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Hello!
I finally finished the Global Byss-Calle tune for World Nyckelharpa Day. It was quite an epic editing session! 156 nyckelharpa players made the final video from 20 countries and it is amazing! I'm not sure we'll be able to top that next year, but we can certainly try. So get Sunday 26th April 2026 in your diary!

So what's new? The Global tune and live dance at the weekend took a lot of time up, but I did add some new things!

In Dance - I added a new section to the dance section. A page of 1x through a tune reference track. I've made an index and then added the tunes for the dance on the 10th May. (We filmed that dance, so it'll go up as a video with music to play along with in the next couple of weeks once it's edited). I'll be adding to this section this year to build up a resource. For now the video links are all unlisted - but I might make them public.

I added The Scullery Marinade on the nyckelharpa and also moved the Session 3: World Nyckelharpa Day 2021 onto its own page. So have a wander over and play along with that session too!
I added Lavenders Blue on the Fiddleharpa. On the flute we've been filming tracks for callers so we have a new video for Auretti's Dutch Skipper and also Jaques Ramble, both from Kitty Bridges 1745. On the Scottish Smallpipes I've added The Golden Birch to chapter 4 of the tutor.

More next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
What a day World Nyckelharpa Day was last week! An incredible 12 hours in Zoom culminating in our little concert. Quite a lot of the Zoom was streamed into YouTube - so you can catch up on it and the complete Playlist. We had over 70 people in the Zoom at the peak from all over the globe! I am now busy editing the global tune and it promises to be epic! I'm holding pout for the final couple of videos to come in and they're definitely worth waiting for. So hopefully by the next update I'll be able to announce it!

So what did I add to the site this week?
A new Catch Club is live: Upon Christchurch Bells. I made this one danceable! So it's played through seven times through! Enjoy!
Before the madness happened that was World Nyckelharpa Day we had a Zoom dance in Symmetry. This video is up and ready for watching! It took a few more days than normal to edit as I was busy with other videos first!
This week we have NH - Snufkin's Waltz written by Jonathon. It's a really pretty little waltz.
We also have Grendel's Polska, this tune was used in a Ted-Ed recently. I've added that to the lesson so you can see it in action!
I've also added Tyrfing's Polska on the nyckelharpa!
I need to send this message out now before we go into Symmetry, so that's all for now. I'll focus on all the other instruments next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
It's World Nyckelharpa Day Week! I've spent the week working on videos, schedules and generally getting ready for Sunday! As always I have a prepared a feast of videos that get scattered throughout the day in the playlist. We've had a lovely lot of videos sent in - but here's a list of mine in order. The times are for the premieres on Sunday 27th April. They are all nyckelharpa related, but some of them are a little off the wall. I recommend headphones for the Zen Warmup and the ASMR videos!

My YouTube Schedule looks like this:
09:00: Nyckelharpa News Network
09:15: Nyckelharpa Zen Warmup
11:30: Unboxing: Larica Gold II Rosin – ASMR
11:45: Start of the Global Byss-Calle Lille videostream (Back-up Stream!) ⬅︎ Send in your video!!!
14:14: Vicki & Jonny's Session for WND
15:00: Byss-Calle No. 6 – Brostugan
16:15: Catch Club: This Macedon Youth
18:00: Nyckelharpa ASMR
20:00: Ending Concert by us

It's time! Here's the Zoom schedule for Sunday!
09:00 - Tokyo Scandi Session
11:45 - Prepare for the Global Tune
12:00 - The Global Tune Happens!
12:05 - Vicki does a couple of tunes from the Halsway Top 40=
12:20 - Meet Holger Funke and some of his amazing nyckelharpa collection
13:00 - Esbjörn Hogmark live from the Eric Sahlström Institute Builders Weekend
14:00 - Leif Alpsjö Tune Workshop
14:45 - Regina Kunkel Tune Workshop
15:30 - Anders, Sofia and Olov Live from Källunge in Gotland
16:30 - Esbjörn Hogmark live from his own Workshop
18:00 - The American Nyckelharpa Zoom Jam led by Sheila Morris, Lesley Foley, Martine Chiasson and Amy Hakanson
20:00 - Vicki & Jonny do the closing concert

I have added lessons for Well Hall and the Parsnip Grater these are one of the tunes in our session above. (I haven't managed to film all the lessons for the session - but they'll come over time)

