Playing the tune correctly?
What I am not doing on this website is trying to make definitive recordings of tunes. Anybody who investigates folk music will soon find that there is no such thing as a definitive version of any tune or song.
You'll almost certainly find that my recordings differ from the ABC files and written music included on some of the pages. This is partly practical (I'm not going to notate every nuance of every tune that I play) but it also makes a useful point. Notation should only serve as a guide; you cannot truly learn or understand a tune if all you do is read and play it from the written notation.
Notation cannot carry the subtle information about the style, lift and danceability of a tune. It also cannot carry the understanding of how a tune fits upon a particular type of instrument and how a player uses the quirks of their instrument to embellish and improvise on a tune.
Music notation also cannot teach about the social context of a tune and how it should be played in that context. Folk music is a social activity and all of the music on this website is social dance music.
All that I can to do is to show how this particular real live dance and session musician actually plays these tunes and hope that is of use or interest to others.
