To expand my intuitive grasp of riffing around in different keys, especially soloing during contemporary folkish stuff, I find it most helpful to learn a little bit of a lot of tunes in a key (different from attaining full competence, ie knowing a tune). If I find certain figures or note patterns repeated in a bunch of different tunes, they get embedded in my brain in a more malleable way that I find useful for other applications. I am beginning to find that if I am playing a song in C, D, A, G, or sometimes the relative minors, I can find lots of notes to goof around with because those are typical old-timey keys. With the help of a hand capo, I can expand this to some keys pretty easily.
It would help me on my adventure if I could start to learn ot-style tunes in non-traditional keys (especially minors), but still standard tunings (if I'm playing with folks I am in G or Double C; I don't want to retune too much). Sawmill is okay, too, or maybe even Sandy River Belle, but I want to focus on the first two. I'd like to find stuff I can listen to and run through the slow-downer, and it would be great to be able to find the occasional tab for tricky bits but my expectations are pretty low there. It can even be a contemporary tune with sufficiently simple instrumentation that I can pick it apart.
What are your recommendations?
Sarah