Originally Posted by
Jim Nollman
We played Sandy Boys. Whereas i started out accompanying him by playing the downward spiraling melody as it appears in any of the books of fiddle tunes, he never seemed to alight on any particular note for more than a moment, constantly slurring between note centers, both up and down, occasionally landing on a quarter tone, and relying on double stops to play some eye-opening moving lines such as (GDDG... GDC#G... GDDF#) .... The rhythm was also in constant motion, slipping behind the beat and then speeding up with a bunch of slurs to regain the one beat by the time we hit a necessary tune balance .... On a certain level, he had converted this exceedingly simple modal tune into a chromatic tune, which also employed hints of an Indian raga quarter tone scale. And yet the distinctive melody always remained front and center in my ear ... That should also explain another point of his, that there's a "danger" of relying on tune books to learn songs from any tradition, instead of learning them by ear, and direct to memory. Books must "freeze" the melodies, while the traditions defy such freezing.
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