Well at my one time experience at Jams, I quickly learned why some old fiddlers hold the violin on their arm,,,so they can hear.  I found it really tough to hear anyone but me,,and I had taken my softest violin.  The other problem I have is that I have taken zero time to learn vibrato or speed.  All my tunes are slow.  My head can understand slow.  But with mandolin I can just chop the chords at whatever speed and tell them I want no leads.  And with that I can "fit in", get to know them and find the musicians I want.  Its just that I really don't enjoy bluegrass(its structure or its mentality), but maybe that's because I have never immersed myself in it.  We will see.

If my goal is to take my violin to folk jam sessions, I will focus on the keys they prefer in folks sessions. All my practicing would focus then on that. Pushing the speed during the first months is not a good thing, but about a year later it might be time to start doing that. Most human listeners prefer fast tunes to slow tunes. This is no reason to rush myself into uptempo repertoire. But the idea, I play slow ballads the whole evening and the audience will just love it, is not realistic. So the next step after about a year should be medium tempo repertoire. At times I do push myself into fast pieces because this helps me to easily play medium and slow pieces. In classical teaching they prefer the metronome, personally I prefer play-alongs. I can push myself into a certain speed by using a play-along which is faster than what I'm used to. Which is the same stress I will be confronted with on a jam session. I know my body is a lazy dog, so I got to make the lazy dog move. After that it's time for reparation: slowing down to work on precision and cleanness again--because speeding up easily causes inaccuracy. That's how you go back and forth over weeks and months. Over a longer period of time you will learn to master even fast tunes. But the question is, whether it helps to play tunes in Db major if I won't need that in the next session. I guess they prefer keys like C, G and D  there.

People are different of course. I just felt like sharing a method how to push tempo as soon as somebody feels like it might be time. I'm now closer to the 60 than to the 50 myself and I don't know exactly where I'm going and whether I will succeed in whatever matter or way.

It is good for me to mostly stay within my limits and I think this goes for anybody. Just now and then it's a good idea to test out where they currently are and how far it's possible to go beyond. Right now I'm at a point where it's important to hold back and work on accuracy. But I do this on a higher tempo level than it was when I felt the need to hold back before.

Limiting myself means in my case, that I will not add anymore keys this year. Also, I limit myself to just one ground position and not even stretch out via pinkie. I want to hear 100 % accuracy before any finger steps beyond that limit.

Today I was rehearsing my performance program, watching myself more carefully than before. I can play fast eighths but shouldn't do that at the beginning of a solo. I have to start with calm phrases which must be very accurate, then I can slowly raise the bar. At he beginning of a solo I don't feel firm enough to rush myself into fast phrasing. In two years it will be a completely different story, but I certainly cannot be that firm after 17 months.

I also feel like vibrato would be a high risk to loose accuracy. I know it's not time for me to train that, it would only distract me from what I really need to practice--possibly even cause a terrible mess. Other people might find vibrato that heartwarming, that they're ready to live with that delay.

Whatever, if folk sessions would be important to me, I would focus on skills I need there and postpone everything else.

15 years ago, just having moved to Berlin, I joined the session of Breton folk music. I didn't really understand what I got myself into. These people where not French, but the music sounded very French and old and reminded me a lot of French baroque composers at the sun king's court. Yes, there was lots of resemblance in the sound of that music. But what did not fit was my idea of developing my personal solo recorder style. These people preferred to play unisono, everybody was following the melody line and everybody lined in. My idea was, this would right down call for adding a second voice and this could be enrichment. One day a lute player joined who was really grooving a lot in an ancient music way. He was giving me the feeling it was 100% baroque music. So I went over the top and must have improvised really great solos and second voices, also filling gaps with improvised phrases. But even the lute player seemed not to appreciate that. I was disturbing the musical 'socialism' with too much individualism. It took me many months to understand, I was not in a community where it was possible to develop my style like at the French court 300 years go. Until that day I had lot's of inspiration there and really improved my style.  And I just couldn't believe how anybody would choose to deny creativity that radically. They finally asked me to stay, but I was sure it was time to leave for I didn't fit. My ideas didn't fit and I was not ready to give up my ideas. I also quit Breton folk dance and joined a baroque dance class. Both dancing styles also resemble quite a bit, but baroque dance is more ambitious and there's no limit up to 1600s solo ballet.

That's always the question: Should I follow my personal dreams and ideas, or should I give them all up and become an ant in kind of musical socialism. To these Breton folkers a hard working soloist is just not a good person.

Of course I don't throw bluegrass folks into the the same category with Berliner Breton folk style people. Many of those Breton folkers tend to middle age and renaissance music and you saw medieval instruments very often joining the jam sessions. At large these people tended  to the new social movements. I'm actually not a fan of meritocracy, but it kinda must have looked like because I was very fanatic and ambitious. Their model was the music making peasant, my model highly educated townspeople who possibly even had gigs or even jobs at court. Those were very different worlds in 1600s and 1700s.

I find my story of the early 2000s very interesting and kinda funny. I had no clue I was part of a clash between two diverging worlds with totally different values. I like these people, but it musically doesn't match at all.

One day I will find the right guitarist and a cellist with similar ideas, we will listen to each other, learn and share our dreams. At least one of them will also contribute a beautiful tenor, baritone, or bass voice so I'm not the only one to sing ......