Dr. Alan Jabbour Integrating Folk Music, Folklore and Traditional Culture Instruction Into K-12 Education
Hear some of the songs from the book in the Appalachian Fiddle Workshop

Dear friends,
 
I’m happy to announce a new publication that I think will be of great interest to fiddlers and students of fiddling.  FIDDLE TUNES ILLUMINATED is a 120-page spiral-bound volume containing musical transcriptions for each of the 45 tunes contained on my two most recent CDs, A HENRY REED REUNION and SOUTHERN SUMMITS.  The transcriptions – done with the able assistance of my fiddling colleague Liberty Rucker, who is skilled in managing the subtleties of the Finale transcription program – provide musical notation for both the tune and the performance style.
 
Many tune books provide only the skeleton of the tune, revealing its basic melodic form but leaving untranscribed the details of performance that comprise musical style. My own style is an example of the large and diverse category that can be called “Appalachian style.”  These transcriptions are an effort to convey the texture of that style.  They include typical bowings for each tune, double-stops, unisons, some drone notes, syncopated phrase endings, and other details that move the student of fiddling from learning a tune to learning the style in which a tune is played.  In addition, many of the parts, or strains, are transcribed twice rather than using repeat signs, and the repetitions provide an opportunity to display the sorts of micro-variations that characterize fiddling in this style.  Some other typical variations are noted at the end of some tunes.  Overall, the transcriptions go about as far as is practical to go in conveying stylistic detail while still making the tunes readily accessible to a reader of standard musical notation.  This is a volume made for the music stand.

It is also a volume made for the easy chair.  Complementing and augmenting the transcriptions, the volume contains the following important elements:

•        A substantial Introduction providing both an overall description of the book’s concept and approach, and a “Using This Book” section that prepares the reader for taking advantage effectively of what the book offers;
•        A Table of Contents;
•        A page of Commentary accompanying each transcription, including the fiddler who was my own source for it, a history of the tune, its
key, its range, its scale, its phrase structure, some tune features worth noting, and some stylistic features that the transcription reveals;
•        Detailed analysis of certain stylistic features and a section of cross-references citing the same stylistic feature in various tunes
throughout the volume;
•        An extensive section called Terms and Features defining terms used in the Commentary, explaining key stylistic features in more
detail, and citing all the tunes in the book where these stylistic features appear;
•        An Index;
•        And four photographs.

The retail cost of FIDDLE TUNES ILLUMINATED is $15 (plus $3 shipping and handling if by mail).  It is also available as a package deal with the two companion CDs, SOUTHERN SUMMITS and A HENRYREED REUNION, for $40.  The book (or the package deal) may be purchased with a credit card using my website (www.alanjabbour.com) and PayPal – just visit the website, select Alan’s Shop, and follow the directions there.
 
And for those friends who aren’t students of the fiddle, let me encourage you to visit my website anyway to see what else I’ve been up to lately.
 
Thanks and best wishes to all

Alan Jabbour
www.alanjabbour.com