The fiddle is one of the most common instruments there is, while it is also one of the most beautiful when it comes to sound. With their invention dating back to the Middle Ages, fiddles have been around for a long time, although they weren’t this famous from the start.
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Fiddles gained a lot of popularity in the 18th and the 19th century, and after this they became a big part in the evolution of music. Fiddles are a big part of folk music and they have had their fair share of influence on the musical industry.
Many people believe that fiddles and violins are the same instrument, and while this is technically true, there is a big difference between the two.
This difference is the fact that fiddles are mainly used to play folk music while violins are mainly used for jazz or different genres of classical music.
No instrument is easy to learn, it has to be said. However learning how to play the fiddle can be easier if you’ve got a helping hand. Fortunately, many online lessons can provide this helping hand.
14 Websites To Learn Fiddle Lessons Online Review
1) ArtistWork
Both a popular fiddler and violinist, in this course on Artist Works, Darol Anger himself will be providing you with the guidelines you need in order to learn more about the fiddle in detail.
Being a professional fiddler himself, Darol will be providing you with all the tips on certain aspects of fiddle playing to help you get started with playing the instrument or to help you improve if you already have some experience.
The course allows you unlimited access to a very wide variety of video lessons that can teach you more and more about specific things, allowing you to grow your fiddle playing skills one step at a time.
Guidelines for things like bowing and cross tips are available, allowing you to learn all about the fundamentals. One thing that can help beginners is playing along with tracks, which is why the course also grants access to easy to follow fiddle tunes that you can play along with.
What makes this course so helpful is that it grants the option of sending reviewable videos and taking a music theory workshop.
2) Udemy
Udemy have a good variety of both beginner and advanced fiddle lessons that can help you learn more about the instrument and playing it.
Their beginner courses on fiddles can help anyone develop a strong foundation for themselves, while they are also good enough to help advanced fiddlers get a quick recap of all the basics.
These beginner courses will be helping with many different things (depending on the course itself), meaning that almost each of them can help you learn something new and important.
Some of the more notable things that a majority of these lessons will be teaching you is working with the bow and tuning your instrument. Tuning is an important thing that everyone that plays an instrument should know, which is why it is important that you learn all about it from the start.
Other than this, they will be focusing on other essential things like learning how to play different keys to make a variety of different sounds.
One very helpful thing that the courses on Udemy can teach you is self-study, allowing you to practice on your own in the future.
3) LinkedIn
Much like their Lynda.com, which is their own site, LinkedIn have a wide variety of fiddle lessons themselves. The topics that their courses feature are similar to that of Lynda, meaning that you will be able to find a few similar lessons.
Featuring all the types of lessons that you would expect, such as beginner courses, intermediate courses or advanced ones, LinkedIn have something to help anyone, making them a good site to learn from if you’re starting off from scratch and intend to master the instrument.
Other than this, they have lessons that can help you with specific things, such as maintain your equipment. Taking good care of your instrument is important, as it won’t sound as near as good as it did when you first bought it if you treat it rashly.
Their lessons can help you learn more about the way you can ensure that your fiddle remains in good shape.
However maintaining your instrument and its equipment is of no use if you haven’t got a good quality fiddle in the first, which is why buying the right fiddle is important as well.
4) Lynda
Lynda.com have hundreds of courses on their site that can help you learn more about fiddles, providing you with more than enough of a variety to learn everything that you’d want to.
There are beginner and advanced courses, as well as some for people that are in between both skill levels. These courses can teach you easy or complicated things, depending on your own skill level and the lesson that you’re taking.
Their beginner courses are quite short, but good if you’re looking to learn all the basics in hurry with full details. Their intermediate fiddle playing lessons can help you learn more, building on all the things you learned from the beginner courses.
Their advanced courses are obviously the most complicated, being lengthier in the amount of time they take to complete and being much more helpful if you’ve already got experience with the fiddle.
Another thing that their courses can teach you is how to play specific tunes. Some of their courses will help you learn how to play specific, popular tunes using your fiddle, allowing you to get some practice and improve your skills.
