2008″. He’s also a really decent guy. 
If you’d like to leave him a note, please do so in the comment box below.
This review is provided for informational purposes only; your mileage may vary. For more information on Mel Bay products, please visit the Mel Bay website.
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