Despite my doubts, it works! The notes are there and I can now read them. Armed with large fretboard and treble clef printouts, a pack of highlighters, and some ingenuity, I was able to devise a decent method and be able to (slowly) sight read. I feel like an 8th century Irish monk with this thing, culling out the sacred language of players gone by and re-penning it in my crude, commoner's banjo tongue. The transcriptions have some quirks, but welcome ones. The clefs have no bar divisions, which lends itself well to "crooked tunes". It allows you to think of a tune as a continuous string, a discourse that can stop, pause, and cut off when it needs to.
More importantly is the treatment of "modal" tunes. They've brought us one step further to the understanding that modal tunes aren't simply "minor". They don't go so far as to state the individual mode of each tune, but their distinction of modal vs. minor tunes important to say the least. This could prove difficult, primarily because many tunes don't fit into the so-called "church modes" laid out in the middle ages. Some play an F# when ascending the scale and an F natural when descending. Some only have five or six notes in the scale, so they could fit into a number of modes. In the end, one would be faced with the task of creating their own system of classification. Ask the fiddler next to you "what mode is this in?" and she will probably say "A". Reach for your nearest book on Indian Ragas or Arabic Maqams if you require more pain and confusion.
The take-away lesson though, is that they have stepped aside from some basic tenets of western music, allowing us to view Old-Time music as a more diverse and dynamic animal. By not employing rigid rhythmic divisions and opening up the 'modal' concept to more discerning interpretation, the American musical tradition as a whole becomes much more rich and mysterious.
That being said, I'm going to go transcribe Boogerman now.
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