We will cover some of the fundamentals and essential techniques to help you discover and build your stylistically bluegrass fiddle sound. Learn some classic tunes, what your role is as a bluegrass fiddler, how to introduce blues elements to your playing, and other important stylistic details such as bowing and simple double stops to set up your toolbox of bluegrass fiddle sounds and techniques. Then learn how you can practically apply them to your playing in bluegrass jam or performance situations going forward. Let’s kickstart your bluegrass fiddle sound!
Instructor Bio
George Jackson is a Nashville-based fiddle player who has tours as a band leader and fiddler for hire, having worked with artists such as Front Country, Peter Rowan, Missy Raines, and many more. Born in New Zealand, George grew up in a musical family and heard bluegrass around the age of 14, immediately falling in love with the style he started trying to work out how to play it from recordings and from the few mentors he could find in New Zealand. Moving to Australia as a 16-year-old, he won the Australian National Bluegrass Championship on fiddle three times and toured the country with his bluegrass band The Company, playing many major folk festivals on the Australian circuit.
As a resident of Nashville and the USA from 2016, George released an acclaimed album of original fiddle tunes, Time and Place, in 2019. His tune “Chapel Hill Deer Stalk” won the DC Bluegrass Union’s 2019 Mike Auldridge Instrumental Composition Contest, and his composition “Dorrigo,” went viral when hundreds of musicians learned the tune and posted videos of themselves playing it online in what became known as “the Dorrigo Challenge.”
Each track on Time and Place was written by George and named for its time and place of composition, tracing his journey from New Zealand to his new life in the United States, exploring ideas of authenticity and identity through fiddle music. In his free time, George brews his own beer and cooks Cajun food. He loves Swedish fiddle music and—fun fact—he was a competitive Highland dancer until the age of 21.