![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmTHMkcnY6zFS7R4DiY2k3nCxVXuFRbSCYzwtsPMMbyUyH/victorian2.jpg)

As said in a quote in Quora’s website with the user Paul Smith, composer and musician:

The difference is how the player interacts with the instrument. A fiddler learns by oral tradition (listening) and by watching masters play. A violinist plays their music from notation. If you are a fiddle player (I have played for four decades), your music is in you. These tunes are in your bones in a way no violinist will ever understand. One problem in learning fiddling, if you already play violin music, is that it is so seductive to think that you can play fiddle music by reading it off a page. Do not make this error. You will learn none of the proper phrasing or ornamentation this way, and you won’t train your ears properly. Also, you can offend traditional players if you come on with the hubris of “I already play the violin—this music is easy!” You would say that perhaps because what can be notated in fiddle music only seems simple, because the complexity is un-notatable. However, in Ireland, the idea of playing like a classical European musician is to sound… uh, “English.” Don’t be that guy.

In fact there is no physical difference between a violin and a fiddle other than the way in which is played.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmbD4MG4wPNW5RYTWsYBteDUyVW5qTmnmpYqBHftR4pHws/fiddlewall1_868x1024.jpg)


Over in the musicology department, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians defines “fiddle” as “a generic term for any chordophone [stringed instrument] played with a bow.” This instrument group includes the violin and many other instruments as diverse as the one-string goge of sub-Saharan Africa, having a gourd sound box covered with iguana or boa skin; the North Indian sarangi, with playing strings stopped by the fingernails and 35 sympathetic strings; and the rebab, a spike fiddle whose quavering song floats on top of the metallophones in the gamelan orchestras of Java and Bali.

On the surface, this kind of fiddle music is technically less complex than classical violin (though sometimes very fast!). Many fiddle players never leave first position. But fiddling calls for great skill in producing the rhythmic and melodic lift originally intended to get people dancing and keep them that way. Even when we’re just listening to a well-played fiddle tune, chances are we’re moving our bodies somehow – tapping our feet or fingers, or nodding our heads. The emphasis tends to be on rhythmic drive and a steady flow of melody through basic forms, often AABB.

But why the sudden interest in this? Precisely because my legs couldn’t handle the tempation my ears were taking from this song:
![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmaQ4qTtVU3K1r86W32yGwQHYzd3EnerEdAzjVNGSRffcJ/6678154fc125d17074e0799c_fiddle_1_result.webp)


[The Coors Irish Fiddle Music](https://youtu.be/_edkn7Qd9Zg?si=IYYPk1UTxlbyDUyV)

Undeniably feels like a cup of coffee on a sunny morning ! It makes your feet crave beating the floor like never before, hands messing wildily on the air above your head as if magic floats right through you, irish fiddle is the essence of dancing. It involks movement.

![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmejdxCbo5GucSUbkDvKQ8MuTghC3uA3WZD3H82VYRoaz1/dancer_min.jpg)

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