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Hello!
I'm at Halsway Manor this week teaching lots of lovely tunes to lots of lovely people.

What's new this week? Well, it was Burns Night last week and we played for a wonderful Burns Night Ceilidh in a pub, so I have brought over from my old blog Ae Fond Kiss to the original tune Rory Dall's Port. Simple and sweet. Enjoy!

For the Scottish Smallpipes it's The Piper's Wedding Jig
On the flute we've reached O and Orleans Baffled
On the Fiddleharpa - it was going to happen sometime. We have Sticky GnT. Everyone gets to play Sticky GnT sometime and this is the turn of the Fiddleharpa!
We even have a tagelharpa tune this week - Nyårsaftonen. I'll be doing this tune some time on the nyckelharpa - but it won't be in this key!

I'm continuing with the shorts and amongst other things have been sneaking in what I'm going to teach at Halsway. Videos below! There are more shorts this week, so go to the shorts page to watch those! When I'm out on the road I do try to make sure the short is filmed on location!
More next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
Halsway Manor has come round again and I find myself right in the middle of preparations putting together the music I want to teach, making badges and general getting ready! I've done quite a bit of filming, so there's plenty of videos over the next few weeks!

What's new on the site this week?
On the nyckelharpa we have Tureholms 'Skreken' Schottis (I'll be doing this at Halsway next week!)
We have The Partridge for the Scottish Smallpipes.
We have reached N on the A-Z of dance tunes for flute and Neat Mr John.
For Fiddleharpa we have Femtiöringen.

A lockdown project of mine was learning to play the tagelharpa. It's been recorded on a few projects since then, so I've added a new course for the Tagelharpa. I'll be adding a few bits and pieces, it's mostly there as a good resource. This week I added a help guide video to show people how I hold it.

I've also finally done my unboxing of the Remic V520. I had been hoping for an amazing replacement to my AKG "sticky bug" - you'll have to watch the video to see if it was!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
This week having moved my rooms around I've been filming away in the spare room and it definitely seems to be working!

This week I've been doing some work on the beginners course, so we a new video on the The Left Hand Position. I've also been adding videos to the Nyckelharpa Four a Day, Days 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 and also fixing a few signposting things in the beginners course.

I've also finished off some work on week one of the Fiddleharpa Four-a-Day.

We have Love and a Bottle for the flute course this week and Dusty Pipes for the Scottish Smallpipes.

I've been carrying on with the shorts this week too! I decided to embed them below for you to watch and I've included links to the lessons where I have them.

Enjoy
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. I had a great time in Sweden and have come back refreshed and ready to get back to work! Lots to be done. Lots of recording and filming and also the work now starts for World Nyckelharpa Day!

I have spent this week mostly trying to sort out my work space. As you know I use green screen to cover the fact that we have a very small house and it's hard to get nice camera angles. Since the start of the pandemic I've had a green screen set up in our lounge, but as of now I have managed to set up a green screen area in the spare room. This is awesome on many different levels. I have always recorded in the spare room, it's set up as a mini-studio, but I've not been happy with the filming in there. (You'll have seen it in some videos!) So now that I have managed to do the green screen up there it means that my videos won't have the sound of lorries and cars going past. I can leave it set up and respond to requests for videos faster. In short - I'm very happy!

I have decided to try to release a YouTube Shorts video everyday for 365 days - it's going to be tough and some of the shorts might be rough and ready! I'm going to film them and upload them there and then, no prep, just shoot and upload! I've done six days already - four tagelharpa tunes, one nyckelharpa and one moraharpa. The ones without links don't have lessons.... yet! Watch out for those as I get them filmed!
1st January - Nyårsaftonen on the tagelharpa
2nd January - A schottis on the tagelharpa
3rd January - O'Hara's Cup by O'Carolan
4th January - A tagelharpa tune
5th January - A polkette on the tagelharpa
6th January - Skäggigtpolskan on the moraharpa

I added a tuning video for the Fiddleharpa - melody strings and Fiddleharpa - sympathetic strings.

