Can you already play all the tunes you want to play with the chanter you have now? Are there no tunes that you've set aside for when you thought you had improved to the point where you could actually play them? Been through all the tunes in all the books you have? > > Don't misunderstand me--I thouroughly empathize with "key lust." (I believe > it's related to "tune book lust.") But if you were asking for were answers > to your root question, this might help. > > Alec
You've tapped into my guilty conscience, Alec. The keys I really miss are low C# and the Bb's. Yes, perhaps the more creative way to deal with the issue is to figure out ways to play the tunes without those keys. But try playing 'Bigg Market Lasses' without a Bb key. And the other guilty thought is, why worry about more keys when I really need to work on clean, rippling runs and arpegios? But if seventeen keys are a guilty pleasure, what is the "right" number? I have tune book (and CD) lust, but "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" (apologies to William Blake). Not only do I play through tune books as a form of entertainment and relaxation, as well as research, I also enjoy reading tune books. My girlfriend, a professional musician, finds it very funny that I'll curl up with a tune book instead of a regular book. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
