I’ve been reworking The Concert Reel, trying to make it sound better. It’s one of the tunes that I tend NOT to play because it’s not so enjoyable for me. Lately, I’ve been into the idea of exploring what it is about the tune that I don’t like - usually it’s an awkward turn that ends up sounding bad - and reworking into something I enjoy.
Anyway, after spending a considerable amount of time with the tune, and neglecting the other increasingly long list of tunes that I have, I realize that I now have forgotten the B part in The Rainy Day. Every time I get to the B part in The Rainy Day, I play the B part of The Concert Reel because the two versions I learned of these tunes are somwhat similar.
Some of you may say, “well go and get the dots on line.” But the versions are almost always different from the one I learned. I learn tunes from different places: on line, recordings, friends. So, for the more organized anal types out there: how do you keep track of your tunes so you never have to worry about losing them?
I learn all of my tunes by ear, by recording on my minidisc at workshops or sessions, or from CD’s. I then label the tunes I want to keep (both on the tracking) and a sticky label on the front, and pull out the recording if I want to go over the tune.
(…being a computer nerd, I also keep a tunes book with the first few notes of tunes that I play written down in ABC, for each part. Usually just being able to start a tune is all I need to remember it.)
I would second that. I too have a notebook with the first 3 or four bars of the tune written out in ABC. I usually find that is all that is required to kick-start the brain into remembering the rest of the tune.
My problem is names - I have such a bad memory for tune names. I would happily play 5 tunes in a row at a session & not be able to tell you the names of any of them. I am thinking of tattooing them on my arms like that guy in Memento!
Niall Keegan told us a sad tale about remembering tunes at a workshop this year. Apparently he once interviewed an old flute player who was a farmer. He didn’t name his tunes, just associated them with parts of the farm, so each big hawthorn bush or hedge/ditch junction had a tune. Trouble was that he’d had to hand the farm over to his son when he got older and to keep it commercially viable the son had had to increase the size of the fields, ripping out lots of the ‘tunes’! And he really couldn’t remember them once the associated feature had gone. There’s a lot to be said for minidiscs and mp3s.
I learn tunes from many different places - recordings, friends, session, and written music. I find it useful to make a “dots” version of the new tune. If I have a recording I can always go back to it, but I find the dots in a notebook more convenient. Often I’ll find some version of a tune on the internet someplace and it may not match exactly what I learned in a session or from a friend by ear. No problem I just change the relavent parts to match what I actually play. All this, of course, assumes a working knowledge of music notation and a computer program to write it down. I play by heart and ear; but sometimes have to remember with notes.
I guess I’m not one of the more organized types out there, because I simply don’t worry about it. It seems to me that having bits of tunes you don’t play that often wander from your memory is very much a part of the music. Happens to everyone, and usually all it takes is a listen to someone playing it to get it all back again.
I guess if I was worried about it, the easiest thing to do would be to record each tune as soon as I’ve learned it, and stash the recordings away somewhere that’s easy to find. That’s exactly what I do for tunes I’ve written. But that sounds like way too much work for tunes I’ve learned.
I thought it was so strange when I first started going to sessions that, most of time, the players couldn’t tell me the name of the tune! Afterward they would put their heads together and say like " oh yeah that was Banish and then Blarney" - They all had internalized the tunes in their heads and fingers, and the names are an insignificant detail.
Having said that, coming to ITM from the Jazz world and being used to “charts” - I keep a list of the first 4 measures written in notation (dots?). At this point I’m just assuming I will always remember the B and C sections!
A have a few friends who keep these notebooks of the first few bars of each tune they play…that works well except when you come to what the piper Bill Thomas refers to as “confusing A-minor reels” (a take-off on the “confusing fall warblers” pages in Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds), such as The Bag of Spuds, Down the Broom, The Gatehouse Maid, The Knotted Chord, etc…for those I think you’d need the B part as well to keep the differences straight if you can’t keep them separate in your mind.
At this point I’m just assuming I will always remember the B and C sections!
Unfortunately, I find that the B and C parts can have a tendency to migrate onto other tunes. I’ve been playing at sessions where similar B sections on tunes were switched yet we all kept playing as if that B section really belonged to that tune! Only afterwards, did stop and realize the error of our ways.
I learn about 90% by ear, 10% by dots. I think a list of tunes with the first two measures written out (either ABC or dots) for each section would be invaluable, but I’m a lazy slug so that’ll not happen anytime soon.
There are certainly a few cases where writing down only the first 2 bars can get you into trouble. Lucy Campbell & The Bucks of Oranmore instantly spring to mind! But it is a good idea when it works.
If you are going to try to keep track of tunes by writing down a few bars, you should definitely do it for each section of the tune, as Jayhawk suggests. I’m pretty sure I forget B-parts at least as often as I forget how to start a tune. Especialilly those darned A-dorian reels, which all seem to have almost the same second section.
…over time, I’ve started adding other information to my “little black book”, such as the keys I play a tune, type of tune (jig, reel, strathspey etc.) and a few abc’s for the b, c, and d parts.
I also keep a very very long list of gan ainmh’s, and it gives me enormous pleasure in turning them into tunes with names - occasionally, for which Richard Moon’s TuneDB is invaluable.
I keep a (semi-current) list of the names of tunes I know. I know maybe a hundred tunes at this point, so every one is precious! But I imagine once one knows 500 tunes, keeping any sort of list becomes irrelevant…it doesn’t make much of a dent in the repertoire if one forgets a few here and there.
What’s a gan ainmh? And how the heck do you pronounce it?
Having a list of tunes, and the dots, would make me feel organized and reassured. But I’m trying not to feel disorganized and agonized because my list is outdated. I’ve decided not to fight “tune drift,” but to accept it. With some resignation… but I’d rather spend time with the tune I’m with. Maybe when I retire I’ll get that tune list polished again.
I keep forgetting the B part of the Rainy Day, too. But worse, I’m starting to mix it up with the B part of Golden Keyboard (the A part of which I consistently mix up with The A part of The Girl I Ne’er Forgot).
And then there’s Cuz Teehan’s and Christmas Eve. And here’s a really humiliating one … swapping the B parts of the Foxhunter’s and Cregg’s Pipes. I actually derailed a box player with that one a couple of weeks ago (who says flutes can’t be heard in sessions? ).
Gan ainmh means without name (or something to that effect) in Irish, so unnamed tunes are usually labeled as such. Pronounced gan (as in began) anim (as in animate).
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