How many tunes do you know? one of our local fiddle players reckons he knows about 600! The very concept is baffling.
Also Padraig O Keffe could apparently play any tune from O’Neils 1001 straight off.
Three. I can never remember more than the current tunes my teacher has set for me. When I hear a tune from a previous lesson I can sort of follow along, but generally I just have zero retention if I’m not playing a tune regularly.
djm
Not nearly enough.
And no matter how many I can learn in a year’s time, it always comes back to that!
Rick
Define “know.” My number is either 0 or 500.
If I were to write a list of all the tunes I’ve ever “learned” it would come to more than 500 
. But before you run away with the idea that I’m just showing off I should add the following severe caveats:
(1) tunes I regularly play in sessions: 100?
(2) tunes I’d like to play, and can play proficiently at home, but which none of the others play: another 100?
(3) tunes I’ve played but not recently and am rusty on: 100?
(4) tunes I’ve played but not for years and would struggle to reinstate without a lot of effort: 200?
(5) tunes I could play with confidence if I went to any other session than my own regular one: 0 
All the above categories are infinitely variable according to prevailing conditions. I couldn’t even play Harvest Home with you unless I’d leaned across and quietly asked: "how fast do you do it, Busk? Lilt or no lilt? How many times? Whaddya go into after it? then reprise all questions for next tune!
Cheers
Steve
Not enough.
Is it just me, or do y’all have the same experience as this: Someone new to your session, or even someone who shows up every week, asks you “Do you know…(such & such a tune)?” - and you say weakly “I’ve heard it but I can’t really play it yet…” or: “I think I might know it but has it got another name?”
Cheers
Steve
I think I’m up to several hundred; it’s hard to say.
Some of the folks I session with know and can start many more than me.
–James
Well sure – there are probably hundreds of tunes that I know well enough to recognize or play a few licks from, but cannot play reliably. And invariably they got that way because people like to play them in sessions…
Hmm…I’ve never thought about counting them…I don’t play any of them well as well as I’d like to, though.
I think I need to upgrade my memory card. I’d say honestly about 30 to 35 tunes at any one time. The unfotunate thing is that when a new one comes in another one slips out. I think some people must have 2,000 Gb brains.
I don’t know all these hundreds of tunes like so many people seem to. I probably don’t even really know fifty.
If you mean tunes that go “#@#!" "%$@!” “&$%^!” or “***#!” every third or fourth measure, then I know 'em ALL.
I suppose that a lot depends on how you define “know.” I have about eight tunes that I’d dare to play to the assembled company unaccompanied. Then maybe 100 that we play in our regular session and have done for ages…but if I showed up at your session and started on some of that 100 you might conclude that I don’t know them “properly” at all, and I might think the same about you, but we’d struggle on and it would work out. I think that this is one of the great strengths of “our” music. You just have to collaborate with others of like mind if you’re to play it well (pure-droppists excepted of course) and I enjoy that side of it a lot.
Steve
I know none of them well enough, that’s for sure.
Whenever this question comes up, I think it would be interesting to know how long a person has been playing. I’ve been playing traditional music for about 3 years and probably know about 75-100 tunes.
It’s not that hard to know a lot of tunes really, so I don’t doubt that yer man knows 600 at least. I’m also sure that there are many master players who have lots more…thousands perhaps.
I’m inclined to agree very much with SteveShaw that knowing that many tunes doesn’t mean that you have all of them at your disposal as “show pieces”. It takes a lot of practise just to maintain that many tunes in your head and keep them straight from one another.
I’m one of those guys that likes to keep track of the tunes that I’ve learned so my list is upwards of 500 tunes at this point. I know more than that for sure but may not know the names so I don’t worry about them. (To answer Tintin’s questions it’s taken me 9 or 10 years..on and off..to get there).
For the last year or so I’ve decided not to spend any more energy learning new tunes but to get really solid on the number that I do have. This task is proving more daunting than I originally thought. At this point I feel that I may have to spend another year working on memory and polishing…at least!!!
Also, I find that my own definition of what it means to “know” a tune is changing…“raising the bar” so to speak.
Like TinTin - I’ve been seriously playing ITM only about 3 years now, and I’d say I know about 75-100 ITM tunes that I’m aware of during that time. My problem is that I’ve played music for 30 years now (I know many folks have played much, much longer) and I’m always surprising myself when I dig up a tune that I learned, say 10 years ago when I was only messing around with ITM, and with about 10 minutes work it’s back in shape. Also, so many tunes to me are named “the one that goes like” counting isn’t all that possible anymore…I wish I had a better memory.
If you add in non-ITM tunes, I’m sure the number jumps closer to 200+ (things like Bach’s Minuet in D, The Entertainer, f*&^ing Pomp and Circumstance, etc.).
Eric
I’ve been playing since 95. I have a couple hundred on my “official list”..
But there’s a lot I have taken off or never put on “the list”..
modern tunes (Stairway to Heaven, Strawberry Fields, Crazy Train, “That titanic song”), Minuet in D, Ode to Joy, Kumbaya, all the kids tunes and Christmas tunes I know, all the silly crap I know like the Jeopardy theme song, just about every tune I learned in the first 4 years I was learning to play the whistle, english or morris tunes I know, some polish folk tune I learned while learning to play the piano, etc.
I can probably still play all those striken from “the list”..they’re just tunes I’ll probably never get called to play in public much, if at all.
All told, I imagine the number is in the 350 range.
My tune acquisition really slowed down when my son was born (end of 2000). I imagine it’ll stay slow until he’s a little older. I was originally picking up a new tune or two every week. Now it’s more like a couple new tunes a month, unless they happen to be really easy (I picked up Maggie in the Woods in like 3 minutes the other day. I’m still struggling with Atholl Highlanders after 3 months of practice..heh)
Try to keep count as you learn.
When I was starting pipes I was encouraged to keep a manuscript book and on each line I’d write the first the first 3 or 4 bars of the tune and the first bar of each other part. And also a note on where and when i got the tune. At that time I had formal and informal lessons with Denis and Mick O’Brien so I was getting 5,6 or 7 tunes a week. Plus youd pick up at least another 25 at a Willie Week and a Scoil Eigse here and there. But when your 16 and 17 you want to learn as many tunes at a music week as you can!
I hit the 1000 mark when i was 17 or 18 and that was 17 years ago and I’m still leaning tunes.
And theres more to learn too!!
Tommy