Somebody starts a tune at a session. All the musician around jump in, an eager pleasure playing on their faces. You sit there, tap you foot, hold your whistle, and you tell yourself: “I know this tune, I know this tune!” But for the life of you, you can’t think of what it is or how to play it.
Has that ever happened to you? It happens to me and usually, in a flash, I either remember the tune and join in, or my fingers just start playing the thing, leaving my mind behind. But sometimes that awful I know this tune moment drags on and on.
What is odd is that there is one tune which I know well and can play comfortably, but which always takes me a long time (that is, into the C-part) to recognize. It’s Merrily Kiss the Quaker’s Wife. Most tunes I’ll recognize within two bars, and if I don’t one week then I will the next. But not that scandalous Quaker’s Wife. Why? How?
No, it isn’t just you, but I expect that it may take different forms in different people. In my case, someone will call the name of a tune that I know I know, but I can’t for the life of me remember how it starts. If they “hum a few bars” for me, then I’m ready to go and I can play the whole thing through.
It all depends on how one’s memory works – or doesn’t.
OH NO You AREN’T alone on this one. It happens almost every session I’m in. Maybe I should go back and read my posting on Alzheimer’s, because some nights I really think that I may have it.
Like last night, we played a string of reels and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the titles in the order we played them, just joined and played them.
Bloomfield, usually this happens to me when I DO know the tune, but on a different instrument from what I’m playing.
The other situation for me is Cliffs of Moher (which I don’t know well but like very much). There doesn’t seem to be a session that goes by when I don’t ask someone what was that cool tune.
Try this…get the tune Merrily Kiss the Quaker’s Wife in your head…now, in time with the music in your head, visually the Quaker Oats guy grabbing this stunning woman, and giving her a HUGE, tonsil-exploring kiss IN TIME WITH THE BEGINNING OF THE TUNE, maybe bending her over backward and have her arms waving in tempo.
Got the mental image? Bet ya you remember what tune is playing a lot quicker than before!
Like last night, we played a string of reels and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the titles in the order we played them, just joined and played them.
And then you get people like me, who are in the opposite boat! I generally know all the names (and the alternate names) for just about every tune played in the sessions I have attended, but I can only hack about 1 in 20 or so songs on my whistle. It comes from spending more time listening to the 200+ CDs in my collection, and not enough time trying to play them. But then again, I can listen to a pro do it, or I can terrify the neighbors....
This is absolutely maddening! It’s like trying to put names with faces. I think that’s why many of the tunes played in the old trad don’t even have names…somebody just starts playing something and everybody joins in. I wish there was some method of association. It would be an interesting subject. GM
Granny, there IS a way to tag most tunes to their names. There is a way to remember almost anything.
Saddle the Pony is easy…imagine taking a big heavy saddle and heaving it over a pony’s back. ba-da-da-da-DUM (saddle lands on pony’s back on the DUM) then the pony skitters around…ba-da-da-dee-da-da-da.
Maid Behind the Bar. . .I can see her cleaning the bartop in time with the music, beer steins over flowing in the background.
Old Copper Plate…remember the guys in the circus who spun plates on poles? I see him doing his thing with huge copper plates.
I have some problem with tunes named after a person, unless I can put a firm face to the name, or twist the name into something: Dinny Delaney ==> Tinny Dough Lay Knee…make a mental image of wrapping a huge ball of dough and laying it on your knee.
The trick is to come up with something so bizarre that you really can’t get it out of your head. Think BIG (HUGE rolling figs chasing ENORMOUS lips…bouncing and slipping over ice (because Fig for a Kiss is a slip jig) to the tune.) Think MULTITUDES. . .thousands upon thousands of marshmallows being raked up in tempo to Rakes of Mallow.
But be sure to make the mental image surreal, and active, and in time to the music. Don’t make a static image.
Slightly OT, but I find myself playing the first half of a tune OK, then forgetting which second half (turnaround?) belongs with it, so I tack on any second half in the same key.
I end up playing Saddle the Kesh, The Frost is the Strand, The Right Boys Harvest, St Anne’s Skylark, Martin Wynne’s Convenience, and many many more.
This happens a lot with Hornpipes of which I think I know a lot (but obviously none too well).
What about the times when you hear a tune and think that it is vaguely familier but can’t play along until someone says the name of it, almost as though the name was a key that unlocked the memory. The human brain can be very weird.
Oh, Martin do I sympathise with THAT! That’s a good part of playing with 5+ strong melody players: someone is bound to get the second part right and be insistent about it.
I remember hearing seasoned session players talking about how they had a “passive” repertoire of tunes that they could play along but could not start off (i.e. remember). I thought that wast strange at the time. Of course, back then I only knew about three tunes, and all of those “active.” Now that I am up to thirty tunes I understand very well what they mean.
