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 Maine
Fiddlecamp is about playing music and learning tunes, and being
able to play and enjoy those tunes with other people whatever
your level of experience or ability. Before camp, each camper
receives a Fiddlecamp CD for that year,
with several tunes for listening and learning, as well as sheet
music for some of them. Learning some or all of the tunes on the
CD is a great way for campers to expand their repertoire and also
to assure that when we arrive at camp there will be at least some
tunes that we will know in common.
The emphasis at camp
is on learning tunes the traditional way - by ear. So campers
are encouraged to listen to the CD and to learn the tunes that
way, using the sheet music only as an aid if necessary. This is
to warm you up for camp and, as it says above, and to make sure
there are some tunes we will know in common for jam sessions if
we want. In general the tunes you learn in classes at camp will
be additional tunes, not on the CD.
 Campers
are grouped by the ability they indicate on their registration
form into classes, each named for a bird. Each group has
a home "nest" and in June camp different instructors
rotate through the nests during the weekend. At August camp, each
class has a primary teacher that they meet with for one workshop
each day plus a review period in the afternoon, while different
instructors rotate through the nests during second period of the
morning. At both camps there is time in the schedule
for specialty workshops that campers may choose independently.
 Maine
Fiddle Camp is an outdoor Maine summer camp experience. Campers
stay in basic rustic cabins without electricity or in their own
tents. Youths stay in cabins but may stay in tents with their
families if they wish. Eating is outdoors under a tent, and classes
are mostly outdoors under canopies. Summer days in Maine can be
hot or cool, and nights might be hot but are more generally cool
or sometimes even cold. Come prepared
or anything. And yes - there are mosquitos. But there are
loons, too, and when we're lucky they make their own beautiful
music at night.
 Good
music and good food are elegantly combined at camp, with meals
and snacks planned and prepared by Second Breakfast
and a cadre of volunteers who take time out from music to help
in the kitchen. Fiddle Camp is like that - many things happen
because someone pitches in and helps out, does it or makes it
happen.
 Afternoons
also have time for non-musical fun, including swimming with lifeguards
in True's pond. In 2007, when a breach in the dam lowered the
water level, swimmers rode a bus to nearby Lake Saint George State
Park. But it all comes back to music, so in the evenings, there
are concerts, dances, coffeehouses and variety shows by both staff
and campers, all under the big tent, as well as jams for various
levels and sometimes other activities in the dining hall.
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