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“The Spotted Pony” is a fiddle tune originally from Missouri that falls into the Old Time genre. I talked a bit about Old Time when I posted a TAB for “Big Sciota” a few weeks ago. The term usually refers to folk music that came out of Appalachia and the South in general that was passed down through the generations without being written down. Before printed sheet music was readily available, amateur musicians used to pass music around by playing together, sharing new tunes, and learning them by ear.
This tradition of passing down folk tunes happened all over the world and for many, many generations, and Old Time is just one specific sub-genre of folk music as a whole that was especially popular in the 1920s and 30s in the U.S. The tunes themselves are mostly much older and of uncertain origin, much like traditional folk tunes from other areas around the world.
The most popular tunes from Old Time are still around today, played by those keeping the tradition alive. They also get pulled into other, more modern folk genres like bluegrass, which came out of the same geographic region and grew directly out of the more amorphous genre of Old Time.
“The Spotted Pony” follows the structure of a reel. You’ll often see it listed as a “barndance” tune, which is just a general term for any type of tune you might hear at a barndance.
“The Spotted Pony” Playing Tips
“The Spotted Pony” is considered a beginner/intermediate tune in bluegrass circles today. It is a wonderful entry point to the folk genre because it has a relatively simple core melody with empty space that allows for a gradual introduction of embellishments to ramp up the difficulty as a new player progresses.
My Level 1 arrangement sticks to the core melody. While there are 16 measures to the tune, there are really only 7 measures to learn that are mixed and matched, and some of those differ from each other by only a note or two. Once you get the pieces in your head, you can start to have some fun by embellishing them in different ways as they are repeated.
Play with the rhythm. Insert some faster doubled notes or triplets. Try out some alternate notes up and down the scale to fill in empty space in the arrangement. The song can sound different and unique each time you play it through while still containing that core melody.
The tune does cover a lot of ground on the fretboard, so while it is a simple song to learn, it isn’t one that can be easily adapted to a high G uke. You would spend more than half the song running up and down the A string, playing as high as the 10th fret.
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“The Spotted Pony” Low G Sheet Music Download
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