Greetings! My name is Tamsyn and I am primarily a fiddle player. I love folk music, from Irish and Scottish to Scandinavian folk music (which I have discovered I really love!), Appalachian and Canadian. I've been playing violin since about age 7, and I started playing Irish music before anything else, around age 9 when I started taking lessons with the local folk music society. It was a little intimidating being the only small person enrolled in the course ...most everyone else was at least 20 yrs. older at the time! ... but such fond memories of learning my first Irish tunes by heart: "The Boys of Bluehill" and "Sweeny's Polka," taught by Oliver Brown, a soft-spoken Irish man with a fire in his wrist. I started classical music and trained mostly classically over the next several years, but have always loved Irish & Scottish folk music and never stopped taking classes in it or playing it on my own.
I also have a sweet little mandolin (technically it's called a "mandolute," but it's basically a mandolin that has a slight gourd shape to it, which gives it a mellower sound), a beautiful antique instrument given as a present by my father for my 16th birthday; and a mandola (currently residing in Sydney, Australia) ... though I must claim far less proficiency on these outside of plucking melodies. I'd really love to learn how to chord these instruments. I have also recently acquired a bouzouki, but I don't really know how to play this yet (chording and right hand problem again), and I try to dabble on the whistles, though these have taken something of backseat to my other instruments as my time has become more strapped since leaving school.
At present, I'm living in Columbia, Missouri, working as an agriculture writer for University of Missouri Extension. I find it odd to be back here working for the university from which I received my graduate journalism degree. Student loans beckon, however, and it was the first job to materialize after I returned from living in Tasmania last summer (2007) through a Rotary scholarship.
I first fell in love with Australia in summer 2004, after nearly two years of simmering resentment at my grad. school for basically canceling my program after admitting me, sucking me in, and happily taking lots of money from me, and I decided on a sudden whim to travel to Australia for a two-month environmental journalism study abroad with Michigan State University. I fell in love with the country, and had the incredible good luck to find people so generous and willing to lend me instruments and welcome me into their sessions, their homes for music (or tea and quiche), and their lives. The people at the Durty Nelly's session in Paddington, Sydney were so welcoming, it was a joy to sit and be amongst the camaraderie, playing along on occasion, or just listening to their excellent musicianship -- and they treated me to several free Guinness! I stayed in Australia two months, traveled from Top End Darwin to Alice Springs, to Canberra and Sydney, to Daintree and Cairns -- and then serendipity took me on my own to the wondrous mossy state of Tasmania and back to Alice Springs in the Red Center. I nearly succeeded at engaging in something musical in every place I visited (minus Canberra -- where I stayed for only two days -- and Cairns). Besides its being a life-alterning experience, I learned so much about culture, environment, music, and had a most welcome respite from the American worldview I'm immersed in here. Not to mention the music and the wonderful local people I met and made friends with.
I loved the country so much, I sojourned there again for a month in January 2005, and managed to get back to Tasmania for a year from 2006-2007 on a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship (somehow, I had the unexpected good fortune of actually winning the scholarship!).
Before my first Aussie trip in 2004, I'd only just got up the gumption to go to my first real session and was amazed at the plethora of fiddlers that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. And I'd thought to be doomed to a graduate life of solitary fiddling! Where were these people hiding ... under the Ozark rocks?!? The session was great. I'd always been intimidated by them, partly fear of being new, mostly fear of not being able to play along or not know the tunes. But, no bites yet, and I actually knew a few more tunes than I realized (though a lot fewer than I'd like!) :) And, like my dad says, the only sure way to get better on any instrument is to get out there and play with people. Hang up the pride and the self criticism and just have fun.
Originally, I'm a Pennsylvanian, hailing from the City of Bridges (more popularly known as the Steel City) ... or Pittsburgh, Pa, where I occasionally played with a Scottish folk group called Twisted Knickers.
In Columbia during my grad. school days, I used to play with a hammered dulcimer group that did more American folk, but also some Irish and Scottish stuff, and this introduced me for the first time to Old Time and Appalachian traditional tunes. I also dabbled with an acoustic string group playing some traditional tunes and originals written by the group's guitar player. It's hard to define what we played .... lots of improvisations of various types of folk music with the occasional bluegrassy or jazzy sort of style added in. A lot of it in minor keys (which I particularly enjoy). Sometimes we produced a curiously *interesting* sound, but sometimes we really kicked up the dust ... still and all, a great musical building experience!
Thanks to all who post such wide-ranging variety of tunes that make this site such a wonderful resource, and a fun place to visit!
--tam--
Tunes in tamsyn's tunebook: 268
| Dot Cat's Midnight Mischief | jig | December 20th 2004 |
| Fiddle to Borrow or Use in Hobart, Tasmania? | July 28th 2006 |
| Studying Abroad in Australia ... Fiddle Anyone? | May 28th 2004 |
| Tunes | A Tasmanian Appleshed Tune | October 12th 2008 |
| Discussions | Re: Fiddle to Borrow or Use in Hobart, Tasmania? | July 29th 2006 |
| Discussions | Fiddle to Borrow or Use in Hobart, Tasmania? | July 28th 2006 |
| Tunes | Fixed the key ... | December 20th 2004 |
| Tunes | December 20th 2004 |