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After getting bitten by the flatpicking bug in the sixties, I
devoured what little educational material there was, then started
learning stuff by ear. When I went to work on A Prairie Home
Companion, I found an environment where I was constantly
encouraged - required, actually - to learn new fiddle tunes,
tunes of all sorts and styles.
As I learned
these wonderful old-time, bluegrass, French-Canadian, Scandinavian and
Irish tunes I would often think, "Gee, what a shame there isn't a big
book of these tunes in guitar tablature for us flatpickers who never
learned to read music." This persistent thought finally jelled into the
first edition of
Granger's Fiddle Tunes for Guitar.
That
first effort, written and printed in the most rustic of manners, was
nonetheless well-received. It was not, however, without its flaws, some
of them systemic (as with the 4/4 time 16-note-pre-measure format -
which made it very difficult to track and to decipher timing), and some
of them individual (as with the switching of the titles for the tunes
"Irish Washerwoman" and "Joy of My Life.")
Over the
next decade and a half I absorbed criticism (always very graciously and
with consummate maturity, of course) and gained more wisdom as a
musician and teacher. I also learned many of the tunes in the book which
I hadn't really known earlier, and, in so doing, found a number of
changes that would greatly improve a second edition. Many tunes
originally presented in open (uncapoed) A, for example, are more
playable in a G position capoed on the second fret. Conversely, some of
the D tunes I presented in a capoed C position on the second fret worked
better on open (uncapoed) D. I also found a whole slew of new alternate
titles for the tunes, bringing the total number of titles in
Granger's Fiddle Tunes for Guitar to over a thousand.
By the
time the second edition was more than a gleam in my eye, I had climbed
so thoroughly over and through the original five hundred tunes that I
was able to re-present them in a highly-playable and error-free format.
I am very proud of the second edition of
Granger's Fiddle Tunes for Guitar.
Click
here to read a longer, more detailed story behind the book. |
