i’ve played the saxophone in a lot of jazz ensembles over the years, and one of the things i’ve learned from that is that there are just some songs you have to know.
Now I play whistles, but I haven’t had the opportunity to play this style of music live like I have for jazz. So my question is this: are there any “must know” tunes in ITM or in the whistling world? If so, please tell me, because the best thing I can do for myself is expand my repertoire 
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Go to thesession.org members’ area and select “tunebook.”
Everything on about the first four pages of tunes listed here would be a really good start.
–James
Wow, that’ll keep me busy for a while, I should have checked there before. The 5 or so songs I’m working on now are all on page 2 so …
Thanks James for pointing this out.
One major shibboleth of the genre is that instrumental dance music is a tune*, not a song. Using the wrong term will arouse all manner of negative attention, often rising to outright hostility.
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Well true, but I’ll never be a stickler nor bend to the prevailing whims.
Aren’t the must-know tunes the ones you want to play?
Yep, for me they are. I’m focusing on learning the ones I enjoy hearing.
Interesting, I’ve used the word chune, not sure how it came about, probably from the scottish side of the family, didnt know the word actually existed…
Interestingly, “chunes” has a whole other existance, unrelated to TM of any flavour but with what looks like parallel genesis coming from Jamaican patois.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chune
- Chune
A song that you like very much
Ah put House of the Rising Sun on dude, that’s a phat chune
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chunes
- chunes 10 up, 2 down
Slang for “tunes” used by people actually “in the Know” about the music they’re talkin’ about
These are some ill gangsta chunes homey
Interesting…
Then why’re you learning this stuff at all? 
Anyway speak as you like, don’t let people get mad at you for silly reasons. However, the song/tune distinction makes etymological sense, as song is from sing “to sing”, and the use of “sing” to mean “play an instrument” is obsolete if it ever existed in English (in Latin it does, cano tibiam et cano carminem “I play the flute and sing a song”); and tune is from tone which is from Latin tonus which is from Greek tonos, which refers to a “strain” and in music means a pitch or succession of pitches regardless of device used to make them. So naturally you can’t sing something on an instrument, but you can produce a tune on any instrument, including voice.
It’s actually the same way in old hymns, at least American and German ones- this isn’t just an Irish oddity. Let me explain, and do pass over if this bores you.
In hymn jargon, a “hymn” is the words, and it is sung to a “tune”, together making a “song”. “Song” can also mean just the words, but never just the melody- those are always “tunes”.
For example, I can sing the hymn “Come Thou Fount” to NETTLETON (the usual tune) or RESTORATION #1 (usually sung to “Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy”), and the tune PLENARY can be set to the hymn “Hark! From the tomb a doleful sound” or the song “Auld Lang Syne” (which is of course the one you’ve probably sung it to).
Of course these all can be switched up based on meter- Come Thou Fount can be sung to any 8s7s trochaic tune, and Hark! From the Tomb can be sung to any Common Time (8s6s iambic) tune. Personally, eg, I’m not the biggest fan of NEW BRITAIN, at least the way it c omes out on my voice, so I like to sing “Amazing Grace” to PLENARY. So, “hymns”/“songs” and “tunes” really are seperate entities. This was very useful in the days before powerpoint and the internet (or at least mail-order catalogs), where you couldn’t pop up any old song on your church slide projector; for variety, why not sing that old, boring hymn to another tune?
In old fashioned language, a “hymnbook” only comtained “songs” (words) with meter signs (and maybe suggestions on which tune to sing it to, given by name), and you could match any of those song to any tune that if it the meter; whereas a “tunebook” or a “hymnal” contained “songs” set to “tunes”.
A similar system used to be used in German- in the Ausbund, an old Anabaptist hymnal, the lyrics to songs, or the songs and lyrics combined, are caled “Lieder” (songs), and are “gesungen” (sung); however the raw melody a “Lied” is sung to is called the “Ton” (same word as our word “tune” or “tone”), for example you might read at the heading to a hymn “Im Ton: beim Wasserflussen Babylon” (“To the tune ‘By the Streams of Babylon’”), or “Im eigener Ton” (“To its own tune”, ie not a well-known ballad tune of the time etc.). I don’t have much experience with German hymnody so I don’t know how widespread this was (we have some Lutheran hymnals in German and English at home that use a similar system, but they’re all published in America so I don’t know if they’re using an American system), but that is indeed how it worked in the Ausbund, which is of course much older than any American hymnody.
Simple, Cause I like it.
Goodness, what a whopper of a title. Google says this:
…and where a hymn commencing “Hark, from the tomb, a doleful sound,” was sung to such a dismal measure that > the very dogs howled > to hear it…
Although it’s not enlightening me much as to the author of this pearl. Isaac Watts?
Good! That there’s the best reason of them all 
Goodness, what a whopper of a title.
Actually, that’s just the first line as your book there says; I don’t know if the hymn has a proper title. I got it from The Sacred Harp, which names hymns by their tunes.
Although it’s not enlightening me much as to the author of this pearl. Isaac Watts?
Sure thing! At least accordign to The Sacred Harp, which isn’t always known for accuracy. It is a rather melancholy hymn, especially without the fourth verse as The Sacred Harp sets it! Grrr. Though the tune isn’t se bad; must have been set to something less cheery in that book. Nother example of “tunes” and “songs”
EDIT: The hymn is indeed by Isaac Watts; it appears in Hymns and Spiritual Songs.
If you want a more complete selection of tunes, go to the session and enter the discussions. There are two recent threads, one of which lists 300 “essential” reels, and 150 essential jigs. Or is it the other way around? Either way, you have several years of work ahead of you.
No doubt about that in my case! 
Hmm… twice as many essential reels as essential jigs. But, I think I know lots more jigs than reels. Guess I’ve got some catching up to do.
I took a look at them. I am still in shock. 
With my rate of learning tunes, it will be a long-lived hobby.
The Foinn Seisiun volumes 1 and 2 from Ceoltoiri Culturlainne has a good selection of some of the “common” session tunes, 220 tunes to be exact. They’re done in sets of course, but each tune is it’s own tract listing for easier listening while picking up the tune I guess. Check it out.