Violin and guitar Pablo Picasso These poems, stories, songs, quote, and art have been gathered from all over the world, partly via FIDDLE-L, an online list for fiddlers and those who love fiddle music. dhebert@crocker.com

The Hard Part by Paul Anastasio O.K., so let's say you've been doing battle with the fiddle for ten, fifteen,twenty or more years. You've learned tons of tunes, anguished for hundreds or thousands of hours over intonation, tone, vibrato, double stops and the like. You can be justifiably proud of all you've done. Be aware, however, as you gear up for the next round of your unending battle for technical mastery of the fiddle, that all you've done and all that you're about to do is the easy part. "The easy part? You've gotta be kidding!" I can hear you saying. "If all that work, all that blood, tears, toil and sweat I've poured into this instrument, is the easy part, what the heck is the hard part?" I'll tell you. The hard part is being able to open up your heart and soul to your listeners, touching them with your music and letting them touch you. The technique that we all battle to master is like the mechanics of a language-sentence structure, vocabulary, and so on. Without some knowledge of a language, we aren't going to be able to use that language for its intended purpose, which is communication. Mere mastery of a language, though, is by no means any indication that the writer, speaker, or, in the case of music, player of that language has anything to say. We've all heard players who, despite possessing only modest technical skills, can really move us deeply, speaking directly to our hearts. Conversely, the radio airwaves, most noticeably in the jazz genre, are often glutted with the endlessly cascading sixteenth notes of players who not only have nothing to say but are determined to say nothing using as many notes as humanly possible. There's a story from many years ago about an encounter that took place on the Count Basie band bus. In this story, which may or may not be true, the unnamed new sax player in the band was walking up and down the aisle of the bus, demonstrating his "chops" by playing everything he could think of, as fast as possible. The great tenor saxophonist Lester Young was slouched in his seat, listening. At the conclusion of this pyrotechnical display Lester looked up and said, "All right, Lady so-and-so (in Young's idiosyncratic vocabulary everybody was lady, regardless of gender), now tell me a story." That's the hard part. When a player is truly telling a story, the technique used and the style of music fade away as the player transcends these elements of language, opening a window directly into his or her soul. In a recent interview Bonnie Owens reminisced about the early days of live recording in the studio with Merle Haggard. She says that she always knew that a performance of a song was a "take" when two things happened. One, they got all the way through the song, and, two, the hair on her arms stood up from goosebumps while Merle was singing. These moments of raw soul-to-soul and heart-to-heart communication are to me what music is really all about. Lefty Frizzell said late in his life that all he was trying to say with every note he sang was "I love you," and you'd better believe that a lot of people heard and felt that love. What's the secret to learning the hard part? I wish I knew. Believe me, if I knew I would open my heart and soul to everyone who's listening with every note I play. Years ago, I had the good fortune to study under a man who really knew how to make that connection. That man was Joe Venuti, one of the most passionate and powerful players in the history of the violin. As you read this, I plan to be studying with yet another great master -- Juan Reynoso. If I can ever pin down their magic, as difficult as capturing a bead of mercury under the tip of a pencil, I promise that I will let you know. If I can shed any light on this subject at all, that light would point in the direction of the greatest of players -- players who have been brave enough to be open and honest, using the language of music to tell us of their joys, their passions and their heartaches. Everyone's list of "greatest" players will be different, as we're each moved by different things, and music that reduces one person to tears may leave someone else completely cold. My list of musicians with the tremendous courage to open themselves completely would have to include violinists Alicia Svigals, Stuff Smith, Svend Asmussen, and of course Joe Venuti and Juan Reynoso. Lester Young's recordings speak to me directly, as do those of vocalists Big Joe Turner and Dinah Washington, Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard and George Jones. You have without a doubt been equally moved by other musicians. What makes these artists able to touch a nerve in us, to make our backs stiffen and run with cold chills while goosebumps appear on our arms? Again, I don't know. The great western swing fiddler Bobby Creighton told me that the way to get better was to spend my days listening to players who were better than I was. By doing just that, and by constantly trying to unlock the secrets of the great masters, we can all hope to learn the secret of really communicating -- touching our listeners' hearts and letting them touch ours. That's the hard part. Used with permission. This article originally appeared in Fiddler Magazine. Paul Anastasio is a wonderful swing fiddler and teacher living in Seattle. Browse his online catalog of swing fiddle recordings at Swing Cat Enterprises.