In today's world there are many ways to "preserve" a song. There is written music that allows one to recreate the song note for note, word for word. Of course, nuance is sometimes lost in this process. There are tones and timing that are not easily translated to paper and are lost in the act of notation. There are all of the recorded formats: CD's, tapes, MP3's and all of the rest. There can recreate the actual performance. Of course, performance's can vary greatly over time, so what has been recorded is just one performance and can miss what has been performed at other times.

If you perform with music in front of you, you are more likely to preserve the tune.

If, like me, you learn from other's performances (often in the recorded form), the song is likely to grow and evolve (or devolve) the longer you perform it. I have returned to the "original" versions of songs I perform and found that I have made substantial unconscious changes in words and melody.

But I have also made conscious changes in songs. Sometimes because the song speaks to me to make the changes. Other times it's to make the song "performable" for me due to my limitations. When Janice in NJ talks about Guthrie and Lead Belly I have to think that the change process was more conscious.

When I look at different versions of Child ballads, I tend to think the changes were of the unconscious sort we call "folk process". However, it is just as possible that the changes undergone by these ballads were the result of conscious decisions.

I think there are many ways to "honor" a song. That's what I try to do when I perform a song. I think that is what the "preservationists" are doing as well. Neither is good or bad, but I thinking makes it so.

Roger in Baltimore