That's all for now! Things will be back to normal next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
I finally got all the videos from Lewes and Halsway edited, so the resources pages are now updated and the lessons will trickle through into these updates as the weeks pass. We had a great weekend playing for dance up in Cumbria at the weekend, it's now back home and ready to start recording the albums we've been trying record for years!!
I did some more updating of the What I've Taught at Halsway page. I've gone back to 2018 so far.
In preparing for the World Nyckelharpa Day session I did some tidying up and added a lesson page for the original Lockdown Session 5. If you didn't play along in 2020 here's the chance to give it a go! I'll try to remember to feature more of these! I can't believe it was 5 years ago that we did this series!

I've tried to finish all the lessons for the workshops over the past few weeks and then it's been a lot of World Nyckelharpa Day preparation.

Firstly - we have our next Symmetry dance on the 22nd April - hope to see you there!

So what have I added this week? For the nyckelharpa we have the great tune by Byss-Calle: No.6 aka Brostugan. I did a version of this which will premiere on World Nyckelharpa Day itself too. On the Scottish Smallpipes we have Stornaway Castle. On the flute I've added Kentish Cricketters.

That's all for now - more soon. Next Friday will pretty much be 100% World Nyckelharpa Day Links!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
It's been a week of frantic filming to try to get everything that I taught at Halsway filmed, edited and uploaded. We also had some request tunes to record for callers and the Casterton Dance weekend to prepare for! So what is new?

From a comment on one of my flute shorts I discovered that two of the play-along videos had an fps error in them - in plain speak. I had managed to export them wrongly so that they sounded a semi-tone lower. I've now fixed this and as a result the play-along videos for the Symmetry Dances from the 20th February 2024 and the 19th March 2024 are now actually play-along-able! I've checked all the other Symmetry videos to make sure they didn't have the same issue! We also had Symmetry this week so that video is up and ready to watch / play-along with. I've had a bit of a today up in the Dance section and added a new Dance Resource Course. I've added a new collection there - Kitty Bridges 1745. We've been asked to record six of these tunes. So I thought about in the end completing all 21. So as a start here is the first of them: Auretti's Dutch Skipper on the flute.

I've also added an update to the Sailor's Hornpipe in the flute course, adding the dots and a video for it being played in D. (This is the tune that led me to fixing the key of the Symmetry videos!)

Having come back from Halsway I'm working my way through the tunes I taught there. So Femtiöringen now has the C string lesson added to it and I filmed and added the Maypole Gånglåt by my other tutor David. The more difficult tunes will follow in the next week or two.

On the Scottish smallpipes this week we have The Southwind. A pretty waltz. Enjoy!
More next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
I'm now back from an excellent week at Halsway Manor. Many tunes were played and many dances had. We also found some time to go walking up in the hills. I took a camera and over the course of two days I filmed the walk, edited it together, sped it up and uploaded it. So now you too can experience the majesty of the Quantock Hills. (Either again if you came on the walk after the any course or for the first time if you can't get to Halsway or up the hill).

I am still to film some of the missing lessons, but I did do some before the weekend so the first of those is below. So what is new?

The Scarf Långdans has the lesson video now included in the lesson page.
At Halsway I taught this rather nice little wedding march - Bröllopsmarsch efter Blinde Janne
I split out the tuning of the sympathetic strings into two lessons so there isn't any confusion with tuning the way most of us tune with the Enar Magnusson Sympathetic String tuning.
On the Scottish Smallpipes we have Pushbike Part 2 - the Reel. I published part 1 a little while back and here is the promised part 2!
On the flute I have uploaded the lesson for John's Maggot, my change tune challenge.

We have a Symmetry Dance on Sunday - 7pm in Zoom. Hope to see you there!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
I've had a recount of all the lessons and as I type this we have 777 different tunes on this site! I wonder what a reasonable goal is to reach by the end of 2025? I'm going to aim for 816 (that's one a week). Watch this space! It's been a busy week preparing for Lewes and Halsway x2. But I've still had time for adding things.
What's new this week?
• We had Symmetry and it was a lovely dance. 🙂 The video is ready for watching / playing along too!
• I've made a front page for the Moraharpa. It'll make it a little bit quicker to find things in that section! I have added Douce Dame Jolie to this course this week.
• On the Scottish smallpipes we have The Lochaber Badger by Fred Morrison.
• On the nyckelharpa we have a waltz called Spegeln. We played this at Symmetry the other week, so here it is with a lesson.
• On the flute we have a tune Jonny wrote a really long time ago called Morfar. It pretty and one of our earliest tunes!