5) SkillShare
Skill Share’s wide variety of fiddle lessons can teach you about a wide variety of different things. There are many courses on the site that can help you learn how to play the fiddle from the scratch or help you improve if you are already an expert.
There are fiddle courses of nearly every kind, even those that can take you all the way from a starter to an advanced fiddler.
These types of courses on their site can provide you with one or two years’ worth of experience in a matter of hours, allowing you to become an expert at playing the violin after only a month or two of regular practice.
Their courses are all in the form of multiple videos, with most of their fiddle lessons featuring 50+ short videos to help you learn new things.
Each video is only a few minutes in length and covers different topics, allowing you to study 1 topic at a time without any difficulties. All their courses are detailed and allow you to study on your own pace, making them ideal if you’re away from home.
6) LessonFace
Lesson Face have more than enough tutors in their collection to help you learn more about playing the popular folk music instrument.
Their tutors are all experienced at both playing the fiddle and teaching how to play it to others, making them ideal teachers. There are many different tutors, each with their own different methods to teach you more about playing the instrument and, one day, perfecting it.
Their site is very detailed, allowing you to learn everything you would want to know about your tutor before you contact them. From their history to their credentials, the site can help you learn anything about them, including their method of teaching, allowing you to decide which tutor can teach you in a way most suited to you.
Personal guidance is something that can greatly help, no matter what you may be learning, however it can be especially helpful when starting instruments, as you are bound to make a few mistakes.
When learning with a tutor however, you can fix these mistakes as they happen. You can book their fiddle tutors and fix your mistakes at any time.
7) Take Lesson
Take Lessons have many tutors from all over the world, ready to teach you more about playing the fiddle at any time.
They have many different tutors available to teach you how to play the fiddle or improve your skills, and depending on their schedule, you can book them for a lesson at any given time.
Being skilled at playing the instrument, their tutors are ideal if you prefer a more personal way of studying as opposed to learning using courses.
Most of their tutors have provided offline classes for quite some time, which is a very good thing as this makes them experienced enough to know how to teach you as well.
You can learn more and more about them through the site, as it covers all the necessary information you’d need to know about them. Once booked, the tutor you set an appointment can be contacted on the decided time via video chat software.
In this video chat, they can teach you more about playing the instruments and clearing out any mistakes. The time of the video chat depends on your own booking.
8) FiddleVideo
Fiddle Video is a site devoted to providing beginners and aspiring fiddlers with the help they need in order to learn more about playing one of the most popular instruments in the world.
They have many video lessons on their site that can teach you anything about fiddles, from the simple basics to every tiny detail that you need in order to improve the way your playing sounds.
These courses are available to anyone in the world and can be purchased at any given time. However spending money on lessons is something that people can be hesitant about if they aren’t sure that said lessons can help them.
This is why Fiddle Video have a variety of free videos on their site that cover a variety of topics suited to a variety of skill levels.
These free courses cover both simple and complicated aspects of the fiddle and can help really help beginners improve in certain aspects such as learning how to play Irish folk music on the fiddle and improving your bowing etc. These free video courses can also be taken on smartphones.
9) OAIM
The fiddle is a very important part of history when it comes to Irish music, especially since the fiddle gained most of its popularity from Ireland itself.
Most of the popular classical or folk Irish music have used violins or fiddles, making them a big part of the country’s musical history. Even to this day, the fiddle is one of, if not the most popular instrument in Ireland that is played on a regular basis by hundreds of thousands.
OAIM stands for Online Academy of Irish Music and it is a site that can help anyone in the world learn more about instruments and their history in Irish culture.
This course on the site is all about helping beginners learn more about what type of instrument the fiddle is and how you can become great at playing it.
Being a beginner’s course it covers all the basics that you could think of and more, making it ideal if you want to develop a strong base for yourself. The course can be accessed on smartphones and computers, while all its classes are self-paced.
10) FiddleHed
FiddleHed is a platform developed by Jason k’Leinberg, a tutor that has been teaching people how to play the fiddle for over a couple of decades.
He has been around both the United States and Europe, teaching people from all over the world more about playing the fiddle.
