Cripple Creek is a fiddle tune with a lot of double stops. A double stop is when you play two notes on different strings at the same time. To make a double stop happen the player must have complete control over their elbow as they play. When playing, shift the elbow slightly up or down in order to hit two strings at once.

Your instrument must be perfectly in tune so be sure to check or it will be difficult to play double stops and make a good sound. The notes being played together in the music must be individually tuned. When a violinist plays a note by itself out of tune it won’t be as obvious or sound as bad as if you were to play it with another note. It will sound very out of tune.

The other key point in playing double stops is to make sure your fingers are perfectly rounded and only hitting one string otherwise it may sound squeaky, scratchy or strange because the finger is hitting the string when it shouldn’t be.

Go through the beginning of the piece and carefully start working on all the double stop notes in the introduction.