Amazing Grace

These tunes are mostly old chestnuts, tried and true veterans of the fiddling tradition. They will be familiar at most sessions or jams, certainly in the New England area. Old-timey tunes and bluegrass favorites are under-represented here, merely because we don't know that many of them. Just about every tune in the collection is a dance tune. Played at the proper lively tempo, they are meant to give lift to the dancers' feet, and mark the figures of the dance. This is why many of them are 32-bar jigs or reels, when played AABB. A good contra-dance caller knows when the dancers have got the feel of any particular dance, and so when to stop hollering at the dancers, to let the music tell them what is going on. A good dance band will use the phrasing of the tune to help the dancers stay aware of where they are in every flying moment. Good dancers may listen to the melody for cues, but they pay more attention to the pulse that drives that melody, so they can fit into each pattern that comes their way.Please keep in mind that music is pulse and sound, and lines with spots on paper are only inky paper. For now let's call the inky paper "notes," and save the word "music" for what we make with our hands, ears and hearts. The notes are a reminder, a way to remember how a tune goes. Once you can play the tune without looking at the book, and can make it sound interesting, and maybe even notice that other people around you are moving with your sound, then you are making music. Remember that the written notes are only a starting place, a group of ideas for keeping a tune together, and not the only "right way" to play the tune. All the same, if you play a tune exactly as it is written here, very likely someone else will recognize it, maybe even call it a different name, and show you how they play it. Happy listening!(Sorry about the long lines, but I didn't know how to wrap them without possibly breaking something.)
This NoteWorthy file uses non standard fonts. These can be obtained as follows:
Patrick - Scriptorium download at http://nwc-scriptorium.org/fonts/patrick_regular.ttf
Boxmarks - Scriptorium download at http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful/boxmarks.zip
NWCX15 - Scriptorium download at http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful/tocfug.zip