One thing I love to do is play around with different fiddle tunings. For example, by tuning my fiddle down.
Down, that is, from the standard fiddle tuning used for 99% of Irish fiddle playing. Sometimes I’ll take all the strings and tune them down one semitone, or two, or even three.
Three semitones down from standard fiddle tuning gives you the rather odd tuning of E – B – F# – C#.
But it sounds just SO lovely!
Different fiddle tunings
Different fiddle tunings are much less common in Irish fiddle playing than they are in, say, old time or bluegrass fiddle playing.
In old time fiddle playing, for example, ADAE is a very common tuning. That means just tuning the bottom G string up to A.
Or taking that a little further, AEAE is also common, tuning the bottom G string up to Aand the D string up to E.
Or, there’s ‘dead man’s tuning’, where the bottom two strings are both D, but an octave apart! And the top string is often tuned to D as well. So, that’s DDAD.
Drop or flat tunings
Here is The Humours of Tulla played in my EBF#C# tuning.
This tuning is sometimes called tuning the fiddle ‘in B’ or ‘to B’. That’s because the D string (the bottom note for many traditional instruments) becomes a B instead.
This means you can easily play with other instruments that are tuned ‘to B’ – most notably, ‘flat’ sets of uilleann pipes. Or B whistles would be another example.
I just really like it for the different sound that it gives the fiddle, with all the strings a little looser they resonate more, and drones and chords just sound a little richer to my ears.
For an even lower deeper sound, I also have an octave violin, or octave fiddle, which can play a whole octave below standard fiddle tuning.
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