Jumping Around

[WindinBoy]

Just got 3 of the 4 Kaufman fiddle tune books A-Z. Do you think having too many tunes at once puts you at risk of total confusion and overload? I do:grin:

My plan is to pick a couple each week and internalize it, make it my own. I hate to say this, but after just flipping pages and trying them out, they sound so much the same it starts to get sort of fuzzy. Well they're NOT the same, it's just the puttering around is like mouthing phrases in a foreign language you don't really speak. Also the arrangements seem great, but I look forward to changing them up after I got the tune down.

What do you think of this thought, or the books if you know? The books are going to be a long road for me if I want to put the paper completely aside, and I feel no need to play EVERY tune, maybe just the ones I get some gut reaction to.

Sorry for this rambling post, it went a few directions.

[Elliot Luber]

Good idea. I think the broader the base of music you learn the more individualized your own style will become as you mature. For example, learning all the Bill Monroe solos will make you a good player, but it probably won't make you distinct in your own right.

[allenhopkins]

"A couple each week" –– so you're planning at the end of a year, to have individualized personal arrangements of about 100 fiddle tunes.

Without knowing where you plan to go on the mandolin, let me say –– I don't know where you're planning to go!! One hundred fiddle tunes is an impressive repertoire; do you want to sit home and play them, find like-minded musicians (good luck there!) and jam/practice/perform with them, or maybe sit in at jams and astound your fellow jammers by your knowledge of dozens of fiddle tunes, with unique, idiosyncratic arrangements?

Your plan may give you a great command of the instrument, but from a musical growth perspective, I don't quite understand it. I'd rather find 25 tunes that I particularly liked, and three or four other musicians who like the same kind of music, and work with them on the tunes until we had something that really sounded "together." Different strokes for different folks, of course, but I'm not surprised that you're finding that all those tunes kinda run together and don't give you the focus that might produce more musical satisfaction.

Just my opinion -- 2¢ worth, as they say...