Is this maintaining tradition or musical elitism?
A few months ago I purchased a mandolin and I’ve been playing trad Irish music almost exclusively since. As a newbie to the Irish music scene I have been trying my best to learn things the right way.
When learning a new tune, some people appear to have the opinion, “If you didn’t learn it from O’Neill’s, you’ve learned it wrong”.
Is this true? It seems like there are a lot of regional/personal variations of tunes out there. Should I be trying to use standardized sources, or is there even such a thing?
As I said, I’m a newbie to mandolin and Irish music. I’d like to do things the right way. Once I’m confident to play in front of someone, I’d hate for them to say something like, “Your technique is pretty good, but you’ve got the A part for the gravel walk all wrong”.