It's not just that it overflows with music of breathtaking intensity and skill, it literally opens up a whole new dimension to Anglo-American fiddling. For most people 'old-time fiddle' means the familiar and well documented tradition of the southeastern states. This is a tradition deeply rooted in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. It reflects a society which saw little new settlement after about 1830 and which has remained essentially agrarian, insular and conservative. Deep old world roots are also apparent in the playing style which closely parallels the oldest styles in Britain and Europe.
Bow strokes are short, attack dynamic, the emphasis on rhythm and volume rather than tone.
The music is highly decorated with drones, double stops, shuffles, bowing variations, mild syncopation, occasional grace-notes. Until recently few fiddlers could read music so tunes usually differ radically from printed versions and from fiddler to fiddler, and a degree of improvisation and variation is normal. In all fiddle traditions there is a balance between playing for listening and for dancing, and until recently southeastern fiddling was pre-eminently functional dance music. Thus fiddlers often play together or in small bands with strong rhythm sections, nowadays usually based around guitars and frailed banjos, though other instruments such as cellos and tambourines were formerly quite common. If the southeastern tradition seems rooted in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Midwestern tradition is rooted firmly in the Victorian era.