Steady Speed Tunes

An hour of tunes played at a steady speed

In September 2014 we introduced our new steady-speed hour for improver musicians who need to find their feet in the session environment.This is a great opportunity for intermediate and beginner musicians to extend their repertoire and gain confidence in playing along with others.

Format

We work through a range of tunes at a steady speed, maybe adding twiddly bits and getting a bit faster as we gain confidence.  We will choose the tunes to be included between the group and add and amend this as necessary. You can download sheet music or abc for the featured tunes from the tune list page,  so whether you prefer to learn from dots or by ear or a combination of the two the tunes will be accessible to you.

For more information on the wonders of abc notation check out the abc page.

What instruments are suitable for the steady speed session?

Most of the tunes will be in the keys of G,D and Em so as long as you can play in those keys you should be fine and basically any acoustic instrument will be fine.

Two As, two Bs, three times….

Many sessions have their own rules and format but as a  rule of thumb in English sessions tunes tend to be played through in this pattern, either on their own or as part of a tune set.  As the aim of this session is to prepare less experienced players for full-on folk sessions we’ll adopt this as a convention.

Only an hour…?

After we’ve finished with our steady tunes the session proper gets under way with our more experienced players.  Please don’t feel intimated by them, some of them are *really quite good* but they’re actually quite nice too.  Hang around and have a drink, listen to some tunes – maybe ones to add to your ‘to-learn’ list and noodle along when you can. This is a good chance to get a feel for session playing beyond steady speed and you may be surprised how many tunes you know and can join in with.

Have fun

Whatever your aim in learning a musical instrument as an adult, it’s really important to enjoy the journey. Let’s have some fun with our music.