Session Tune Chord Playing Charts - Q&A

A large collection of charts that provide the chord playing sequences for 400 popular session and jam songs and tunes.

	Q: Why are you doing this? A: This project began when a group of folks (mostly fiddle students) started playing Old Time fiddle tunes together at our home in Pegram, TN, back in December 2001. At that time, many of our rhythm players were new to string band music. We knew how to play chords, but we didn't know the progressions for fiddle tunes. We couldn't find chord charts for many of the tunes we were playing; sometimes when we could find published chord charts, those we found did not match our melody arrangements. We began creating and collecting these charts in early 2002 so that we could play more tunes as an ensemble in a shorter period of time. We are not advocating that this is the proper way to learn chords; we are merely providing them because it has worked for our group. You are welcome to use them or not. Q: Where do these chords come from? A: The majority of these chord charts are made "by ear". Contributions come from a number of resources, including our jam members, their teachers, the Internet, and various printed and recorded material. The group makes the final decision as to what arrangement sounds right and we make amendments to arrangements if it seems appropriate. Q: Doesn't this take a lot of time? Why bother? A: We have personally invested hundreds of hours in this project. However, creating these charts has taught us how tune progressions are put together. We have, over time, developed the ability to hear chord progressions quickly, and to communicate the changes to other players. Writing these charts has made us better musicians. And it's a lot more fun to play with folks who all use the same chords. Q: Are these charts the "official" version of the songs? A: No way. These are the chords that seem to work best for our jam. There are surely other ways to chord these songs; however, we have attempted to create charts which show the basic chord structure as we play them in our area.	Q: Can I listen to your jam's arrangements? A: We recorded our jams from 2002 through 2007 and posted the tunes on our website each week for jam members and visitors to practice along with. You are welcome to listen in. www.PegramJam.com Take note that these are not performance- quality recordings — you will be listening in on a very casual jam — you will hear lots of floundering and lots of talking as we figure out a tune. But we hope you will get some idea of how the melody is supposed to go. Q: I've found an error. Do you want to know about it? A: Absolutely. Please send any corrections or additions via email to: kirk@k4ro.net. Remember, though, that one tune can have several variations, so be gentle with us. Q: Would you like to hear a great tune that is not in the Pegram Jam collection? A: We sure would. There's a page on our website devoted just to that issue. Q: Will this document ever be finished? A: We plan to continue to add tunes for as long as time and energy permits. We are constantly discovering great new music to share. We plan to add new tunes as they come along. Q: Can I help out somehow? A: Yes. You can send us corrections for existing tunes or information on traditional tunes you think should be included in this collection. If you would like to help financially to support the web server and bandwidth costs, you may use the PayPal "Here's Our Tip Jar" link on the Pegram Jam website. Even a small contribution would be greatly appreciated. Our best to you !