Tony Trischka: Master Collection of Fiddle Tunes for Banjo

Submitted by mwrowe on 7/8/2009

Where Purchased: Janet Davis Music Website

Overall Comments

I just got this book about a week ago, and I am really excited about it. It has tabs for just about every fiddle tune you can imagine, from the parking-lot classic to the deeply obscure. In many cases, especially for the most well known tunes, he has included variations on sections, or even entire songs. The two CD's included with the book are well recorded, with the songs played at a tempo that is slow enough to hear the individual notes, but fast enough to get the melody and feel of each piece. The pieces cover a range of styles, keys and tunings.

I have a couple of Tony's other books, specifically "Teach Yourself Bluegrass Banjo", "Melodic Banjo" and "Masters of the 5-String Banjo" all of which have at least a few fiddle tunes. I like the arrangements in this book better. The tabs are also well written and clear. My biggest problem is deciding which songs to tackle first-- I want to learn them all!

My only complaint is that there seem to be some "missing" tabs-- in the book, Tony talks about a second version of Jerusalem Ridge in A, but I can't find it on either the recording or the book. Maybe he (or the publisher) decided it was too hard; he does say that the fingering is too tricky to explain (not enough space). There is also a cool second version of Devil's Dream on the CD that is not tabbed out. Maybe I should just take these as challenges though; I keep feeling I would probably learn ten times as much if I had transcribed these songs myself. Also, there are a couple of "bonus" songs that were apparently added at the last minute-- St. Anne's Reel and ... something else. (Don't have the book in front of me now.)

Highly recommended. I hope he puts out tabs from "Double Bluegrass Spectacular" next...

Overall Rating: 10