Here’s an original tune, one I wrote for my lovely wife Jeanne and recorded on my fiddle CD, “In the Quiet Night: Fiddle Tunes from the Upper Midwest.”
What I’ve written out is just the basic melody of the tune. Bluegrass and old-time tunes in the key of A often use fourth-finger drones and open double-stops — “Jeanne Marie” is no exception. I encourage you to play around with them and see what you can come up with (hint: open double stops on the A-E string plane sound great on A part, and droning an A with your fourth finger on the D string will give you a nice, fat warm sound on the B part of the tune).
There are also variations that you’ll hear on the recording but are not in the written version. Again, this transcription is just the basic outline of the melody. I encourage you to play around with it and come up with your own variations. And in a few weeks, I’ll be writing a bit more on how to embellish a basic melody with fourth-finger drones and open double-stops.
Enjoy!
Audio:
Sheet music (click to enlarge):
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.