This article is shared through IDEALS under the CIC Authors Addendum1 APA Citation: Thibeault, M. D. (2009). The violin and the fiddle:

Narratives of music and musician in a high school setting. In C. Abril & J. L. Kerchner (Eds.), Musical experience in our lives: Things we learn and meanings we make (pp. 255–274). Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Many thanks to the MENC for permission to share this online. More on my work, including links to other publications, is available on my website: www.matthewthibeault.com Twitter: @mdthib

                                                                                                               1  More  information  available  here:    http://www.cic.net/projects/library/scholarly-­‐communication/introduction    

N a t e

E v a

Bob

Mandolin

Fiddle

Guitar

Key change Tune performance Experimenting with chords Tune performance Nate and Bob practice, Eva gets paper

1 2 3 4 5 6

Melody = Break = Chords

Nate: What key does he play it in?Eva: He said D, but he plays it in CBob: I could put in another keyNate: D or G would be betterBob: OK, I'll put it inEva: No, it's good practice, it's good practice for right now

Eva: OK.

Nate: See, I don't actually know all of the chords, soEva: Mostly just D and ABob: Well, I have this book that has this [inaudible] just haven't bothered to lookEva: D, D, A, D Eva: Where are you?

Bob: I don't know I'm jsut playing random chordsEva: You're changing chords randomly, so I'm just followingBob: Wait, so get out a piece of paper and a pen and we can write a chord progression for now

Eva: Oh no, he's taking notes on this, too, are you?Matt: I'm just writing some general stuff down

Eva: Uhh

Figure 1: Three Minutes of Bluegrass Rehearsal

Chord variations:

1: D D | A D |

2: D G | D |

3: D | G D | D | A | D | G D | D A | D |

4: D G | D | D A |

5: | | A | D |

6: D G | D A7 | A7 |

Chord variations: