This has probably been asked on this forum in the past, but thought I’d get brave and ask. If you were to list the most oft-played tunes at IT sessions in a ‘Top 10’, what would they be?
Starr
There aren’t any. Anyone who says otherwise is inexperienced and talking out their a$$. Every session is unique and will have its favorites. I play in multiple sessions every week and no two are exactly alike. So the best thing is to get “stuck in” at a particular session, get to know the people involved, and learn their repertoire.
Now there are tunes which are well-known because of age or famous recordings, but that doesn’t make them good session fodder.
I think you need another zero on your list to come up with something more accurately representative. There’s just so much variety. If you are asking for yourself, what do you know already? If not, what’s your purpose for asking?
Nonetheless, in my very limited experience I would say that one pretty sure bet would be Silver Spear.
I do think there was another thread on this subject not too long ago but I’m not sure what terms to use to search for it. Anyone remember?
Carol
Is it this one? Question for Session Players - Top Six Session Tunes
I searched on “common session tunes list” and specified All terms.
I like dfernandez77’s graph at the end of the second page. It’s a decent list of tunes one ought to know. Now if only someone would go through it and mark what kind of tune each one is.
Instead of “top 10”, think maybe “top 100” or something. There are books out there with notation (gasp - did I actually say that?) that can give you a fairly reasonable selection for session tunes if that’s a way for you to go. Walton’s is one that comes to mind. A more daunting source would be the six volumes of Breathnach’s Ceol Rinnce na hÉireann series, but you’d soon get far afield from “standard fare”, whatever that is in the end.
What I’m trying to say is that Pat’s point is a valid one. Much of what gets played here in the Twin Cities will be different even from session to session, depending, and from community to community this holds true, too. For example, I was at a session in Chicago and struck up a couple of hornpipes that I thought were a safe bet, and nobody knew them! That was sort of embarrassing. I suppose you can’t go wrong with tunes like the Kesh, Connaughtman’s Rambles, and so on, and for those a book specifying “session tunes” may be a safe bet. Just don’t expect the selection to be universal to all.
Well, I think Starr’s question was pretty legitimate. I’m not sure that 10 is any better or worse a number than any other. Surely there are tunes that pop up frequently. “The Silver Spear” is one, “Swinging on a Gate” is another, and “Drowsy Maggie”, “Road to Lisdoonvarna” and “Kesh Jig” are a few more. You may hear them at a particular session and you may not, but most of us can agree that they’re common ones.
Still, I’d like to see someone who can really talk the way that Pat describes. (Besides the politicians, I mean). 
There will be tunes that most musicians will have in common, they can be a good opening for a conversation. But the yare a bit like the old ‘nice day today’ you get past them quickly. I am not sure walking into a setting and meting out a few yards of Silver Spear, Kesh, Drowsy Maggie and, god forbid, THE Kerry polka will be a good idea. Some of these may come up but a high density of the old favourites may not be your best option. Best approach would be just to learn the tunes you like best and take those along when you go out, once you settle into the environment, you may learn the specific tunes goign at that time. All the time you’d be building a store of tunes. Ten as good as any number? I wouldn’t think so, you will want a repertoire as broad as you can. Ten is merely, if anything, a start which will have you waiting patiently in the periphery until one of them comes up.
LOL.
Ten as good as any number? I wouldn’t think so, you will want a repertoire as broad as you can. Ten is merely, if anything, a start which will have you waiting patiently in the periphery until one of them comes up.
Very patiently, I’d think. I’ve been going to sessions more again recently. I’ve about 200 tunes or there abouts, although I’ve stopped counting. I join in on one tune in two or three, at the most. It would be less if they didn’t indulge me once or twice a night and ask me to start a set. I don’t mind: I love just sitting right there and soaking up the music and conversation up close.
Two tips: First, go because you want to listen, not to play. Second, have a few sets laid out before you go. If you sit down in a session, people will eventually strike up a conversation with you and ask you to play something. (You’d not want to repeat a tune that’s already been played that night).
But ofcourse you go to the sessions where the snobes go, unwelcoming to fresh players who only have the connaughtman’s rambles under their belt 
Yes, you do want a party piece for when you are put on the spot so the group can feel you up.
Gotta love the snobes: they can play. 
I hung out, just listening, for a while before joining in the sessions, and then I managed to get myself invited, rather than just sit down. The guy who did invite me said, “we don’t mind beginners, as long as they don’t try to start every set.” Good advice there. Now I am going almost every week, and picking up tunes. Like the other week the flute player looked at me significantly while playing The Old Flail, so I’ve learned that one, now. First time I went, they asked if I had The Pipe On the Hob (in D), and when I said I didn’t, they said, “well, that’s a nice one.” So I’ve learned that, too, together with the Goat on the Green which they played before it that night (I learned the Goat of a lovely little whistle clip sent by a friend). Played that last night when they asked me to start one. Also last night they played Palm Sunday and talked about what a lovely tune that is. I’ll pick that up tonight, I think it’s on Eavesdropper, amazing tune with a turn that left me a bit baffled harmonically.
