I'm with Will on the "sessions v singarounds" front. And these are also, in our area, very different from Folk Club etiquette, where (in our area at least) you tend, if the evening's not advertised as a "singaround", to have a booked act supported by a number of floor singers who do generally perform solo, or as,say, a rehearsed duo.

Stating "the rules" up front won't work at the events I go to as people tend to arrive and depart throughout the evening, so as a newbie you just need to take a while to absorb the "style".

But it's musical awareness that's the key factor, whatever type of event it is. The "session" I go to that Will attends is fantastic, due not just to the quality of the musicianship from most participants, but also to the sensitivity they bring. Although tunes often "just start" by consensus or by several people "twiddling around" before one twiddle becomes dominant and everyone gets behind it, people at the back or newbies are invited to "do something" at some point in the evening, and the group appears to be very sensitive as to whether a contributor would be happy for people to join in or not. It's mayhem, but controlled, joyous, sensitive mayhem and the fact that I'll happily drive an hour each way to attend it, despite having little to contribute musically (yet?) speaks for itself.

Singarounds can be great or terrible for joining in. I don't mind anyone joining in with what I'm doing, if it "fits" but from time to time I get absolutely pissed off when someone sings or plays the version of a song *they* know, rather han listening to what I'm doing and following it.

A while back I did Sandy Denny's "Rising For The Moon" at a singaround. I was being fairly loudly accompanied by someone playing a lead line on guitar to my rhythm. It didn't sound bad, but the way I play this one I've put 16 bars of my own lead between verses 2 and 3, and I'm not experienced enough yet to modify "on the fly" things I've learned. I hoped the guy would stop when I started my own lead riff, but he didn't...and the 2 riffs clashed horribly.

Similarly with "Poverty Knock" which I did at another singaround very recently. This is a song I learned at my mother's knee, and my version has a slightly different chorus from the accepted version. I also run two verses together between each chorus as otherwise I think it makes the song too long. There are 10 short verses and since it opens with the chorus, 11 choruses if you do one every verse. A very loud singer "helped me out" by constantly trying to intersperse the "missing" chorus at the end of each verse, and also (loudly and empatically) "correcting" the line in the chorus which I sing as my mother taught it to me *well before* the song was known outside Batley, Cleckheaton and Liversedge mills. I'm sorry, but I WON'T be "corrected" in an interpretion of a song originating in the exact Yorkshire mills my mother started working in in 1930 by someone living in Kent who's never seen a woollen mill in his life :-)

Mostly, singarounds are great though. Very different to sessions but just occasionally spoiled by someone who's not "aware" enough to be sensitive to others.