A must-have for beginning and intermediate players
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When I first started playing the fiddle seriously about eight or 10 years ago (after several years of tinkering) a friend in a local contra dance band showed me his copy of The Fiddler's Fakebook. Though I was a marginal music reader at best, I decided to buy one. It was the best music investment I ever made. Because I've never completely decided whether I wanted to be a Celtic, old-time or "other" fiddler, this book was the perfect match. Over the years I have learned dozens of tunes from it - perhaps 30 percent of my repertoire. Now as a semi-professional player in a Celtic band, as well as a contra dance band, I continue to use it to learn tunes. One of the few drawbacks of this book is that many of the tunes are odd-ball transcriptions, quite different than many people play them, at least in this part of the country. Some are over-simplified, but if one uses them to learn the basic tune and then relies on listening to recordings or other players for variations and style, one can still benefit greatly from the Fakebook version. I would recommend any fiddler have this in his or her collection.
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Good book for fiddlers, guitarists, tin whistle players, etc
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This book is being used in a beginning Celtic music class I'm helping with. It has many, many standard Celtic tunes, and the guitar chords that go with them. It is by no means limited to Celtic, having a more than generous selection of old-time tunes as well. Excellent bonus: each song has a reference or two to a recorded source, so you can hear the way it's done by pros. The only negative is that occasionally the version of the tune (or its transcription) is over-simplified, or, in some cases, a non-standard version. If you are looking for a book with music you can use all around the acoustic folk music scene, this one must be highly recommended.
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