Yeah, I guess so long as you're in a solo situation, you are free to play a tune however you like, and if you have enough chutzpah, even try doing things completely unexpected. You've created your own version and you'll get one of a number of reactions - rejection or imitation or something in between, the imitation bit depending on your prior credentials I guess as a bona fide piper in the eyes of others.CHasR wrote:
my op fwiw, is that: it becomes a "version" (as much as anything CAN be in an aurally transmitted body of work where improvisation & regional variation is expected) when a top flyte piper's rendition is widely imitated.
otoh, Critique of rank & file pipers who develop their own arrangements can range from nodding acceptance, to complete rejection.
So in reality, to attempt to answer my own question now, it seems this notion of 'versions' is really quite fluid. For every 'accepted' version, there are probably dozens and dozens of individual musicians' versions that others might deem 'wrong', but in the end, as others have noted, what exactly is 'wrong'? except that one particular way (I'll not say version here) of playing a tune is not the 'way' it is played in a particular session context, but possibly quite acceptable in another.
At the same time, each one of these ways of playing a tune is also not meant to be set in stone as individual variation within the tune is a major component of the art of Irish music, isn't it?
I think therefore that some people may be in error when they hear a few bars of variation by an individual and think it is therefore a different version of the tune, not undertanding that that individual may never play it like that again, but next time introduce a different variation and so on and so forth.