Beginning violin and fiddle Video Lesson: How to Play the Gigue by Pachelbel

Hi, I'm Lora with Red Desert Violin and I'm here today for Virtual Sheet Music to talk about the Gigue that goes with the canon, the Pachelbel Canon. This piece is always ignored and I'm so glad that Virtual Sheet Music has paired them together because it's a great little tune, and it has the same benefits as the Pachelbel Canon. It can strengthen your understanding of rhythm, and it gives you great practice in third position.

So first off, look at the meter is 12/8. That freaks a lot of people out. But if you can count to 12, you can count in 12/8 time. All that means it's like having 2-6/8 bars glued together. So instead of 6-eighth notes, there's 12/eighth notes per bar. No big deal. They tend to be grouped in groups of three, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. So there's four big beats and 12 little beats. All right. So let's take a look at this. We have to learn to nail that high D if you're playing violin one.

Oh how do we nail that note? It's so scary. It's really not scary if you learn to find your anchor even without finger tapes. We're all very familiar with that first finger anchor, that ringy spot on our instrument.

And then I would just practice a few "Here Comes The Bride." Find your ringy one. Eventually you skip the first note and you can just nail that fourth finger. Beginners tend to be sharp on that note because they envision that it's so high that they stretch for it. It's really not a high note. It kind of feels like a low four to me. All right. Actually I would do that exercise on all four strings. Find the ringy note. Do you hear my D string ringing? It's ringing like crazy, and then play "Here Comes the Bride."

That's the interval for a perfect fourth and when we play first finger to fourth finger. In most settings, it's a perfect fourth and it's a big gap. You've got two fingers are missing. It's easy to overshoot that or play that out of tune. So that's worth practicing bum-bum-bu-bum on every string, all four strings. All right. And then that will help you to nail that top note.

All right. Now we're in the key of D major. So if I were you and if you're just beginning and you're just learning third position, I'd play a major scale in D major in third position. The more time you spend in third position, the more comfortable you'll be. Obviously, right? So you find it that ringy third finger which is now first finger on your A string.

I would play a major scale. That just gets your hand in the right frame. And then we have to figure out a fingering. So it's D to C sharp. So it's a nice high three, and I'm shifting down on the downbeat of bar four, watch. Right there.

Okay. Now this is a dance. So let's talk about the style a little bit. It's like little tiny one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three steps in every single beat. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Okay. So you got to have a heavy beat and then heavy, light, light, heavy, light, light. The technique aspect of this piece is you've got two notes slurred, and one note single over and over and over again.

If you don't plan ahead what you're going to do with your bow distribution, you're going to end up stuck at the tip and you'll be trapped. So you have to do kind of a slow bow, and then fast, slow, fast, slow, fast, slow. Slow, fast, slow, fast, slow. So your goal is to play that whole thing in the area of the middle and don't use too much bow on the slur.

All right. So we give a heavy slur, and then you've got to be careful not to whack the single note. So be heavy on the slur, heavy, light, heavy, light, heavy, heavy, heavy, light, heavy, light, heavy, light. And that's a real trick learning to do heavy, light, heavy, light, and getting your bow lengths just right but you're going to see this figure all the time in Handel, in all baroque music. So if you spend the time to learn this gesture, this bow style, it will pay off big time.

All right. And then toward the end, there are some more third position opportunities. The downbeat of bar 18, I would shift. So you just played third finger in the bar before. Then match that note and play it with the first finger. That's a pretty easy shift. And then three, four, three, four, three, four. It's lovely.

Thanks for watching. Write your questions below, and I'll respond and I'll see you next time.

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---