There will be more next week!
:))
Vicki

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At long last I can talk about a project that I did quite a lot of work for during the pandemic. I got to work on Netflix's The Witcher Blood Origin. The character Éile, an elven bard plays the nyckelharpa, so obviously they needed someone to teach the actress to play! I was unbelievably excited to get the job!

Because of the way I was asked to play (ie as much drone as possible) I decided to use a gammelharpa bow and a gammelharpa bow hold. (It's not possible to hold that bow in a modern way!) You can tell that from the video below. At the lesson with Sophia I realised who had made the instruments - Ian McMaster of Blackdown Harpas. Ian did an amazing job with all the requirements he was asked to do (I'm not going to give away any spoilers here!) but let's just say I was stunned at the job he did!

Sophia was a great student and I think from the photo below she looks awesome! I've had a lot of comments about the bow hold - but to be nerdy for a second:
The strap is held correctly, the elbow is nicely over the tail piece, the thumb of the left hand is behind the keys, not the neck. The pinkie of the right hand is crooked behind the bow exactly where it should be and the thumb is tensioning the bow hair. Any other critique is overboard - so I will just say - good job Sophia! You rocked! I was onset making sure that everything was correct, so although you can't see me in the picture below, I was there, just behind the camera!

Unfortunately Netflix forgot to credit me. So there are two of us nyckelharpa players on the soundtrack - the rule of thumb is: if you see the nyckelharpa being played - it's me playing. If you don't see a nyckelharpa on the screen, then it's Erik Rydvall playing.

In the instagram link on the left - go to the second image to hear Sophia play for real. She was awesome! The instagram link on the right is me de-tuning the nyckelharpa down to Bb!

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Hello!
Happy New Year every one! I hope you all had a great break and ate far too much! I've been away so there are only two things to add this week. Kelsterne Gardens on the flute and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the säckpipa

What has been exciting has been the release of The Witcher Blood Origin. This was one of the projects that I did during lockdown. I tutored one of the main actresses - Sophia Brown to play the nyckelharpa, I recorded with her in the studio and then advised on set for scenes in episodes 1 and 4. If you look for me in the credits though, due a bit of an error - you'll only see Erik Rydvall listed. So the rule of thumb is this - if you can see a nyckelharpa being played, it's definitely me playing. If you can only hear it, it could well be Erik. I recorded a nice solo at the start of the song in episode one, this didn't make the final cut - but the video below is what it would have been! There have been queries about the bow hold the actress uses. I used a old style gammalharpa bow, so that's the bow hold I taught Sophia. Sophia was a really great student and such fun to work with!
Back to work this week - I have videos to make and teaching to do!
😀
Vicki

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Hello!
Happy Christmas! We got through all of our Christmas tour and then made it over to Sweden to be with family for Christmas. We got to see the Gävle Bock on our way north and it was really cool! I've put a couple of pictures at the bottom of this entry. So what do we have this week?

We have a new nyckelharpa trio for Christmas! Jingle Bell Rock is good to go!

We have Santa Claus is Coming to Town flute duet!

Friday 23rd December - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Saturday 24th December - We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Happy Christmas!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
We're now in the Christmas tour and it's a lot of fun and a lot of travelling. The weather has been challenging and cold, but so far so good!

Friday 16th December - I Saw Three Ships
Saturday 17th December - Mary Free
Sunday 18th December - Silent Night
Monday 19th December - O Little Town of Bethlehem
Tuesday 20th December - Past Three O'Clock
Wednesday 21st December - In Dulci Jubilo
Thursday 22nd December - Frosty the Snowman

On the flute we have Jul Jul Strålande Jul (live from 5pm on the 16th)

We're off to Clent and Wychwood and then back home again for our own village hall gig and then the last night of the Christmas Show tour is in Zoom - so don't forgot to come along to that!
Stay safe!
:))
Vicki