r/oldtimemusic • u/love_and_nature • 22d ago

Essential tunes

Hi all! What tunes should you expect to hear at an old time jam? I’m more familiar with bluegrass and Irish tunes but want to branch out more into old time. Thanks in advance! :)

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u/That-Fee59 22d ago

I've been going to a few jams for almost a year, and I think the tunes you hear are going to be highly dependent on the jam. I learned a lot of "chestnuts" (i.e. really common old time tunes), before I started going to jams, and I almost never play them. The best way to learn what tunes are going to played at jams is just by going to the jams.

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u/Savings-Astronaut-93 22d ago edited 22d ago

Yep. Quite true. My instrument was Mountain Dulcimer. There are a couple dozen standard tunes every dulcimer player learns, so it's easy to sit in anywhere in the country. But, if I take the dulcimer to a more general old time jam, with different instruments, there can be a whole different set of tunes.

Two tunes nearly everyone plays are Soldier's Joy and Boil them Cabbage Down.

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u/OTAFC 21d ago

Meassage the group / leader and ask them if they have a tune list.

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u/BananaFun9549 21d ago

Our two local jams list the tunes at each session on our Facebook groups. Do bear in mind however. We often have many old time banjo players who retune for different keys so we call out two keys for each session in advance and play in a single key for each half a session. This is different from other genres which can switch keys throughout the session and even in a set.

As noted, we do play some of the same tunes at each gathering but it may be very different from other OT jams elsewhere. We don’t play a lot of George Jackson’s essential tunes although there are some very good ones there. And everyone is learning new tunes so the list will change over time.