How many tunes do you think a piper should know? My plan is to learn ten each of jigs, reels and hornpipes . Learn the basic tune first and then expand on them as I improve before I move on to more tunes half a dozen slow airs would be next ,of course being a non-irish speaker and learing slow airs is a bit of hot topic but I’ll have a go anyway Its probably not important but how many tunes do you think you know ?
P S
One musician I know around my way reckons he knows so many tunes that in his whole life he,s never had to play the same tune twice
There’s no magic formula…It’s good that you are setting a defined goal. Limiting your repertoire early on to work on your technique is a good idea. Be sure to get lots of face to face time with an experienced, accomplished piper. Dublin is lousy with them 
Eventually you’ll want to learn more tunes, lots more if you plan on being a session hound, but don’t rush that. I think my own playing was held back somewhat by a lack of focus, but some face-to-face instruction helped get me back on track as far as getting the chanter under control. Get your chanter playing whipped into some kind of respectable shape before you set about learning hundreds of tunes.
Good luck!
edited to include the following:
Having lots of tunes is useless if you can’t put any personality or style into them IMO - I’d rather have a smaller repertoire with lots of ornamental detail, variations, regulator stuff, etc, than two or three times as many tunes with little or no variation.
I have been at it about 10 years now and I have a very limited list of tunes I play in public.
I say fewer tunes played well with your individual style is much better than many tunes played blah.
I find it hard to leave the jig family as that is what first caught my ear in pipe music.
IMHO. slow airs are the hardest and will take the most time, btw.
I just learned my first reel on pipes this last month, but it will be a while before I do it in front of strangers.
There was an old time piper, Eddie Joyce, who only knew a couple dozen of each type of tune according to O’Neill; but he could play the hell out of them, so much so that he got a little too carried away at times. He practiced with leather gloves on, also, with holes cut in the fingertips; with the gloves off (literally) he could “play like a house on fire.” This is akin to Buddy Rich’s practicing drumming on pillows; if you can play that stuff on a pillow you can play anyone’s drums.
Of course Joyce’s peers in his time included Patsy Touhey and Barney Delaney, who had nigh unto bottomless repertoires. Plenty of pipers and other musicians seem to play the same handful of tunes all the time, but most will pull something novel out of the hat if you give them enough time. I try to think of a musician I’ve learned tunes from, and that will put me in mind of a tune I haven’t played in a while. With some musicians I think of various records…this will only come after you’ve piled up lots of music, I suppose.
You can also write out all your tunes. I kept an alphabetical log for a while, along with a sheet of paper with all my tunes written out randomly; in the log I’d check whether they’d been added to the sheet or not. Handy if your mind works that way. Assuming your mind works in the first place, duhhhhh! In the end it’s better to play fewer tunes better. I think anyone would agree.
Hello
John Kelly, the fiddler from Kilbaha in West Clare, always maintained that a large repertoire was a must for any traditional musician.
Having said that a lot of the older pipers seemed to have a Top Twenty of tunes (pipers like Tommy Kearney and Peter Carberry) which they would play at concerts and recitals. These tunes would belong to a common pool of piping tunes.
Regards
John
Most of my public playing is done in a session context so I’m in the “learn a lot of tunes camp”, for better or worse.
Hey! I just noticed I’m about to get to 100 posts! Do I get a prize?
Laconically yours,