Haven't quite worked out the font sizes on this site - I just increased the small post to 18pt and that is NOT 18pt type. Anyway...
I am meeting up with someone tomorrow night who would like me to play some of his fiddle tunes for some gigs that he has written and work out some accompaniments. He is a guitarist/banjo/mandolin etc player so will no doubt have his idea of what he wants. Also quite keen that I use a DADGAD like sound etc
Which is well and good.
So my aim is to as quickly as possible get to know those tunes so that I can add to them hopefully. I have decent ears for fiddle tune accompaniment and have sat in quite a lot of sessions so I reckon tomorrow will probably go like this (with one BIG proviso which I'll put further down). For each tune
I'll ask him to play through it and just try to get a feel of playing along as I hear it to get some thought of how I think it might go
At the same time I'll record what we do on my little Zoom H2 recorder so that I can take it to bits at my leisure
If he has the dots too I'll grab a copy of them to save me time working them out. If he hasn't no problem
I'll also ask him how he hears it and whether there is a chord progression that he has
I will want to know the structure and whether or where it repeats
I probably also want to know how much he is prepared for me to do it my way
That tends to be the way that I'd work with something new. But in short my aim is to find out as much about it as quickly as possible so that I can make a positive contribution. If it is an Am - Em - G thing we'll get there quite quickly and I can then go away and really get to know it. If it has lots of precise and important changes then I'll need something more precise.
if it doesn't work out that way I'm quite happy for us to work out how we get to the point where I can play it with him so that we are both happy and satisfied so that we can make it better and better until we really 'know' it.
But my way isn't everyone else's.
If someone hasn't got great ears for chord structures or whatever there is no point, in my view, in letting it get in the way of a decent result in a short period.
The few things that I have written and the songs that I play often exist in little books (if I'm organised) or scraps of paper. And if someone else wants a three bars of C and two bars of D and then three of F etc approach I probably already have it to offer.
As I say in my mind the aim is to get to playing as quick as possible with as few barriers as possible.
We had a young fiddle player who was going to come and play who wasn't sure what we wanted. So to help I sent along a recording of the song, a midi file, and a suggestion of the sort of thing that I heard in my head. BUT with lots of things saying 'you bring what you want - it doesn't need to be like this'. It seemed easier than spending hours of time potentially wasting four or five people's time in person. And once you have done it once you always have it to give to someone else.
Just my view
I wonder what size the font will be this time...