Just curious. I sat down and tried to list all the tunes I know. Then went through my tune books and added some more. Got together with friends to play and added some more. This was some time ago.
Now, when I look at my list, there are some of the tunes that don’t come readily to mind. I shared the list with a friend I play with, and now he (in good humor) holds me accountable for all the tunes I listed: “Come on now, it’s on your list!”
And I always seem to be jotting down lists of tunes to learn next. It’s all getting rather cumbersome. Do people secretly consult their tune lists to decide what to play next at a session? Do you swap lists with your playing buddies? Or, since it’s an oral tradition, should I throw mine out? Lately it seems that it’s reminding me of how much I’ve forgotten at least as often as reminding me of the tunes I still know.
At a normal session, I don’t use a list, nor do I know anyone who does.
A trio of us did do a gig last week where they wanted it to be “like a session”, and I did make a list of possible tunes to play in case we got stumped (figured it was unprofessional to sit there for ten minutes trying to think of something to play), but it never really got used.
I do have a list of tunes to learn next. (Or at least I did – it was right on my desk this morning, but I can’t seem to find it now.) And I have a list (on my computer, so it’s safe) of names that need to have tunes written for them.
Part of the problem with lists is once you’ve been at this a while, you start accumulating lots of tunes you don’t have a name for. Or tunes whose names are basically useless. (Like “Paddy Fahy’s” – he wrote a bunch of tunes and never named any of them, as far as I know.) And just because you have a name for a tune doesn’t mean your buddies have the same name for it.
When I started playing, I jotted down the tunes I knew on a list. I keep it on my computer, because it’s easier to maintian.
I use it mostly to jog my memory when practicing. When I go long periods without consulting it, I find myself focusing on the nice tunes I just learned, and let the older stuff languish. And then invariably, someone will play one of those older tunes at session, and I’m rusty as heck. Since the list is a couple hundred tunes long at this point, I can’t play them all at one sitting…but I can note on my list which tunes need more work, which haven’t had practice in a while, etc.
As for sessions…
In Houston, all of the sessions were list-free…occasionally someone would bring sheet music as a courtesy if they really wanted everyone to learn a certain tune (though most poeple didn’t end up learning the tunes brought this way). But then again, the Houston session has been goin on for 20-something years, and some of the players have been playing in it the whole time.
At the sessions I’ve been to in Dallas recently (which isn’t all of them, mind you), I’ve seen more lists, to help organize who all knows what. I think partially, this is because the session and musicians are newer, so you can’t just come in and whip out a tune and expect anyone (except maybe the chord-strummers) to play with you. I would expect that in 20 years, there’d be a core of old-timers that know hundreds of session tunes, and that there wouldn’t be any real lists (except among newer players trying to accumulate the “core tunes”)
I keep my “tunes I want to learn” in a folder on my hard drive. When I hear a tune I like, I scour the net and my CD’s for examples, variations, sheet, etc, and dump it all in the folder for the next time I have a chunk of time for learning. I think it’s got like 1800 files in it right now :roll:
I have a folder of MP3s of tunes which I’m currently interested in – I usually try to keep it about 20 tracks long. (It only sort of agrees with the written list of tunes to learn.)
In practise, it’s not clear to me how well this works, however. At best it helps the tunes seep into my brain; I usually still have to sit down and work out the notes the hard way.
I find it of greatest use in working out variations and finding verisions that are closest to what I play in session. I usually end up finding five or six recordings plus sheet & ABC from several sources. I usually end up with 5-10 files for every tune I’m interested in.
There seems to be a point at which one spends more time organizing tunes than playing or learning them. But if I ever got started with an i-pod it would be fun to start an audio file of tunes instead of a paper list.
Maybe next session I’ll just try writing on the inside of my arm, under my sleeve, some tunes to start. Nobody would know.
We usually have a list on hand just for the fact that we have a lot of ‘come and goers’ so they can have an idea of what the rest of us are sure to know how to play, and also if they play something really awesome I or everyone else wants to learn I can jot it down on the list so I can take it home and learn it. Also I can then find the sheet music and pass it around to the folks in the session that know how to read it.
I think lists are usefull for jogging memories when people are getting to the point of “oh… I don’t know… what should we play…” and you start spending more time on deciding than playing!
A session can get away without a list, but a show needs a list. Otherwise the group falls back on the same old stuff every time. Personally I like to keep a list in my pocket even at a session. You can forget what tunes you know.
