Fiddle Lessons for Beginners

You can find traditional fiddle lessons given by a teacher privately or if you’re a DIY’er, you can learn to play the fiddle online with videos or with instructional books. It helps if you know what style of fiddle music you wish to play such as American (Bluegrass, Cajun, Folk…) Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Welsh…), Jazz, Canadian, Scandanavian etc. because you can find instruction specifically suited for these styles as opposed to generic lessons.

Free Online Fiddle Lessons

The Folk of the Wood has some great beginner to advance fiddle lessons which include how to hold the fiddle, parts of the fiddle and bow, how to tune your fiddle, how to learn to read music, tremolo, vibrato and other fiddle bowing techniques, scales, positions and chords, practice tips and free fiddle sheet music from beginner to advance melodies. Go here to access all lessons: Free Online Fiddle Lessons.

The Fiddle Hub offers online fiddle lessons but it requires a membership. There is a paid membership where you purchase lessons for $4 and then have unlimited use of that lesson. There is also a free membership, but you still are required to register. The free membership gives you four how to play the fiddle lessons including smooth bowing, accurate fingering, learning tunes and reading tablature. It also give you access to 3 free fiddle tune lessons, “Paddy’s Return”, “Soldiers Joy” and “Whiskey Before Breakfast”. Click here for Fiddle Hub Fiddle Lessons.

Beginner Fiddle Lesson Videos

This beginner fiddle lesson starts with tuning, finger patterns and include a quick how to play fiddle beginner tune, “Bile em Cabbage Down” using Nashville shuffle and one and two bowing:
Tuning, Finger Patterns and "Bile em Cabbage Down"

Below is another little fiddle lesson given by Casey Driessen, a Grammy nominated fiddler who often tours with different bands and quartets playing bluegrass and other acoustic styles of fiddle music. He was on tour with the Frank Vignola Quintet and stopped by Mel Bay Publications where he gave this quick lesson on bowing and double stops and how to warm up with long bowing intervals:

Beginner Fiddle Lesson on Bowing and Double Stops

If you want to find a fiddle teacher in your area, we found this website, called "Get Lessons Now" where you can choose fiddle lessons from the drop down menu, enter you zipcode and it gives you a list of local teachers. It will give the teacher’s education, awards received, lesson details, rates, hours lessons are offered and a bio/personal statement from each teacher. There is also a “send message” button so you can ask questions via email.

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