What makes Shetland fiddle music recognisable and different from other fiddle styles?
• The actual tunes, which as well as being Shetland-based have links with mainland Scotland and with Scandinavia, which is culturally closer. Many of the tunes are ‘modal’ (the key signature is not the root note of the tune), which makes it hard for accompanying instruments to decide which key to use. • The rhythm of the music, which is often syncopated (the accent is not on the first beat of the bar). It sometimes has an ‘extra’ note in a bar or an ‘extra’ bar in the whole tune. These varying bar lengths and uneven numbers of bars are common in Swedish and Norwegian but not in mainland Scottish music. • The bowings, which are varied, with a great use of slurs (that is, the playing of more than one note in one bow stroke). A characteristic bowing pattern is “one down and three up”, one note played on a down stroke and three on the following up-bow. In mainland Scottish music, it is usual to start each bar with a down-bow. In Shetland, fiddlers will even slur over a bar line, in order t
