How many of you keep tune lists? I have attempted to keep a list of tunes i know so if certain ones dont get played much at sessions i remember to go back and keep them refreshed, or i will forget how to play them. Though now i realize that i have started to associate tunes with their names, and sometimes if a tune comes up that i know but cant recall its name sometimes i cant play it, for some wierd reason. Often times midway thru i will remember the tunes name and it all rushes back into my fingers.
anton
Yup, except that I hardly ever refer to it, so it’s incomplete and pretty useless. I also suffer from the same memory dysfunction of being distracted by not remembering what tune I’m playing.
I did until about a year ago. And then there were a bunch of tunes I accumulated at sessions and still can’t name, then a bunch I learned from albums that nobody else here knows so I’ve forgotten them. 
I do. It is as much a tool to help me practice as anything else. I have them listed and the first few notes, so that I have a chance of actually remembering it. I swore, last year at the St. Louis Tionól, that I would double it by this year’s event, and managed to do so. I mark the ones I can play fairly well differently than the ones I really just barely know… so I can tell which ones need more practice than others… It’s good to sit and just go through it and remind myself of how many I’ve “learned” so far… the more of them I learn, the easier it is to learn them… and to recognize patterns and remember names… practice does that, I’m told. 
I have a big list at home that I rarely look at and another battered one, much shorter, that I take to the pub, as I want to jog my memory constantly as to what we can all play. It’s a pleasure to revisit the big list every now and then because there are many tunes on it that I thought awkward to play when I put them on the list but which I now find easier as my playing has developed. I think if you don’t keep a list at all some very nice tunes may inadvertently be allowed to drop out of your repertoire over time.
My list contains such entries as “Reel on track 4, 3rd tune, of the Patrick Street one that Bill lent me.” 
Annie,
I also have a tune list that I started when I was taking lessons. I’m really organized (because my memory is not) and I have the binder with the sheet music of the tunes divided into jigs, reels, etc. I also have a list of the tunes at the begining of the book. Your idea of including the first few notes with the titles is a good one. I am always forgetting how tunes start or I confuse one with another. Do you include the notes in regular musical notation or do you use ABC? Either way, it’s a great idea.
Mike
I don’t know that it conforms at all to ABC, but it seems similar. I use lower case letters for the lower octave, and upper case for the upper… Here’s an example of how I show them (I keep longer notes for the ones I don’t know as well, in case I need even more of a hint 
):
Danny O’Keefe’s Slide … Am/D … aEEDbabDb
Dingle Regatta … G/D … DcDED babDb aagabag
…
Lord Mayo … A/D … ea gabE EDbDE
Love Won’t You Marry Me … D/D … ddegab ageeecege ddegab cDEDbag
I use a graphics program, so I have the name, key and notes in separate columns, which makes it easier to see, but that doesn’t transfer to this format, so I inserted the “…” stuff. It works.