Katie Glassman’s Fiddle School
Photos By Erin Nutini
Katie Glassman’s Fiddle School (fiddleschool.com) has everything that you’d want in an online music teaching platform. The site offers instruction from two world-class fiddler players who thoroughly know their subject and expertly present their lessons in a well-designed, step-by-step teaching method that has something to offer fiddle players of all experience and skill levels. The core of the teaching is presented through a series of easy-to-follow short video segments, but it doesn’t end there. The site also offers webinars, private lessons, progress reports, access to an online fiddle community forum, weekly emails of encouragement and support, weekly “office hours,” completion certificates, and fiddle camps (both online and in person).
Before we dive deeper into all the learning tools and support the Fiddle School offers, lets first take a look at the background of the school’s founder and head teacher, Katie Glassman.
Background
As a young girl, Katie Glassman attended the Denver Waldorf School where every third grader was required to either play violin or cello. Katie said, “As it turned out, the orchestra teacher, Chris Daring, was a Texas fiddle player. So, I started taking lessons from her and she started to take me to fiddle contests. I was eaten up with the music. I was really lucky because as a nine-year-old I heard Herman Johnson, Orville Burns, Dick Barrett, and all of these great players. I would sit in the front row with my tape recorder. My mom was thinking, ‘What is up with Katie? She’s obsessed!’ But this music hit me out of the blue, and I fell in love on day one.”
Katie was not just watching the legends compete, she was also entering fiddle competitions herself from age nine. She recalls, “My first contest was in Crested Butte, Colorado. The great Dale Morris was judging — and I got third place!” During her early contest years she primarily stayed close to home in Colorado, but by the time she was a teenager she was traveling to contests in Oklahoma, Idaho, Missouri, and California. Her first year competing at the prestigious National Old-Time Fiddler’s Contest and Festival in Weiser, Idaho was in 1994 when she was thirteen.
Remembering that first year at Weiser, she said, “I came in 52nd place out of 90 in the junior division. That was not acceptable to me. I practiced really hard and the next year I got 15th and made the first cut. The following two years I got sixth place. I then had one more year in the division, when I was seventeen, and I got first place.” In 2001, Katie won the young adult division at Weiser and she has won the swing division four times. In 2013, Katie won both the Rockygrass fiddle competition in Lyons, Colorado and the Walnut Valley competition in Winfield, Kansas. In 2015, one of the years Katie won the National Swing Fiddle Championship at Weiser, she also took first place in both the Bob Wills and open divisions at the Bob Wills Festival and Fiddle Contest. She has also won the Colorado State Championship seven times.
While many contest players stick close to the contest circuit, Katie has also played in a variety of noteworthy bands through the years and, in addition to playing fiddle, is a talented singer and songwriter. Her band Katie Glassman and Snapshot has recorded two albums (the first in 2011, the second in 2014) and she also joined Joey McKenzie and Gavin Kelso (former rhythm section of the Quebe Sisters) in 2014 to form the The Western Flyers. Regarding her work with McKenzie and Kelso, Katie said, “We toured a different state or country about every weekend for six years. I also got to play twin fiddles with legends like Byron Berline and Bobby Hicks. The whole thing was a great experience. It was like playing in the Western Swing superhero band.”
Katie played with The Western Flyers until November of 2019. While she was touring with that band she also continued playing with Snapshot. When COVID hit, Katie stopped performing altogether to focus on building her online teaching platform.
When asked about her stylistic influences on the fiddle, Katie said, “When I was growing up, it was one hundred percent Texas style fiddling that I was learning. When I went to the University of Colorado, I studied classical as well as Dixieland jazz, swing, bebop, and I also went to my first bluegrass jam. I had never seen a jam where you passed the song around the circle.” During this period, Katie also traveled to France to study jazz violin with Stephane Grappelli’s protégé, Didier Lockwood.
These days, Katie considers herself more of a Texas style, Western Swing and early jazz style player who “dabbles” in bluegrass. She said, “Because I’m so authentic about genre, I know what I don’t know.” However, if you were to search Katie’s name on YouTube and watch her play the fiddle tune medley of “Ashland Breakdown” and “Spider Bit the Baby,” it is evident that she has put time into studying Kenny Baker. She said, “I got really into the Kenny Baker albums and learned all the tunes from those albums. But where I don’t feel competent in bluegrass is that I haven’t learned the singing repertoire. If I don’t know a melody, I can solo around the chords, but I’ll feel much better if I know the melody.”
Fiddle School
Katie started her online “Fiddle School” in December of 2018. She said, “I actually started working on it in 2017. The genesis of the program was from touring and finding people living in rural places where there were no teachers. At first, I thought I’d develop it as a side project, but it turned into an entire curriculum of how to learn the fiddle from day one.
“When COVID hit, I watched the most beautiful community I’ve ever seen be born. We turned into an international community, and I started doing office hours on Zoom so that everyone could see each other. Fiddle School became a great place for adults to work on fiddle and to get to know each other. Not only that, but we had people in, say, their sixties who had never played before. Now, two years later, they can sit down at jams and play twenty to thirty songs!”
