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And some more questions...
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How do you learn to play by ear?
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Practice. Practice. Practice.
As you learn to play the fiddle, paying attention to where you place your fingers, and making sure that you're playing in tune, you will start to remember what finger makes which note. It takes a while, but eventually your fingers become as familar with the fingerboard as your voice is with humming a tune. Or as your lips are with whistling. Think about it. Do you have to think how to have your throat when you hum "Mary Had a Little Lamb?" Or how must you have your lips to whistle "Dixie?"
Just keep plugging away and it will get easier. Like magic, your fingers will know how to find that note and you won't even remember thinking about it.
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First of all, if you really had a "tin ear" or in otherwords, couldn't hear the difference in a note at all, I don't see why you would want to play the fiddle. You've probably would have been wondering all these years why anyone scratches away at a pretty wooden box with a stick at all!
What you probably mean is that you can't sing so well. That has to do with learning how to sing, not learning how to fiddle.
If you find that your notes seem sharp or flat when you play, try closing your eyes to practice. You'd be surprised what you can hear when you can't see. Also, record yourself. If you can detect being out of tune, you don't have a tin ear and there's plenty of hope.
Granted, there are some folks who hear and therefore play music incredibly well. But the fiddle has been around and has been used for a long time. If you had to be a musical genius to play it, it would not be so popular.
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I have a tin ear. Can I still learn to play the fiddle?
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How do fiddlers go so fast?
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Practice.
The more time you put into it, the better you'll get.
Start out slowly when learning a new movement whether it be the single shuffle (long-short-short) bow or the triple shuffle (the one where a fiddler's bow looks like it's going to tie itself up in knots.) Play a wee bit faster each time you set down to practice - or until you get screwed up. Then set it aside for an hour or so; then go back to it.
Just a side note here and I don't want to get preachy, but alcohol and/or drugs will never loosen a fiddler up to a point where they play better. They will play worse. All the honky tonk jams I've ever been to, the best fiddlers always stayed stone sober. A fiddler has to make the notes. It requires a very fine dexterity to play the fiddle and that dexterity is gone with the first drop of alcohol.
If your bow arm shakes so when you start to play, warm the shakes out of it with about ten or twenty full length double stops on all the strings. That usually get the shakes out if you're nervous.
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