As for dots . .
Personal reminiscences are valid and important here. Good on Anthony
for providing them.
There must have been a variety of behaviour over this dots/ no dots
thing, surely?
Learning by ear is still important. Especially if you play with a set
of people who have developed their own style which may be either
recent or developed over a long time.
However, there are plenty of hand-written tune books around (anyone
hear the recent-ish BBC Radio documentary about this?) to suggest that
competent(as far as we can guess) traditional musicians of the past
found them useful. Vickers for instance?
One reason why the Gows felt that their printed publications would be
useful is that musicians from different areas found themselves playing
incompatible versions.
Presumably musicians from the past assembled individual tunebooks for
a variety of individual reasons. Partly perhaps as a statement of a
personal repertoire. Or partly as a handwritten recipe book might be
used. Mostly you know the favourites but occasionally want to refer
back.
Francis
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