accurate enough

[Judith R Cohen <judithc...>]

Allen writes,

> The transcriptions are good enough, better than good enough. It
> would be fun to hear the field recordings but not necessary. If you play the
> stuff from the page as written if your accurate enough you will get the
> transcribers intentions.

sorry, but at the risk of broken-record syndrome, I disagree.
You can never, ever, unless you yourself happen to know the tradition
extremely well, reproduce a song with its dtyle and flavour form a
transcription. As Josh himself has said, it's simply a different medium.

Now WANTING to do that is an entirely different issue. 

> Sometimes I wonder if theres not already too much rote playing
> of transcriptions

This is not for you or anyone else to decide.In any case, I'm not
talking about rote playing of transcriptions, but of learning from
performance. It's a choice of the performer. Some want to try to
reproduce traditional renditions (as I usually do), some don't. But it
isn't for anyone to say one or the other is "too much"; there are
reasons for both and in between.

I still think that if one wants to do an innovative , personal rendition
of a traditional piece, it still behooves one to have heard the original
and make one's changes, take one's departures, from there. But that's
just my opinion.

However, if one WANTS , for whatever reason, and despite the implied
sneers of those who feel it is uncreative, than even the best
transcriptions simply won't do the job.
(In seeking to reproduce traditional performances, which I can only do
to a certain extent because I'm me and not them (sometimes the
ungrammatical accustaive works better than the grammatical nominative)
I've often been told this was uncreative.

That's ok. Actually, I'm not always TRYING to be creative. Sometimes
it's a goal, sometimes it isn't. I'm often just trying to do a task I've
set for myself, bring a tradition to life as it is/was, as best I can,
i.e. just be a vehicle.

cheers, Judith

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