In addition to the program that teaches new students from day one, Katie also has designed other programs to fit the needs of those who are not new to the fiddle. The first caters to people who learned how to play the violin or fiddle when they were younger and are now returning to the instrument. The second is for those who have been playing fiddle for a while and are interested in honing their fundamental skills. The third includes webinars for more advanced players looking to learn crafted Texas tunes for contests and jams. And there are also the popular Swing Improv Workout classes. She said, “I’m offering classes that I wish I had been offered when I was learning.”
The fiddleshcool.com website offers several different sections, each open to all members. The first is titled the “Starter Kit” and provides beginners with everything they will want to know to get started. Katie is the instructor in these videos and does a wonderful job clearly explaining every aspect of learning to play the fiddle such as taking the fiddle out of the case and putting rosin on the bow, correct posture when holding the fiddle, holding and using the bow, details about the left hand, and much more. Katie said, “We want the student to get comfortable with the instrument and internalize the basics before we actually add a song. Once we jump in, we are going to learn everything through the practice of fiddle tunes. There are exercises scattered throughout the course, but I’m big on learning to play music by playing music. There is about a month of material in the Starter Kit.”
Anticipating that some students who are interested in learning how to play the fiddle may have had some experience in the past, put the instrument down for a while, and are now coming back to it, Katie designed another section of the website titled the “Restarter Kit.” Here Katie expertly re-introduces the student to their fiddle without them having to wade through material in the Starter Kit that they may already know. This kit helps those who are returning to the fiddle to remember their basics before moving forward to learning tunes.
One more kit that Katie has included is called the “Tune Up Kit.” Like the “Restarter Kit,” this section is aimed at those who have experience with the fiddle who might need to review and work on fundamentals, even if they have been continuously playing. It’s also aimed at fiddlers who just want to level up.
After the student learns the basics and has worked on fundamentals via the Starter Kit, Restarter Kit or Tune Up Kit, they are ready to move to “Session One: Texas Fiddle Foundations.” Currently, Katie has loaded three instructional “Sessions” onto the website. Each session is designed to be a twelve-month program. There are twelve lessons per session and each lesson is designed to take the student roughly one month to complete. Each lesson contains sequential videos on technique, learning videos for two fiddle tunes, play-along tracks, and detailed notes about the lesson topic. In the first lesson of Session One, for example, the student focuses on bowing technique while learning to play the tunes “Boil The Cabbage Down” and “Oh! Susanna.” For the majority of the tunes presented in this course, students are taught the basic melody of the song and then several variations. Fiddlers learn each song and variation by watching and listening to Katie’s very thorough and easy to follow instruction.
Once the student has worked his or her way through all twelve lessons of Session One (learning 24 new tunes, with variations, along the way), they are ready to move on to Session Two: How To Reach Your Next Level. Here the student will once again learn new techniques while absorbing 24 more new tunes with variations. Session Two is also designed to take about a year to complete before the student is ready to move on to Session Three: The Advancing Fiddler, which is a program that is also designed to provide the student with a full year of instruction. Session Three tunes include lots of signature Texas variations and feature techniques like shifting, vibrato and double stops.
Katie has carefully crafted “Practice Pals” for most lessons. These are her guided warmups to facilitate fun and successful practice sessions for students at every level. Katie also shares information about the culture of breakdowns and Western Swing, introduces the who’s who of Texas fiddlers and recommends various recordings. Weekly Zoom “office hours” are also provided as a forum to ask questions and meet up. Champion fiddler Celeste Johnson rotates with Katie as host.
As if all the above-mentioned features of the site weren’t enough, Fiddle School also offers a one-year Mastery Certificate Program where small groups limited to ten students do a deep dive into the curriculum, performing at bi-monthly Zoom classes and receiving friendly, personalized feedback from Katie and Celeste. They also work through the year in student study groups as everyone helps each other prepare for in-class performances, building and maintaining great repertoire along the way. When course registration opens in November 2022, Fiddle School will offer four levels of Mastery for the first time.
One of the most positive things about Katie Glassman’s Fiddle School is the camaraderie that Katie has worked hard to build with, and among, the students. Her weekly emails are very encouraging, the private Facebook group is a great way to interact with fellow students, and her webinars and camps also add to the sense of community.
Today there are many different options for fiddle students wanting to learn online. I think that what Katie Glassman has put together at fiddleschool.com is something that provides top level, easy to understand instruction delivered through a very thorough method. On top of that, Katie’s positive attitude and encouragement while giving expert instruction in the videos and through the Zoom classes, webinars, “office hours,” and online community make the learning fun and enjoyable.
If you are thinking about starting to learn the fiddle, picking the fiddle back up after having laid it down for years, or honing and advancing your current skills, I highly recommend checking out Katie Glassman’s Fiddle School. Katie is generously offering Bluegrass Unlimited subscribers a 15% discount on a Fiddle School membership—use discount code BluegrassUnlimited2022 when you sign up to receive your discount.
