Want to Join the Club?
The Tune of the Week Club is a fun lesson series that basically provides all the resources (and more) I would send you on your way with from a private lesson. Each week there is an instructional video, then a slow play-along video, a fast play-along video, and the written out music for each tune. I also include one video showing a “fancy” version - basically the version that I would do if I were playing the tune in a jam or at a gig, both slow and fast. This is for those more advanced students who don’t need the full instructional video for the simple version, and are just looking for motivation to learn/work on a new tune each week, and maybe play a different version than they’re used to. I also talk about some more nuanced skills in these more advanced videos. All videos are downloadable for future reference or for fiddle fun when you're hanging out in a tent somewhere.
About your Instructor
Aurora Bowers is a classically trained fiddler who has been playing bluegrass and old-time fiddle music for 25 years. She got her start in Fairbanks, Alaska, in a musical family with deep roots in the Alaskan traditional music scene.
Aurora’s musical tastes and experiences have taken her from an eclectic teenage fiddle band called “Slightly Askew” to a study of jazz and jazz theory at Whitman College, and then on into a deep dive into traditional music in ETSU’s Old Time, Bluegrass, and Country music program. Most recently, she has played and recorded with The Norris Bowers Band, The Hannah Yoter Band, and Ryan Bowers and the Brain Trust. Her most bizarre claim to fame is that she recorded on the soundtrack of a Las Vegas slot machine game called "Lucky Clucks."
She has been teaching music for about 10 years, through many different avenues. She has been teaching private lessons, both in person and online, for about 5 years. She has also been a teacher with Dancing with the Spirit, a program that teaches traditional fiddle music in remote parts of Alaska, for about 7 years. Through that program, she has traveled to many different Alaskan communities for week-long workshops, as well as teaching group classes online. She is a certified secondary special education teacher, and in 2019, founded a fun and informal group called Pickers in Training, which is aimed at demystifying the "rules" of bluegrass and old-time jamming, and making jamming more accessible for musicians of all skill levels.
Inclusiveness is one of her main guiding principles when it comes to music and teaching, and one of the main reasons she started this online fiddle school. She loves working with students of all ages and ability levels, and is especially interested in figuring out the quickest route possible for every student to start having FUN with music!
Example Curriculum
- Liberty (26:30)
- Skills Class: How to Cross-Tune (2:16)
- Road to Malvern (20:13)
- Whiskey before Breakfast (18:36)
- Cumberland Gap (23:21)
- Cluck Old Hen (16:47)
- Booth Shot Lincoln (22:12)
- Chips and Sauce (15:50)
- I've Got a Bulldog (28:56)
- Wagon Wheel (14:09)
- Walkin in my Sleep (18:03)
- Old Bunch of Keys (14:07)
- Yellow Rose of Texas (16:56)
- Needlecase (17:01)
- Winder Slide (13:29)
- Kitchen Girl (12:26)
- Elk River Blues (11:57)
- Sal's Got Mud Between Her Toes (18:04)
- Red Rocking Chair (13:44)
- Old Joe Clark (11:38)
- Skills Class: Bluegrass Improvisation (22:42)
- Every Time you Say Goodbye Solo (13:05)
- Big Sciota (11:26)
- Shove the Pig's Foot a Little Further into the Fire (13:19)
- Soldier's Joy (21:22)
- Temperance Reel (17:47)
- Grub Springs (17:24)
- Billy in the Lowground - Old Time Version (11:51)
- Billy in the Lowground - Bluegrass Version (17:02)
- Salt Creek (11:30)
- Blackberry Blossom (20:36)
- Big Mon (14:56)
- Gold Rush (16:11)
- Salt Spring (15:15)
- Salt River (12:44)
Other things!
If you're not ready to dive into the Tune of the Week curriculum, but want a quick and dirty how-to guide for the fiddle, feel free to buy my Fiddle FUNdamentals course instead. All of the Fiddle FUNdamentals material is included in Tune of the Week though, so if you think you might want to go there eventually, I would recommend just starting with Tune of the Week. I also teach a course called Fiddler in Five Days, which includes 5 days of exercises for violinists to quickly fiddlify their playing. If you sign up for either of those through my website at aurorabowers.com, you can get them for FREE!