When my wife, Mary, went from busy working Mom to finally having more free time (our daughters now out on their own), she picked up the guitar after a near 30-year hiatus. She entered the world of bluegrass jamming, with me at the ready to give her some instruction.
It wasn’t easy at first. I started out teaching her some fiddle tunes from charts I had in my files. Though she could read them and play them well at slow tempos, she would usually “crash and burn” in a real life bluegrass jam. It wasn’t really her fault. It was me, the teacher, who should’ve realized that at her current ability level, she didn’t have a fighting chance to play these tunes at the tempos that were expected (even in an intermediate-oriented jam).
Too many years later, I gradually started writing more simplified versions of many of these fiddle tunes that she was still struggling with. It really helped! She started to be able to keep up with the faster-paced pickers, and her confidence level shot way up.
One day, she said to me, “Jeff, these are really great arrangements. You need to get these tunes into book form!” After some many months (perhaps a year?), she set up our music writing software for making a double staff of music and tablature. This was something that eluded me for years.
With this powerful new tool that she had “programmed,” I set to work on twenty tunes that she helped pick out. Some of the arrangements changed slightly from her original versions, but that’s because I wanted to simplify them even more! I’m not necessarily a “speed demon of bluegrass,” so I wanted to make them easy enough for me to play at 200 or even beyond on the metronome.
Of course Mary was the perfect “guinea pig” for the test run of these 20 tunes. She recommended a change here and there to smooth out some of the rough edges. Thus, I insisted that she should be co-author of this book. It never would have existed without her initial suggestion, and her input both musically and technically were paramount to getting this book “done right.”
So given all that history and fanfare, we hope that “20 Fiddle Tunes for Bluegrass Flatpick Guitar: Simplified” will make your future jamming go more smoothly. It’s helped Mary (and me), and may its use give you the boost you need to play faster and with greater confidence.