I must really, really love playing melodies. This is probably why I’ve gravitated towards
fiddle tunes, Irish trad and other instrumental folk music. I had a broad, hungry and obsessive taste in
music long before I ever decided to play an instrument, so the fact that I’m pretty
much only interested in playing fiddle tunes and folk melodies has come as a bit of a surprise.

I name checked all these cool groups and musicians simply to
demonstrate where I might have been coming from when I first picked up an
instrument (tenor banjo) 8 years ago, back in June, 2006. Note that NONE
of the music I liked up to that point is what you would call Irish or oldtime, except for maybe Norman
Blake.
I assumed that I’d be wanting to
strum chords and sing John Prine, Neil Young and Grateful Dead covers, but I didn’t enjoy that at all. (Maybe the fact that I hadn't chosen a guitar would have been an early indicator.) Then I was introduced to some fiddle tunes like Arkansas Traveler and
Silver Spear and I was hooked right away!
It probably helped that tenor banjo was an instrument more suited to picking
melodies than accompanying songs, at least to my ears.
Tenor banjo was my first choice, primarily to be different,
but I wonder if I inherently knew that it was the right choice at that time? Now that I’m kind of switching over to mandolin, the world of music is
continuing to open up - both forwards and backwards.
I still am all
about playing melodies but as I continue to work on developing my ear, there’s
the opportunity to learn a portion of a Phish jam or a riff from a
Medeski, Martin and Wood composition, for example. Not everything from my music listening past will lend itself to this
treatment, but anything you can whistle you can play on mandolin. I also want to be open to any influence this old favorite music might have on the interpretations of traditional music. It's all the same language.
Playing mandolin is definitely going to continue to dictate the type of music that I play. The mando's consistent, standard tuning of GDAE, coupled with the fact that it's fairly easy to play in any key, as well as its melodic range and friendliness toward melodic notes, allows for me to broaden my search for tunes to all the corners of the globe where music is part of a cultural tradition.
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