Old Tunes-New Tricks!-Temperance Reel

Today I'm going to show you one of my very favorite fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. It's called Temperance Reel. I'm going to show you a basic melody version and a more advanced version of this tune. All right, stick around. So Temperance Reel has always been one of my favorite fiddle tunes for flatpicking guitar. For whatever reason, I just, I love fiddle tunes that have like a 6 minor in it, or, you know, like a tune like Cherokee Shuffle or like the Lost Indian. I just like them. But this is also just an essential fiddle tune that you have to know for flatpicking guitar. Now I've linked down to some of my favorite recordings of this tune down in the video description. I'll link to the classic Tony Rice version, I'll link to the Bluegrass 95 version. There's also a great version from, uh, Jim— one of Jim Mills's solo albums. I think it was there's this third one called Hidehead Blues, and Cody Kilby plays on that, um, and just tears it up, as you would expect Cody to do. And I've also got another version by Tim Stafford, so go and check those out. And feel free to let me know if I left any, like, classic versions out, and I'll add that to the list down there. But what I'm going to show you here is just kind of my version of it here. I'll kind of show you my interpretation of the basic melody and my, um, kind of more advanced version from there. Okay, so before we jump into the tune here, and I wanted to do this because sometimes I forget to do this, Let's actually just listen to the rhythm and the chords of this tune here real quick. All right, so this tune is out of G, and, uh, you know, we got that E minor happening a lot in this tune, and I just love the way that sounds. But what I want to do now here, let me just jump in real quick and just show you the real basic melody of Temperance Reel. Okay, so this is just kind of the basic melody to the A part of Temperance Reel. We'll do Okay, so if you can get that down right there, that's essentially the A part of Temperance Reel. And we'll just repeat that. So one more time, I'll play it nice and slow here. Okay, so a couple of things on this I like to kick this off with the— I like that. It gives it a really cool, almost kind of a fiddle sound. Imagine that, it's a fiddle tune. Okay, um, you don't have to do that though. If you want, you could just do— okay, and, um, or you could just come in 1, 2, 3, 4. And also at the very end, I'm embellishing on that a little bit. Some people will play like— if you wanted like just a really, really bare-bones melody of this, it would probably be more like I just like to embellish on that a little bit because I think it, for me, it makes it sound a little bit more smooth and gives it a little bit more of a fiddle sound. But if you don't want to do that, you could do— okay, either way, that's the A part there. So now let's jump into the B part here. Again, you've just kind of got to learn one little 4-bar phrase and then we'll repeat it twice. So that's going to go like this. Okay, so one more time. Okay, and as always the case with these lessons, I got the tabs for you down in the video description and in the top pinned comment if you want to kind of dig into this a little bit, um, in a little bit more detail. So, all right, there's our basic A part and B part there. We just repeat each one of those 4-bar phrases twice. So now let me play it for you up to tempo with the backing track. When I say up to tempo, I think this is at about 120 beats per minute. You know, sometimes people play this tune a little bit faster than that, and sometimes people will play it a little bit slower. For me, that kind of 120 to 130 tempo is ideal for this tune. Temperance Reel does not sound good at 160 beats a minute. It just, it sounds ridiculous. You know, as opposed to like a tune like Big Mon or even Wheel Hoss that sound good at faster tempos. This one, in my opinion, doesn't. I mean, about 120 to 130. So I'm gonna play it here at 120, and this is just kind of the basic melody A and B part. It will sound like this. Okay, so now that we've got the basic melody down here for this, let's go into a more advanced version. I'm not going to get, um, like too, too, too detailed here. I'm just going to kind of go through it. I'll play it slow here for you, but I'm just going to kind of show you where I'm embellishing in certain places. So, um, kind of more advanced version here, we'll do on the A part. Okay, so I'm just embellishing on it in certain places right here. Okay, and then, and then I'm coming here. That's almost one of those kind of Kenny Smith style, you know, one of those kind of licks. Um, and then after that, I'm just taking the melody down an octave. Doing a little cross picking right there. And then, and then throwing like a little E minor lick here.

Okay.

Just— I'm just kind of, you know, but I'm, I'm not completely abandoning the melody there, um, but I'm kind of hanging out with the melody and then I'm embellishing on it a little bit, going back to the melody, embellishing a little, kind of going back and forth. And that's a really exciting thing to do where we've still got one foot firmly planted, you know, in the tune, but we're also playing around and having a little bit of fun with it at the same time. Okay, so now let's do the B part here. So we'll do Okay, so kind of, kind of the same deal as the A part. I'm obviously playing different notes there, but again, I'm kind of playing the melody a little bit and then embellishing a little bit, going back to the melody and kind of going back and forth right there. And that makes it exciting, okay? Um, but it's not— we're not abandoning the tune there, okay? So there's like a fine line there between, you know, hanging out in the melody and embellishing a little bit. There's an art to that. But anyway, you know, one more time. So I'm starting off the melody, and but then when the chord goes to D, I'm just doing a, like a D lick. Then from there back to the melody, and then after that I'm going to take this little, um, you know, that kind of— you hear Cody Kilby play those, you know, a lot. You know, we'll play it slower here. And I'm doing that because the chord is an E minor right there, and that's kind of like our E minor thirds.

But I'm—

and then when the chord goes to a D, and then I'm going to end with another one of these kind of Kenny Smith style, back to the melody, and there we have it. Okay, so now let's listen to this more advanced version of Temperance Reel up to tempo along with the backing track. This is at about 120 beats a minute, and it'll sound like this. So I hope this lesson has— you know, if you're new to this tune, if you've never learned this one before, you know, obviously I want you to add this amazing, really cool, really fun fiddle tune to your repertoire. But I also hope this has given you some ideas on how you can kind of embellish on some of these tunes, maybe improvise around these, and ultimately come up with your own interpretations of these tunes. Now remember, I have several classic recordings of this linked down in the video description. Also at the top of the video description, you can get the tabs for this, and in the top pinned comment. So, all right, I want to thank you as always for hanging out today. Check out some of these other fiddle tunes right here that are great for flatpicking guitar. As always, thank you for hanging out, and I will see you next time.