Hell is filled with musical amateurs. -G. B. Shaw

At Sunday's Charlottesville session, the same older gentleman fiddler showed up from last week. He began to repeat the same pattern of playing unintelligible tunes at a ridiculous pace. At that point, a very experienced flute player asked him to play more slowly.

The old gentleman said that he couldn't, and the other fellow stated that he was "playing ahead of" himself. The fiddler seemed annoyed at the suggestion, but did slow down a bit. Unfortunately, he was still badly out of tune. At that point, the same flute player interrupted and asked that everyone in the session check their tuning. He was trying to let the older fellow tune without embarassment, except that the fiddler didn't take the hint! When he realized that the older fiddler wasn't going to tune, the flute player insisted and the fiddler did so grudgingly, but then left in a huff a few minutes later.

The old fiddler may or may not return, but I am grateful to that flute player, who had the nerve and standing in the session to express what everyone else was dying to say. I will try to learn from this episode and be sure that I don't play anything at volume which I don't play well.