Hi! I’m Mitch Reed. My vlog this week is on the legendary Cajun fiddler Cheese Read from Mamou, Louisiana, and he’s a distant cousin of mine, and the Reads were Scotch-Irish people who came down to Louisiana during the Spanish Land Grants. A lot of Scotch Irish came down at that time...
Hi, I’m Mitch Reed…welcome to my vlog! And my vlog this week is on Creole and Cajun blueses. Really old-timey blueses going back to maybe the 1920s, 30s, played by Dennis McGee and by Douglas Bellard, people like that.
So the first one I was going to play was a blues that I heard...
Hi, I’m Mitch Reed. Welcome to my vlog and my vlog this week is on Cajun & Creole one-steps. The two one-steps that I’d like to play you right now is a little medley of one-steps that Canray Fontenot played. So these are Creole one-steps. They’re pretty funky, and I thought...
Hi, I’m Mitch Reed…welcome to my vlog! My vlog this week is on cross-tuning, tunes, and players. I just want to talk a little bit about that. It’s a tradition that we used to have down here that we’ve pretty much lost; not quite sure why. Maybe because the fiddle seconds...
Hi, I'm Mitch Reed, and welcome to my vlog. It is the 1st of March, and I am thinking about St. Patrick's Day already. And I thought this would be fun to maybe play one of the few Cajun jigs that we have. A jig is a type of dance tune that's in six-eight. we have one in Cajun music and it's...
Hi, I’m Mitch Reed, welcome to my vlog. today I’m going to talk about how to practice quietly. Not something that I like doing, but you do have moments and times where you want to practice but there’s people in the house or maybe you’re staying in a hotel, maybe you get...
Hi, I’m Mitch Reed, welcome to my vlog. Today I’m going to talk about going to a jam and being able to bring your fiddle and play chords behind the accordion, the singer, and all that stuff. So basically, how to second at a Cajun jam, the things to think about, and what to look for....
Hi today, I'm going to break down Fi Fi Poncho, a great old-time fiddle tune, Cajun two-step. And I'm going to try something new. I put some tape on my fingerboard. I put tape for the first finger so that's where my first finger is always going to go. Second finger, third finger, and I'm not...
Hi! Welcome to my vlog…and my vlog this week is going to be on, “Should I have tape on my fiddle or not?” This is a question I hear a lot and this is what I usually say to people is if you’re a total beginner, if you just got a fiddle, you’ve never played fiddle...
Hi! Welcome to my vlog. Today I wanted to discuss a couple of things about fiddle maintenance. We are in the beginning part of January and in Southwest Louisiana we have a lot of cold fronts that come through but it gets hot then cold, hot and cold, and recently a lot of my students have been...
Hi, today on my vlog I’m going to talk about double bowing for Cajun waltzes. What I mean by that is using this rhythm [00:10]. I’ll slow it down a little bit [00:18]
So some of the old-time tunes that were recorded like in the ’30s and the ’20s, some of the fiddlers used...
Hi! Today on my vlog I’m going to talk a little bit about something a lot of people ask me about, questions about, and it’s the difference between violin and fiddle. So I thought I would give it a try. I’m not a violinist, I’m a fiddler. I did study classical music though...