The tune of choice is the third required tune in a standard fiddle contest round. Some rulebooks print it as “tune of fiddler’s choice.” The definition is a rule of exclusion: it cannot be a breakdown and it cannot be a waltz. Everything else is fair game.
What qualifies
Rags, polkas, jigs, hornpipes, marches, schottisches, swing tunes, and fiddle blues all work. A lot of tunes of choice run in 4/4 time, which gives them a different feel from the driving 2/4 of a breakdown even at similar speed.
The form rules loosen here too. Where a contest breakdown must be a square tune with two equal parts, the tune of choice may run three or more parts, and it may be crooked, with irregular phrase lengths. The Walnut Valley rules say it plain: the tune may be more than two parts, may be crooked, or may carry a different feel from a hoedown, as in fiddle blues.
One check before you commit: a handful of contests ban specific novelty tunes by name, and some require public domain material. Bowing rules reach into this round too. Some contests state whether hokum bowing (the Orange Blossom Special style of showpiece bowing) is permitted on the tune of choice, and a few ban figure-8 bowing by name. Even where it is allowed, it rarely scores, because judges reward melodic substance and a tune that leans on a bowing gimmick has little left when the gimmick wears thin. The double shuffle problem covers the whole family. Read the rules for your contest first.
Why the round exists
Each required tune tests something different. The breakdown tests danceability and drive, the crank-it-out rhythm. The waltz tests tone, intonation, and expression. The tune of choice is where creativity lives. It rewards the tune that is more complex, both in harmony and in rhythm, and it shows the judges a side of your playing the other two rounds cannot.
Two schools of thought
Contest veterans split on how far from a breakdown your pick needs to be.
The careful school says leave no doubt. Keep your tune of choice nowhere close to a breakdown: skip reels, hornpipes, and anything breakdown-shaped, and play a rag, jig, polka, swing tune, or march instead. If a judge hears your tune of choice as a second breakdown, the ambiguity costs you, not them. The stakes can be brutal: at the Minnesota State Fair contest, a tune judged to be in the wrong category scores a zero.
The relaxed school comes from people who have sat in the judging chair. Many judges do not split hairs over the label. Hornpipes pass all the time, played North Missouri style at a moderate pace with a slight lilt, notier and more ornate than a breakdown. Even a tune usually labeled a breakdown can be shaped into a tune of choice with the right treatment. It all depends on the judges you draw that day.
The practical takeaway: when you do not know the judges, follow the careful school. When the tune sits in the gray zone, the treatment decides it.
Common tunes of choice
Rags rule this round. The favorites include 12th Street Rag, Ragtime Annie, Beaumont Rag, Black and White Rag, Cotton Patch Rag, Dill Pickles Rag, Done Gone, Duck Shoe’s Rag, Pig Ankle Rag, Red Apple Rag, and Stone’s Rag (also called Whiskers or Lone Star Rag). 12th Street Rag is a great pick if you can pull it off, and that “if” is doing real work.
Polkas make strong picks too: Jesse Polka, Clarinet Polka, Allentown Polka, and the Jenny Lind polka all see contest stages.
Jigs bring the 6/8 lilt that no breakdown can: Smash the Windows, Irish Washerwoman, Haste to the Wedding, and Banish Misfortune.
Two-steps, schottisches, songs, and marches round out the list: Red Wing, Alabama Jubilee, Maple Sugar, Kansas City Kitty, Texas Schottische, Twinkle Little Star, Say Old Man, I Don’t Love Nobody, and Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down.
Blues and swing bring the different feel that judges remember: East Tennessee Blues is the standard fiddle blues, and Florida Blues sits right beside it. Where the rules allow swing, Texas fiddlers reach for Sweet Georgia Brown, Little Rock Getaway, Satan Takes a Holiday, Little Bit of Swing, and Goin’ Places.
Some tunes flex across the line. Liberty, Limerock, and the three-part Texas setting of Dusty Miller get played as tunes of choice with the right treatment, but each sits close enough to breakdown territory that the careful school would pick something else.
Picking yours
Carry two, since tunes cannot repeat across rounds. Pick for contrast: if your breakdown is in A and your waltz is sweet and slow, a driving rag in C or a greasy blues changes the temperature on stage. Play what you know cold, and let the tune do the showing off.
One more thing to consider. All the strategy above assumes you want to place in the money. If you do not, the tune of choice means what it says: play whatever you want. Plenty of fiddlers use the round to put a rare tune on stage for the joy of it.
Rare tunes need a source, and one of the best is free. The Library of Congress holds Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection, with 184 field recordings of the Glen Lyn, Virginia fiddler made by folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966 and 1967, plus 69 transcriptions with tune histories. Reed was past 80 when Jabbour recorded him, and his repertoire reached back into the 1800s. Dig through it and you can walk on stage with a tune the judges have never heard.
Next up: contest breakdowns and contest waltzes.