Seems to me there are two or three different concepts going on here:
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The original request was for “most oft-played” tunes at sessions. That’s either going to vary completely from session to session, as Pat said, or it’s going to be some sort of weird statistical thing which won’t reflect the reality at very many sessions.
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I think maybe you’re thinking of the “most well-known” tunes, which would be a completely different thing.
So for instance, the five tunes you name. At our local session, I’d wager that every musician knows at least four of those tunes. However, I don’t think any of them are in the top 100 most commonly played tunes at our session. Everyone knows them, but they would be rarely, if ever, played. (“Silver Spear” would be the most common, and that would be maybe once every three or four sessions.)
So if you want to be able to start tunes and have people play with you no matter where you go, you want the ten most commonly known. But if you want to blend in with your local session, you need to sit a few weeks and figure out what they actually play.
At every session I’ve been to, at least a few tunes from L.E. McCullough’s 121 session tunes book have been played. I know that’s not exactly the answer to your your specific question, but as previously mentioned, your specific question doesn’t have a solid answer.
I find many of L.E.'s settings unusual, for example, his B-part of the Earl’s Chair is unlike what I hear people play.
So do I. Silver spear and dunmore lasses immediately come to mind as tunes that needed tweaking after learning from his settings. But the list of tunes in the book seem pretty common in sessions around these parts.
I have had good luck playing sessions in Oslo, Dublin, Edinburgh, Seattle, and Boston with tunes from the virtual session over on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/swf/folkmenu.html
Mind you, it will only get you in the door. Another good starting place is the classic album “Music At Matt Molloys” on Real World Records. The nice thing about learning from that CD is you get some class sets, combined with some serious ear training…
One last book, which only people in Seattle seem to know about, is their “Smoke in Your Eyes” compilation. It is hard to find (though a quick google search found it here: http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us/~fish.html) I have the pocket one, showed it to a friend at a session (NO I DIDN’T PLAY FROM IT), next thing I knew I had to order 5 from a friend in Seattle to ship over!
Sure, it isn’t 10 tunes, but as my friend says “You can’t really play a session until you have between 100-500 tunes”.
Peter, sounds like sessions in Clare have gotten a lot more, um…interesting since the last time I was over.
Do you ever wonder why you don’t get many women at your sessions (or perhaps why the ones you do get are dressed rather provocatively and can’t seem to actually play their instruments)?
Is the number one session tune in your neck of the woods “Touch Me If You Dare”? Followed closely by “I Will If I Can”?
There are plenty (possibly better) books to learn from, John Walsh’s session tune book, David Taylor’s Yellow and Blue books, Brid Cranitch’s also Yellow, Blue and Orange books (what’s with the colour coding?), Randy Miller’s fiddle tune book etc are all good sources for tunes. I went the Ceol Rinnce way but if’s sessions you’re after these few will do you, learn all tunes in any of them and you’ll be flying it.
Depends on where you are, from what I have seen in the book (I don’t actaully own it) they look pretty normal to me. Although, Larry only lives about an hour away and has hosted one of the sessions I go to. So those may be the “New Jersey” settings.
As for the Brid and Matt Cranitch books, they are good. Although, I have stumbled across some odd tunes in those.
My advice, if there is a session near you go to it and see what everyone is playing. Ask for the names if you want to look for the sheet music, other wise just let them get absorbed into your memory.
Norbeck’s ABC tunes are also a good place to start. If I hear a tune in a session and I don’t quite get it, I’ll look it up in Norbeck’s.
I want to thank you all for posting…this is great information, just the sort of thing I was hoping to get. (I noticed another thread above this one about session tunes, which I intend to read next.)
I posed my question here not knowing exactly how to ask for guidance. Since Tional in March, I’ve come back to the whistle (after being waylaid by bodhran-playing for awhile. ::insert appropriate bodhran joke here: Since March, I’ve been learning songs found in the 121 Favorite Session tunes, and have also been trying to pick up songs on CDs, such as the Bothy Band and, yes, Music at Matt Malloy’s. However, I wondered if those sources were both accurate (in the case of the 121 Tunes) and also relevant time-wise, since it has been a few years since the Bothy Band CDs were made. So, it occurred to me that these forums offer a superb source of knowledge on which tunes it might be good to start learning first and plucked up my courage to ask.
Again, thanks so much for all the good advice!
Starr