Fiddle in the context of "Music of Scotland"

The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino piccolo and the pochette, but these are virtually unused. Most violins have a hollow wooden body, and commonly have four strings (sometimes five), usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and are most commonly played by drawing a bow across the strings. The violin can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow (col legno).

Violins are important instruments in a wide variety of musical genres. They are most prominent in the Western classical tradition, both in ensembles (from chamber music to orchestras) and as solo instruments. Violins are also important in many varieties of folk music, including country music, bluegrass music, and in jazz. Electric violins with solid bodies and piezoelectric pickups are used in some forms of rock music and jazz fusion, with the pickups plugged into instrument amplifiers and speakers to produce sound. The violin has come to be incorporated in many non-Western music cultures, including Indian music and Iranian music. The name fiddle is often used regardless of the type of music played on it.

Country music, also known as country and western or simply country, is a music genre known for its ballads and dance tunes, identifiable by both traditional lyrics and harmonies accompanied by banjos, fiddles, harmonicas, and many types of guitar; either acoustic, electric, steel, or resonator guitars. Once called hillbilly music, the term country music was popularized in the 1940s.

It originated in the Southern United States, and spread throughout the Piedmont area of United States, from Louisiana along the Appalachian Mountains to New York. The music is believed to be derived from British folk music, brought to the United States during early waves of immigration. Rooted in American folk music, such as old-time and Southern Appalachian music, many traditions blended to form country music. In particular, this included cowboy and vaquero Western music and African-American traditional folk songs and spirituals. Mexican, Irish, and Gospel music have had a formative influence on the genre, as have the Polynesian Hawaiian music and the Southwestern styles of New Mexico and Tejano, as well as gospel music, blues modes from blues music.

Neotraditional country (also known as new traditional country, hardcore country, or hard country) is a country music style and subgenre that developed in the 1980s and emphasizes the traditional country instrumental background (i.e. fiddle and pedal steel guitar) and traditional country vocals found in subgenres popularized in the 1940s-60s. Neo-traditional country draws inspiration from styles such as honky-tonk, Western swing, and the Bakersfield sound and performers such as Hank Williams, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Tammy Wynette, Kitty Wells, Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, and Merle Haggard. as well as often dressing in the fashions of the country music scene of the 1940s-1960s.

The neotraditional country movement was ignited by artists George Strait, Ricky Skaggs, and John Anderson in the early 1980s as a reaction to the pop-country and Urban Cowboy scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s,and became popular in the mainstream country scene by the mid-1980s into the mid-1990s with artists such as Randy Travis, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Alan Jackson, Highway 101, Patty Loveless, Kenny Chesney, The Judds, Brooks & Dunn, Mark Chesnutt, Toby Keith, and Keith Whitley. By the mid-to-late 1990s, the neotraditional country movement was overtaken in popularity by "stadium-sized" pop-country performers like Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Billy Ray Cyrus, LeAnn Rimes, and Tim McGraw, who integrated aspects of the neotraditional style with the musical and theatrical components of arena rock, adult contemporary music and 70s-90s pop music.

The country/western two-step, often called the Texas two-step or simply the two-step, is a country/western dance usually danced to country music in common time. "Traditional [Texas] two-step developed, my theory goes, because it is suited to fiddle and guitar music played two-four time with a firm beat [found in country music]. One-two, one-two, slide-shuffle. The two-step is related to the polka, the Texas waltz, and the jitterbug.

As with other country/western dances, there are many different versions of two step across the United States, and there may be no one truly "correct" way to perform a particular dance. Even individual dance halls may have their own unique variations which they consider correct.

Irish traditional music (also known as Irish trad, Irish folk music, and other variants) is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland.

In A History of Irish Music (1905), W. H. Grattan Flood wrote that, in Gaelic Ireland, there were at least ten instruments in general use. These were the crwth (a small rubbed strings harp) and cláirseach (a bigger harp with typically 30 strings), the tiompán (a small string instrument played with a bow or plectrum), the feadán (a fife), the buinne (an oboe or flute), the guthbuinne (a bassoon-type horn), the beannbhuabhal and corn (hornpipes), the cuislenna (bagpipes – see Great Irish warpipes), the stoc and storgán (clarions or trumpets), and the cnámha (bones). Within the tradition, there is poetic reference to the use of a fiddle as far back as the 7th century, which predates the development of the modern violin by around 900 years.

Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dancing and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle (see old time fiddling) and plucked string instruments, most often the 5-string banjo without a resonator pan, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo–fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered by some to be a precursor to modern country music, but it is also has a contemporary active subculture of musicians in various parts of the United States. Old-time music can generally be distinguished from the more widely known bluegrass genre by the use of cross-tunings on the fiddle, by all melody instruments playing in unison, by a lack of individual instruments taking breaks to improvise, by sessions remaining in one tuning or key for an extended period (because fiddles and banjos are tuned especially for that key or even for one tune), and by banjos being frailed instead of finger-picked and lacking resonators to make them louder.

Huludao (Chinese: 葫芦岛; pinyin: Húludǎo), formerly known as Jinxi (锦西) until 1994, is a coastal prefecture-level city in southwestern Liaoning province, People's Republic of China. Its name literally means "Gourd Island", referring to the fiddle-shaped contour of the peninsula ("half-island" in Chinese), which resembles a bottle gourd, at the city's Longgang District. It has a total area of 10,582 km (4,086 sq mi) and as of the 2020 census a population of 2,434,194 of whom 1,252,660 inhabitants lived in the built-up (or metro) area made of the 2 urban districts and Xingcheng City largely being conurbated.

Located on the northwestern shore of the Liaodong Bay, Huludao is one of the three principal cities (along with Jinzhou and Hebei province's Qinhuangdao) in the Liaoxi Corridor, and is Northeast China's gateway through the Shanhai Pass into North China. It borders Jinzhou to the northeast, Chaoyang to the north, and Qinhuangdao to the southwest, as well as sharing maritime boundaries with Yingkou and Dalian to the east and southeast across the bay.