Julia Delaney wrote:Remember the first time that we tried to play a hard tune, one that didn't make sense, that we did not like? And then we did play it, after fumbling around, and we found something lovely about it? That sense of discovery?
This is a good lead-in to an anecdote I was going to add to this thread, which relates to both the thread topic and, incidentally, to Krassen-O'Neill's.
When I first started playing this music, on several occasions my playing partner and I would sit down with our copy of the book and simply sight-read through page after page of tunes, trawling for new tunes to add to our repertoire. Neither of us had much much grounding in Irish trad then, as we played mostly British and American folk.
We'd pencil-mark tunes we liked, and those that left us cold. And there were FAR more of the latter than the former. It seemed we'd go for pages before finding one that struck our fancy. It was actually a bit shocking. How could this supposed "bible" of ITM contain so many awful stinkers?
Of course, now I can look at our pencilled notations and laugh. Many of the tunes we marked as complete dogs are among the best, most iconic tunes in the Irish repertoire. My judgment back then said far more about my own ignorance than about the quality of the tunes themselves.
There will always be tunes you don't like and disagreements of taste. Something like Tam Lin is hardly a melodic masterpiece. It's more like a minute-long rhythmic riff or rant and can be very effective as such, especially for listeners. But in another frame of mind, it's a simply god-awful ornament and arpeggio exercise masquerading as a tune.
Anyway, I think the personal lesson I learned is not to be always so quick to judge. Maybe it's my own failure of imagination, but there are tunes I've written off until I heard someone else's playing of it, and suddenly: Aha! Now I get it. Or you sit down to work out your own, crafted setting of a tune and realize that there's gold to be mined by giving it its fair due.
.... and there were always things that grabbed my ear and enthusiasm and others that I was indifferent to or even put off by, from both aural and written sources. But then, I was a seasoned listener to music and definitely had ideas about what I liked or didn't and why, though not a closed mind.
