Master the Breakdown
Let’s assume you want to master the breakdown, the foundation of Texas-style contest fiddling, consisting of a traditional tune and a set of variations. Wallace suggests seven steps.

First, learn the basic two-part tune of the breakdown. “You need to have a sense of what the tune is before you learn the complicated versions of it,” Wallace warns. “When I first learned this style, I was clueless that these meandering variations were coming from a tune.”

Most Texas breakdowns, he explains, come from Irish or Scottish melodies, which are in more-or-less binary form, two repeated parts of about eight bars each. “One of those parts is usually called the ‘coarse’; it’s the part on the lower two strings,” says Wallace. “The other is the ‘fine,’ which is on the upper two strings. You improvise on those two different parts of the tune.”

Wallace points out that most breakdowns consist of seven or eight standard variations, each highlighting a specific technique—for example, cross-rhythmic development of the tune, adding fourth-finger drones, or transposing the melody to create second- and third-position variations on the tune.

Coincidentally, you’ll find seven or eight standard-variation techniques for a breakdown, including one variation in second position on the high or “fine” part of the tune, and a third-position variation for the low or “coarse” part.

The best way to start learning all this is by pairing a recording of the breakdown with an exact transcription of the improvisation. Wallace recommends Stacy Phillips’ book Mark O’Connor: The Championship Years (Mel Bay Publications), which you can read while listening to O’Connor’s CD of the same name (Country Music Foundation). Or pair O’Connor’s Soppin’ the Gravy (Rounder) with transcriptions by Daniel Carwile that you can download from O’Connor’s website (www. Markoconnor.com). Peter Martin has an excellent series of transcriptions in print (Petimar Press, available at petimarpress.com), and Wallace says Martin will usually make you a tape of some source recordings if you ask.