Scottish Fiddling in General
Due to migration from rural Scotland to the industrial areas and the rest of the world, many players have returned again over time with certain traditions intact and some evolved through the melding of various styles. This is very apparent in the "Central Belt" region of Scotland, where two fifths of the population reside. There is a significant influence in this area from immigration from Ireland and the rural areas of Scotland coĩnciding with the rise of industry.
Top fiddlers from Scotland today include Aly Bain, Bruce MacGregor, Duncan Chisholm, John Martin, John McCusker, Chris Stout, Iain MacFarlane, Charlie McKerron, Eilidh Shaw, Douglas Lawrence, Catriona MacDonald, Alasdair White, Aidan O'Rourke and many more, including a burgeoning number of fine young players.
With mass migration the tradition has been carried with the emigrants (both voluntary and forced migrations) all over the world and "Scottish Trad" is now played around the world. Key performers in the USA include Alasdair Fraser, Hanneke Cassel, Ed Pearlman, Bonnie Rideout, John Turner, Elke Baker, Melinda Crawford, Colyn Fischer, and David Gardner.
Another style worth mentioning is the music of County Donegal, Ireland (just a short boat journey away), which is not strictly Scots but Irish. The accent on the Donegal fiddle tradition is somewhat more akin to the Scots tradition than to the Irish. The historical connection between the west coast of Scotland and Donegal is an ancient one (many shared names) as can be heard in the volume of strathspeys, schottisches, marches, and Donegal's own strong highland piping tradition. (See Donegal fiddle tradition). And, like some Scottish fiddlers (which tends to use a short bow and play in a more straight-ahead fashion), some Donegal fiddlers worked at imitating the sound of the highland pipes. Scotland has influenced Donegal fiddling in various ways. Workers from Donegal would go to Scotland in the summer and bring back Scottish tunes with them; Donegal fiddlers have found some good tunes in Scottish tunebooks and learned from records of Scottish fiddlers like J. Scott Skinner and Mackenzie Murdoch. And fishermen from Donegal have returned from Shetland fisheries with Shetland tunes.
The Scotch snap is a very particular characteristic of much Scottish music. It is generally represented in musical notation by a sixteenth followed by a dotted eighth.
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—18th-century Scottish proverb, collected in James Kelly, Complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs, no. 351 (1721)
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