I totally agree with this..With the band I was in in Houston, we were pretty strict about listing everything, so that we didn’t have big gaps while we figured out what we wanted to play. I was so anal about it that I would make the 4 45 minute sets fit in 25% of a piece of paper, so you could fold it in half twice, and have 1 set of tunes on each side like a flip book that you could keep discreetly at your feet. Nothing bothered me or (or felt more unprofessional) than fumbling around for what to play next.
Often, we’d switch a song or tune out here and there, depending on the crowd mood. But even so, those changes were within a definite framework of ebb and flow we wanted within the sets.
I’ve only played Irish music for 3 years, and in the last year it’s been a lot less so I’m losing (Irish) tunes and not gaining any new ones. But that heads off on a tangent . . .
As a beginning player with a limited repertoire, keeping a list had several benefits for me:
PRACTICE.
The list helped me remember what to practice, because I DO forget tunes if I don’t play them every so often. As my list grew, I tried to go through it periodically and see what needed refreshing. If I don’t do that, the tunes gradually evaporate from my feeble little brain. (which the Irish ones have been doing, fast, since I stopped playing much Irish music and stopped making an effort to cycle through my list every few weeks )
ANSWER “WHAT DO YOU KNOW?”
I also found that the list helped enormously if I was put on the spot: people kindly ask the beginner “What do you know?” [and “Not much, you?” isn’t what they expect to hear. ] Already feeling nervous, and now the center of attention, my reaction was to forget what I know. I could pull out my list and either glance at it to pick something, or even hand it to someone and let them look for tunes we know in common. In a group of people who don’t play together often and don’t know what they have in common, if you’re the person who pulls out a list and hands it around, then the others will be picking tunes you know . If the group is trying hard to include everyone, then the person with the smallest repertoire will be the limiting factor, so having a list of that small repertoire helps minimize the long back-and-forth of “Do you know X?” However, from my very limited experience and much greater reading, this doesn’t/ wouldn’t happen in an actual session.
BUILD SHARED REPERTOIRE. I’ve traded lists with several people, and although we each may only get around to learning a few tunes from the other’s list, it’s a start toward shared repertoire. I don’t pick up tunes by osmosis hearing them in one session; I have to make a concerted effort.
Summary: I highly recommend that beginners in particular, and anyone with a limited repertoire, keep a list and have it with you if you might be playing with people you don’t know well. If it doesn’t seem appropriate to pull it out, just keep it tucked away.
Hi Sarah! I have your list, you have mine. At least next time we get together we can do the “let’s see what we both know” routine. Just don’t expect me to be able to play everything I wrote down! Thanks for sharing some of my favorites.
A list is good to keep for practice, so you don’t neglect any tunes. Many of us are neophytes of some sort, and we’re probably much better off keeping a list.
I have all the tunes from the Walton’s 101 slow airs CD on my Mac in an iTunes folder. I have them sorted by priorty, and work on the highest priority ones (5 stars). Once I have a tune down pretty well, it drops to the lowest priority (1 star), and that makes up my regular practice list. I’ve also added airs from Mick Woodruff’s site and a few from Clips and Snips and other sources.
I tend to use the dots to learn a tune, then work on playing along with the CD version.
At the moment, I have 27 on my list for learning, and another 14 that I imagine that I know. I have another dozen or so that I’ve learned from other (written) sources.
I also have a computer-based list of non-IrTrad songs that I like to play on the whistle–folk, old-timey, blues, Chinese, and Bluegrass songs and tunes that I play on guitar.
Just a couple of days ago, I spent a few minutes building a list of fiddle tunes that I play a lot on guitar, and it comes to only 57, though I’m sure I missed a few. I don’t even have a list of tunes to learn on the guitar (though I may work up “Shuckin’ the Corn”, now that I’m in an area where that one seems to be popular with the banjo players). I think that there are so few because Bluegrass doesn’t rely that much on tunes. There’s a lot of singing, and it’s seldom a problem to improvise a break to a song.
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] Already feeling nervous, and now the center of attention, my reaction was to forget what I know. I could pull out my list and either glance at it to pick something, or even hand it to someone and let them look for tunes we know in common. In a group of people who don’t play together often and don’t know what they have in common, if you’re the person who pulls out a list and hands it around, then the others will be picking tunes you know