Alasdair White is well known as Battlefield Band’s virtuoso fiddle player. In these past four or five years, his musicianship and tune making have had a great influence on the bands repertoire and continuing success, and playing with Battlefield Band has given him that wider audience that his music deserves.

Alasdair comes from the Island of Lewis, one of the Gaelic speaking Outer Hebrides where music and culture remain strong daily forces. It would be easy to emphasise his youth, but in fact he is as complete a musician and composer as any of us have heard, of any age. Alasdair has been an award-winning fiddler since he emerged at age thirteen. The Scotsman praised him as a “13 year-old maestro of the Highland fiddle playing surging strathspeys and reels with maturity and expertise beyond his tender years”.

Check out more highland fiddle music CDs at footstompin.com. For more information on Scottish music why not read our Scottish music guide.

Lesson Plan

In this course you learn to play in the West Highland Style. You will take in a march, 2 strathspeys, 2 reels and a jig.

Listen to a FREE fiddle music sample of Alasdair playing Calder's Rant/ Prince of Wales.

Lesson 1: Major Manson of Clachantrushal (March)

Lesson 2 - South Uist Golf Club (Strathspey)

Lesson 3 - Christy Campbell (Strathspey)

Lesson 4 - The Amorous Lover (Reel)

Lesson 5 - Craig Murray's (Reel)

Lesson 6 - Put the set together plus jig: Pull The Knife Out And Stick It In Again

For our online teaching to work you will have to have Windows Media Player installed on your computer. This comes with Windows. If you are a Mac user you can download it here. You will also need a fast internet connection (adsl, broadband), and speakers connected to your computer so you can hear it (these can take the form of computer speakers (connected from your sound card) or headphones). These lessons are not downloaded to your computer - they are streamed from our internet servers. If you have any questions please contact us.