I’m just curious, how many tunes do you Chiffers have in your repetoire. I know several people who claim to know 30000 to 4000! Not me certainly! I may have near 1000 but that would be just a guess! How many ITM. tunes are there anyway?!! I’m sure that it could only be an estimate. Just curious and I thought I would put that out there.
I reckon it’s around 1500. It seems to stay around that mark. I’m forever putting new tunes in … but old ones fall off at the back. 
3!
I haven’t attempted to reckon how many tunes I’ve ‘got’ for many years. Guestimate? Probably c500 ITM that I kinda know I know and a whole bunch more I can play but don’t ‘know’ to list or even remember until someone plays 'em. Then there are at least a couple of hundred Welsh tunes and dozens of other odds and sods.
52, for various values of “have”. I’ve only been playing ITM since October, so the list is still short enough to track via my session.org tunebook 
Ditto…but substitute ‘28’ and ‘December’ for ‘52’ and ‘October’. 
Wow, still holding steady around 8-10. The mind boggles at the thought of 1500 or more. 
Frankly, the mind boggles at the thought of 28.
How many tunes are there, approximately, anyway? How many are listed at thesession.org?
Dr.Phill you have a good sense of humour. would I be right in guessing that it is the 3! That you list at the bottom of you posts?
He has, even if his spelling is lamentable! (OK, “lament” is an exception to the normal English spelling guideline that you need to double the intervening consonant if an e or i is not to make the preceding vowel “say its name”…) Though I think he may have a couple more tunes than he is letting on…
I had an old musician tell me once that when you have about 60 tunes of a particular genre in your head the rest will come easily because you will have internalized the basic structure and idioms of that particular genre. I have about 100 tunes and I did notice the last 40 came much quicker and easier than the first 60.
That is what I was initially thinking.
Yes, but what does the phrase ‘have in your repetoire’ mean?
For me to ‘know’ a tune I must be able to play it, on request (should that ever happen 
), with very few mistakes(or none?). I should not need a lead in from other musicians, or crib notes.
I feel I am letting myself off lightly though; part of me wants to ‘know’ a tune so thoroughly that I can spontaneously make suitable (deliberate) variations to the tune while being true to the sources. A further goal (much further… I do not even know how to start) would be to the ability to ‘fill in’ with suitable melody the space between a singers phrases.
By that more strict definition I have no tunes at all.
If we allow all the tunes that I have ever stumbled through using props, lead ins, or hiding behind other musicians, I might manage a few more than three.
Apologies to the OP - I was trying not to drag this thread into a definition of ‘know’ 
.
Hi
To follow on from Dr Phil.
My wife’s violin teacher told her than in order to play well and know a score ’ you must get over wanting to get it right, play and not get it wrong’ .
I personally know only one tune and that is the one that constantly runs through my mind when I am trying to do something other that play my whistles.
Ian
It’s a pertinent point, Phill. I automatically respond to this line of query on the basis that I ‘know’ a tune if I can play it without reference to notation fairly accurately when it crops up in a sesh - i.e. the melody is in my aural memory and well enough ‘under my fingers’. That is different from having a tune ‘in my repertory’, which I would use to mean knowing it thoroughly to perform/lead it and probably include knowing its title.
Oh Gosh! That’s not fair Jem! You know I don’t know tune names. That means I have precisely 0 tunes.
30,000 tunes would take a long time to play.
If I’ve played it through a couple of times without incident, I consider it “got.”
At 3 minutes per tune, that’s 62.5 days non-stop. Guinness World Record, anyone?
As to how many tunes, based on my reading and gleanings lately, what seem to be the best guesses put the number of tunes in the Irish-ish tradition in the 12,000-15,000 tunes range, with a lot of those tunes also part of other traditions as well. I often see the advice that you need about 10% of that number to be be essentially session-ready. I was very interested to learn, I think from Alan Ng’s website or something he wrote, that there are considerably more unique A parts than B parts. Not saying any of the above is correct, but there seems to be something of a loose consensus on some or parts of that. On Wednesdays and every second Monday.
Spot on. The next 100 will be easier again[ Happy whistling!quote][/quote]