This weekend I have two days of workshops in Lewes - Swedish tunes and Purcell tunes. Then we're doing the Walking and Dancing Week at Halsway Manor Monday to Friday and then it's the Spring Nyckelharpa weekend. So my next update will be in April. At which point it's going to be full on heading for World Nyckelharpa Day!
More soon!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
A week of editing! And just when I thought everything was edited, I did some more filming. I'm doing a workshop of Swedish tunes for any instrument and a Purcell tunes workshop in a weeks time and then it's the Halsway Spring weekend after that. So it really is all hands to the pump on those three workshops! I did find time to start thinking about my videos for World Nyckelharpa Day and I filmed an unboxing of a new block of rosin. It's the Larica Gold II that I usually use, but the video has a slant on it. But you're going to have to wait until the day itself and the premier to see the video - make sure you have headphones!
We had our Symmetry Dance this week and the video is ready to play along with / listen again too! We also have our next dance next Tuesday!

One for Diana has had the grace notes added to it and also a duo video added to the lesson page.
For Moraharpa this week we have Tant M'Abelis. It's a second tune with the drone string cranked right up to a G.
On the Scottish Smallpipes we have The Soup Dragon by Gordon Duncan.
One the flute we have the very regency tune La Nouvelle Panurge – 1823.
More next week!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
It's been a mixed week this week. Prepping more dance tunes. Editing more videos. Working on the tunes I'm going to teach at Lewes in a couple of weeks time. This has meant a lot of very nerdy work on researching Purcell/Playford music. These tunes will get filmed in April I should think! We had fun at the IVFDF25 and I took a few videos. Nothing that I could make a play-along video from, but we did do three change tune challenges! Can you get all three? I'm still editing videos to complete these and I wrote one the day before the dance! We have Scullery Marinade, The Parsnip Grater and Lollicowlero! (These are all YouTube links as the lessons aren't filmed yet! I'm in the middle now of putting together what I'm going to teach at Halsway at the end of the month. So I made a list of the tunes that I've taught since the pandemic at all the major workshops! You'll find that list here. I can and will go back further, but this was all to hand!

So what's new this week?

On Moraharpa I had a request so I added De La Iensor.
On the Scottish smallpipes I added another tune that Jonny wrote many, many years ago, It's a two parter. This is Pushbike Part 1. You'll get part 2 next week!
I wrote a change tune a couple of months back and we played it at a dance, the lesson is now done for Find the Mole. Nominally it's in the nyckelharpa section, but should be played on any instrument that can!
This year is a Jane Austen anniversary year, so I think there are going to be many Regency tunes being played on the flute this year. So I've added one from the Jane Austen Festival last year. It's The Lass of Richmond Hill. A great tune that goes past in a flash!

We have a Symmetry dance on Sunday so hope to see you there!
:))
Vicki

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Hello!
Since last week we've been up to York for the Jorvik Viking Festival, led some tunes for the American Nyckelharpa Association, had a Symmetry dance and a folk club gig! But I have managed to add a good spread of things to the site this week! If you'd like to see the show - I filmed it and have uploaded it to YouTube. It's now in the Subscribers Extras section. Grab a coffee and enjoy!

We had Symmetry this week and here is the link to the play-along/listen again - Symmetry 25th February
On the säckpipa we have Tyrfing's Polska. A polska that Jonny wrote for Jorvik. I love the tune and it's likely to be taught at Halsway at the end of next month!
On the Scottish smallpipes we have a tune by Jonny called Friday Afternoon. It's a perfect example of jumping down to the drone note to make staccato rhythms,
On the nyckelharpa I added the articulations to Pablo Goes Fishing and added a duo version taken from Symmetry.
On the flute I added The Tightrope Walker. This was one of the change tunes from last summer and is paired with Jacob Hall's Jig II.

I've been doing quite a bit of filming and it's going to take time for everything to filter through, so more next week!
Enjoy
:))
Vicki