Chord sequences for traditional songs

Trad Strings
1

I’ve got a few books of Scots ballads. One of them contains chords and melodies, one has the melody lines printed with no chords and one just has the lyrics. If I try and search for the chords to some of the songs I get various different results for the same song.

So my question is, does it matter what chords I play? Is there a definitive version of each song that I should be learning or as long as I’m playing chords that the melody will fit into is it cool?

I guess for sessions everyone should be playing the same thing or it’ll sound crap.

Anyone got a good website for getting chord sheets for trad songs? The session has most tunes but, again, just the melody lines. No chord sequence.

2

As long as the chords fit the melody, it’s quite safe to do what ever you feel comfortable with. That being said, one would do well to stay away from tritone substitutions of the dominant chord and other such non-ITM stuff. If you listen to recordings of different bands playing the same song, you’ll often find differences between the versions. As it everything in ITM, nothing is truly set in stone, there are just more or less orthodox ways to do things.