I’ve been very interested in the classic fiddle tunes lately, whether they come from the “old-time” or “Irish” traditions. “Angeline the Baker” is such a beautiful and simple melody, and a great example of the pentatonic scale. I’ve mostly been working on flat-picking these tunes(others include: Black Mountain Rag, Over the Waterfall, Fisher’s Hornpipe, and few more..) but inspired by Doc Watson’s beautiful travis kind of fingerpicking style and a very interesting fiddle tune medley performed by classical guitarist, Muriel Andersen, I decided to create a fingerpicking arrangement of this tune. I’ve added some additional harmony with a walk down bass-which definitely moves this arrangement out of the pure old-time sound. That said, the ringing of the open-strings is very important and the melody in harmonics for the ending is a nice challenge.

This is also a great arrangement for teaching. The tab should be helpful in identifying the right fingerings to maximize on the use of open ringing strings.

They don’t actually play until 3:50 into this video, but Allison Krauss and Dan Tyminski play this tune so beautifully!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYsZIQ0FQc