About how long would you say it takes to learn a new tune, on average? For me it’s varied greatly from a few days or less to a lot longer (that probably relates to whether I’m in one of my fits of obsessive playing or barely have time to pick up a whistle 
). Sometimes I find memorizing a tuen too quickly makes it harder to retain (I memorized something on my sax in about fourty minutes a few weeks ago and couldn’t remember it well enough to play wihtin three days), so there has to be a ballance, I guess…
It depends. Some tunes take longer than others. Also, the longer you’ve been playing, and especially playing in sessions, the quicker you can pick up a tune.
That said, learning the tune is one thing. Living with it long enough to actually make it your own is something else.
Even with simple tunes like the Shannon Breeze, there is a vast difference between someone who plays the tune well, and someone who’s been playing it for over thirty years…
–James
Are you talking about the tune AKA “Rolling in the Ryegrass?” I’d never heard it called by any other name until last week, and now suddenly everyone’s calling it “the shannon breeze.”
very nice
ok, you’re right. and I’d heard that clip before, so shame on me for forgetting. I’d snobbishly assumed it was just someone’s tutor book unwittingly choosing the least common name for the tune because the author didn’t know any better…
It’s possible I’m partial to one name over the other, which those of you who know my wife’s name will doubtless understand. 
Peter, thanks for sharing that! That was lovely.
–James
Just another clip on the transcriptionpage , they’ve been there for years. All of Micho’s clips there were from a concert I did with him, in what was it, 1986 or so.
Depends, but if I work on it hard, I can have it memorized within a few days; able to play fluidly, about a week; able to play well, five years I’d reckon, and I haven’t been playing that long 
Depends, but if I work on it hard, I can have it memorized within a few days; able to play fluidly, about a week; able to play well, hahaha you jest.
It’s also hard to memorize two similar tunes at the same time…too easy to get them confused. I assume that gets easier with time…
Memorizing the notes is the easy part, most simple polkas I can memorize in less than 10 mins, just playing them 3 or 4 times over. Assuming I’ve heard the tune played a good few times before. A harder tune might take me up to 2 hours to memorize but months to play at a satisfactory level.
I’ve been at the whistle avidly now for 34 months, and in my journey so far, it takes me about 5 to 25 minutes to learn a tune, unless I have listened to it for a thousand times, and just have the melody burned into my memory, where then I can try it out on the whistle and work it out slowly for muscle memory sake, then go from there. That’s just to learn the basic notes of the tune. To make it something presentable, probably a week or 2 weeks. To make the tune incredible, (assuming incredible isn’t too dramatic a word to use here…) well so far I don’t believe my playing is incredible so there’s yer answer. But I constantly work on tunes, make them my own so to speak, better them, etc, etc.
However I recently came across a tune, that goes by a name of Madame Boneparte, in G major, and I’ve seen another written version in A major, it’s hornpipe by nature to my knowledge, and anyways there’s a serious of jumps if you want to call them, in the B part… So far the trickiest damn fingering sequence I’ve ever come across in a tune on the whistle. For me anyways. But part of the struggle was remembering… And my memory isn’t the best in the world unfortunately. I started this tune about 3 nights ago, worked on it for about 20 minutes each night so far, and still, those jumps aren’t totally down pat. Although I guess I could cheat, and not Vent the “back” D… But that would be taking the easy road, and my ego can’t stand that. 
So I guess it depends on the difficulty of the tune, length, arrangements of the notes, how well you know the whistle, etc…
-Eric
Madame Bonaparte is a Set Dance, the ‘serious jumps’ are a series of simple arpeggios on G,A, G again and D I suppose it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Anyway, ‘learning a tune’ means being able to roll off the notes by heart, being able to play it at speed, being able to tug along in a session, being able to put all the bit in the right places to make it sound half decent, being able to move within the tune with an understanding of it’s structure and rhythm while changing it at will?
There are many people who have listened to Irish music very thoroughly for years without playing it much who are able to knock a tune out of an instrument without much in the way of technical skill, falling over at times but hitting on the essence while there are also people who are able to play the notes in a technically quite capable way without ever hitting the right spot musically. I know which I prefer listening to.
It’s all so relative.
Hmm… Well if you put it that way, then I’ve never learned a single tune in my whole 34 months of playing whistle. Or am I missing something here…
I was just wondering on what the interpretation of ‘learning’ a tune could be. Suggesting maybe you can look at it on different levels.
Depending on which interpretation you choose, you fill in how long it takes to ‘learn’ a tune.
Saying you’ve “learned” a tune does seem to imply that you’ve reached some sort of end. I hope I never have a tune “learned.” At the same time, I hope to learn many tunes. The more you know, the more you don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure, I’m still learning…
I’m going by foggy memory but I seem to recall Loretto Reid saying that she generally doesn’t play a tune in public until she’s practiced it for at least a year. But then she and her husband are rather exacting (and excellent) musicians…
What folks have said is pretty much true, a tune can take minutes to days or weeks to “learn”. But the way I see it, I’m always learning, even though I’ve been playing some tunes for 10 years. Different settings/variations, different accenting, newly acquired technique, different instruments, etc. will change the way I practice a tune. This might seem daunting to new players but it’s actually something to look forward to because the same 16 bars of music played the same way, over and over again, can quickly get stale. It’s the beauty of a living tradition.
It is a bit of a ‘how long is a piece of string’ sort of a question isn’t it
Well, if you mean by “learn” to be able to play through without faltering or going off into another tune (and never mind the subtleties), I’ve learned tunes in about 3 minutes—tunes I had in my head and just found under my fingers. Amazing experience (and regrettably rare). Johnny Cope took me about 4 months to learn (I am still working on Murphy’s). Hope this helps.