Tunes

Some of the most wonderful experiences you can have is to hear Scottish and Irish traditional instrumental music when it's performed well by accomplished musicians. (Quick caveat emptor - I'm talking tunes pretty much totally here. Songs are guid, but not my buzz!)

I am one of many wannabes who would love to emulate these folks, and in fact, I have tried to do so, and I will continue to try. I've even played in a few bands in my time, and I know what it's like to feel the energy of a room full of happy dancing people, responding to music you are playing. I've never quite met my own expectations of how a piece of music should sound before I can justify performing it in public. However if I wait for perfection, I'll never play it anywhere outside of my own space. 

So you just have to go for it, and if it's not quite right, persevere, and come back to it and try again, and again. My own technique - play to yourself a recording you want to emulate to the point that you can sing or whistle them, in your head too, and all the while keep practising them. I'm happy to play sets that others have arranged until I get the tunes, then I can arrange my own sets.

I started a YouTube channel, Tunes on the Fiddle, to share my own playing attempts with the world during the great pandemic. The idea was one set of tunes a day for a year, not just a tune a day. Around 1000 tunes or so. I managed a little over 55 days of recorded sets before I could no longer accommodate the amount of time I needed to practice, 'perfect, perform, record, edit, and upload every day, with my regular day-to-day life and job. So it fell by the wayside, but not before I did manage to upload some decent sets.

Here's a one I recorded playing along with a recording of my late Father and Grandfather from the 50's, save from an old reel for a reel to reel recorder. I wish I knew who they were speaking to - it's a gem of an archive.