Teaching people how to play the fiddle is one of his passions, and to help as many people as he possibly could, he created FiddleHed, a site where people such as yourself can come to take lessons on any specific matter of fiddle playing.
The site has been made with the comfort of beginners kept in mind, making it ideal for people that are recently starting out with the instrument.
It’s obvious that you can’t throw complicated terms that students have never heard of and expect them to understand what you’re saying. This is why he has made his lessons as simple as they can be to make them easier to work with.
All his video courses have diagrams to show you where to position his fingers and there are also sheets to help you identify different tones.
11) RedDesertViolin
This course on Red Desert Violin is brought to you by Lora, who will be your teacher throughout the course.
She has been playing the fiddle for a very long time and wishes to help other people learn more about the instrument as well, which is why she has provided this easy to follow lesson that any beginner can take as long as they have a bow and fiddle.
The course features all the basics, teaching you about all the simple things that everyone would need to know in order to get started with playing the fiddle. The course can help you in its own way, while there are also other additional things to help you improve as well.
These include downloadable audio files and videos that you can play along to in order to improve your skills.
A lot of people have a problem with taking these types of courses, which is the assumption that they can’t get feedback or answers to their questions. In this case though, this isn’t a problem, as Lora can give you answers through comments on the site.
12) PegheadNation
Peghead Nation is a website that was created for the purpose of helping people that play instruments improve their skills.
The site was created back in the September of 2014 and features online lessons for a few specific instruments such as guitars, ukuleles, bass and more, including of course the fiddle. In fact, they have many different fiddle playing lessons that can help you greatly improve specific aspects of how you play.
From starters to complete experts, the site has fiddle courses for pretty much anyone, allowing them to learn more about the instrument or get a crash course on the things that they have already learnt but are forgetting.
Their video lessons are provided by expert fiddlers who are masters at the instrument and can help you improve. The site features lessons for pretty much anything, including the different styles you can implement into your play.
What’s great about the site and all the lessons that it offers is that you can take a free sample of all the available lessons to see how they’re taught and if they are the right ones for you.
13) BlueGrassDaddy
Blue Grass Daddy is a site that heavily focuses on providing people from all over the world with the courses that they need in order to improve their fiddle playing skills.
The tutor for the multiple lessons that the site will provide you with is Dr. John Cockman, a skilled fiddler who has been playing the popular instrument for over 25 years. His free fiddle lessons can help you develop the base that you need in order to learn all the advanced topics related to fiddles out there.
Before you get started, the site will be asking you to follow three easy and necessary steps, with the first one being about buying a fiddle and tuning it.
The site will also be providing a free guide for this, informing you about how to purchase and set up a fiddle the right way so you have no problems.
Step 2 and 3 will be about learning how to read the tablature and playing fiddle tunes respectively. Guides for both of these are also given. Once done, you can start taking their free fiddle lessons.
14) OnlineLessonVideo
Online Lesson Videos features many different lessons on their site that can help you learn more and more about playing the Irish Fiddle.
Based in St. Louis, Missouri, the site features lessons taught mostly by local musicians that all have their own unique specialties. The site features courses for a good enough variety of courses, allowing people to learn all about their favorite instruments.
All their courses will be teaching you about small but important things such technique exercises that you can use in order to improve the way that you work with the bow, along with other things such as reels, jigs etc.
This doesn’t mean that tiny details is all that they cover though, since the site have more than enough lessons that can help you learn more about things like bowing in general, tuning your fiddle, maintaining it to make sure that it doesn’t get damaged any time soon and more.
In short, there is more than enough of a variety on the site and you can learn most things about fiddle playing from said variety as long as you have a bow and fiddle at your disposal.
Choosing The Best Fiddle Lesson Online
Instruments are one of the things that people immediately think of when they want to pick up a hobby or learn about something new, so it is only natural that there are many lessons for an instrument as famous as the fiddle.
All these sites feature well explained lessons that can help you learn more about playing the fiddle and how you can improve your skills to the point where you will have no problem performing in front of people.
Even if you feel these lessons aren’t the ones to help you, there are thousands more on the internet waiting to help you out.