American Old Time Fiddle Tunes: 98 Traditional Pieces for Violin With a CD of Performances

First, for people who do not understand American musical vernacular: A "fake book" or "fakebook" is a collection of melody lines of songs, without orchestration nor harmonies. The words "fake book" and "fakebook" have nothing to do with any sort of counterfeiting, bootlegging nor other improprieties. Indeed, this particular book appears to be genuine and was in the publishers inner wrap when it arrived. It arrived on time and in excellent condition. Having made that clear, this songbook has a number of characteristics which have caused me to give a poor review.The Amazon product description page has not been updated to denote the fact that this book has links to electronic copies of the songs rather than a CD.The songs are mostly basic, easy to intermediate in difficulty. They are often notated in cut time so as to use quarter and eighth notes rather than eighth and sixteenth notes, which improves readability for the beginner. However many of the songs are written for AEae, instead of GDae, which makes for a lot of confusion. The reason is that one never knows until they play a song written for AEae, whether these are the true notes if played in standard tuning or notes "adjusted" so they sound like different notes unless the fiddle is tuned in AEae. This was a popular way of transcribing folk tunes in the early twentieth century but fell out of favor in the 1950s. The way I learned it some years later was to play the tunes as written then only tune to alternative tunings if they made fingering easier, in essence, learn the tune first, then change the tuning if needed. So basically to read alternatively tuned songs in this book, one has to either relearn the tune or transcribe it correctly onto a sheet of music paper.In any regard this book's approach to alternative tunings is highly confusing and out of style for this century. Another problem with alternative tunings is that AEae tends to be prone to breaking strings, especially after repeated retunings of steel strings. If one just has to play that fingering to get started, it would be safer to tune to GDgd and then retune to GDae and adjust fingering as soon as they memorize the sound of the notes.Some tunes like "Napoleon's Retreat" are written here in DDad, however there are a lot of us out there who much prefer DDae for obvious reasons.Another problem is that usually fakebooks (see my note at the beginning of this review) are written so that musicians, particularly jazz and folk musicians, can "fake" a tune, adding harmonies, riffs and multiple parts as needed. But not this one. It is cluttered with the writer's idea of what they think are the right double stops. Needless to say there is no way to really get the best out of the tunes except to ignore those double stops and play what sounds right to the fiddler "faking" the tune at the time, especially those of us who prefer a hornpipey alternative to southern Appalachian stylisms.

It came not only very fast, but also in good condition, but sadly did not come with cd.

Base line music for wide range of playing and favorites.

I love the selection of tunes, but the book is not useful for accomplished readers who skim the music to see what a tune sounds like. The tunes are notated to accommodate cross tuning, giving a "play by number" feeling. I would much prefer to see the notes written as they sound rather than as they are fingered in first position.

I like the book but the cd was missing. I was looking forward to practicing with the cd.

Excellent book for developing a repertoire of old time fiddle tunes. The arrangements are accessible to advanced beginner/intermediate players, but provide an authentic old-time style that sounds much more advanced. Highly recommend!

as expected

Perfect tunes, I love to play it! Had lots of fun playing it, be careful, it’s gonna make your bow bald!

I grew up surrounded by english folk music, and liked the idea of playing something people could stamp along to, So gave this a try.A few tunes in and have had a ton of fun already. Noticed improvement in my playing too (probably from wanting to practice that much more).As a beginner, playing for a year, these have been the right side of challenging so far.

The great thing about this book is that there are a number of tunes included that use altered tunings, which enables you to get a really good insight into the approach of the mountain fiddler. And there are nearly 100 tunes, so you get some great repertoire included - loads of old favourites, as well as some less well known tunes. Can't recommend it enough.

Some great tunes in this book and the CD was good as well, but more interesting is a history of the tunes and where they originateThe music is in music notation, but thats not hard to read..great book!!!

This book is brilliant, such a great selection of tunes and the CD is very useful. However the tunes are very complex so I wouldn't recommend to a beginner or anyone who isn't a massive fan of reading music (I had to get my teacher to translate for me and I've been playing for a few years!) Otherwise brilliant!

The book itself is good, a good selection of tunes to work but the CD was missing therefore nothing to aid learing.