Old age is a terrible thing -- but I wasn't any better at this when I was young. So maybe it was the drugs, but...

I cannot keep the names of jigs, reels, hornpipes, etc. connected to the tunes themselves. There are so many tunes with so many names...some with multiple names. And lots of them aren't all that different from lots of others. Occasionally I successfully hook the first few bars to a particular name, but remembering the first four bars of Father Kelly's from Jackie Coleman's from Bobby Casey's from Humours of (Insert One Of A Dozen Names Here) from everything else -- jaysus. Then throw in the Irish tune names, which I can't even pronounce, much less hook something memorable to.

How do you guys do it? Tips? Tricks? Dietary supplements? Or am I just going to have to get used to carrying around a fake book?

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Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn't all right, it isn't the end.

I don't think there's any reason to be overly concerned with tune names.

I've known a couple good players over the years who didn't know the names to most of the tunes they played.

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

Everybody's memory is a little different. For some, the name of the tune helps.

I'm one who finds that the name of the tune helps. My other memory job is the first phrase. Not so much the whole phrase, but the pieces of the first measure or two that trigger the rest of the tune to start flowing.

(But, to confess, I'm not all that good at remembering how to start tunes, except for the ones I am working on regularly).

I wouldn't worry about remembering the names of the tunes, either. If anything, for me it's mostly just a way of keeping track of what I know, and maybe it's easier to tell someone that, for example, "you should learn Kesh jig" rather than "you should learn the jig that starts like this".

Moreover, the name of the tune helps me to connect it to the possible other tunes that I'm used to playing in the same set. Say it's a set of three tunes and I remember one name, then I can usually remember the two other tunes as well, even though I wouldn't remember their names.

Found a new strategy on a thread on another board that might work for me...incipits! The name of a tune followed by the first 2 - 4 bars...just enough to get the gears meshed on a tune.

A little cheatsheet like this could have lots of tunes in a format small enough for a vest pocket, and would quickly tie the name of each tune to its unique beginning. Kind of like what my brain should be doing anyway.

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Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn't all right, it isn't the end.

I have seen some really beautiful Incipits that were ring bound and laminated.
Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

For me the more important question is: How does on keep a large amount of tunes in memory? So far I only know 5, so I can play them all every day, but I'm very much hoping (and working on making it happen) that the number will increase...

Sometimes, I just make up a name with my playing buddies when nobody remembers what the tune was called. The multiple names that some tunes have could lead to confusion as well. There is a popular Irish number called Gary Owen that my guys play a lot. It became politically volatile here because of its association with General Custer of the 7th US Cavalry.The Irish Brigade played it in their assault on Fredericksburg during the Civil War too, so the tune is not entirely Custer's, but to avoid drawing heat, we call it by yet another name coined by a singer. We call it Tim O'brien's Gary Owen, and one of our guys sing it while I play the Bb. So, there is confusion everywhere.

I'm still a novice, but I have about 40 or so tunes that I can play pretty easily from "memory". Honestly, most of it for me is muscle memory. Someone will call a song that I know at the session and my fingers do all the work without too much thinking. I'm still getting used to being able to do this since I've only been working on tunes for the last year, but a session is a good test to try to call up the tunes you've learned. (I should also mention that I am not gifted musically. I have to work very hard to make any progress and even that progress is mediocre.) So I think the more opportunities you get to play with others, the better you'll learn them and the less you need to practice the same tunes regularly, that is to say, sooner than you know it, you'll start packing away the tunes. I certainly never thought I'd be at 40 tunes after a year.

(The session I am a part of meets weekly. I choose to learn tunes based on what they play at the session and being there encourages me to learn more and more tunes.)

I probably know the names of less than 2% of the tunes I know....I often ask the name of this or that tune all the time but I rarely remember them...prolly why I know such a small percententage of tune names This has come up before where I've met people who were annoyed that I did not know the names of such and such a tune... they thought it an insult to the composer...I can understand their passion but I, personally, wouldn't be too bothered by the names of tunes and how one retains them I've written tunes myself that I have a hard time recalling the names of

Yes back in the 1980s when I was playing a lot more ITM than I do now I had that sort of thing. It was full-size sheets of music notation paper, with the first 2 bars of each tune, and the tune name.

It was organised by genre and key. So there were pages of D Major reels, the A minor reels, and so forth.

I had these sheets in a binder, and whenever I practiced I would run through as many tunes as I could. It generally was a practice aid and not something I would take to sessions or gigs.

The problem I ran into was that there are quite a few A minor reels with nearly identical 2nd parts. So for those I had to write the beginning of the 2nd part too. Otherwise it's easy to go into the 2nd part of a different reel!

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle

Errol Flynn's

Tim Obrien's Mick Ryan's Lament is a song which poignantly addresses the conflict of the Irish young men who came from Ireland and idealistically joined the army only to find they were being used to chase people off their own native land, something they had despised at home. That song uses the tune Gary Owen as it was the marching "song" for the 7th Calvary and still is used by the 1st Calvary division.

We used to have US Army veterans request it from time to time. In modern American military use it is often coupled with The Campbell's Are Coming. It took us a few youtube searches to figure out why they thought we weren't "playing the whole thing." These tunes are quite connected in military parades and funerals. That also explained why they thought we were playing it too fast. Wikipedia will gives a good short read on Gary Owen.

At that time we also had a singer who would break out "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye" right after. This song is a strong contrast to the American rewriting of the same song "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Needless to say there was some discomfort in that room.


John Riley is another song by Tim Obrien dealing with an actual historical event. These songs were part of an album called The Crossing which was collaboration with John Williams, John Doyle, and Winnie Horan. I may have missed some other artist in there. If you enjoy the old time style and the Irish/American history of that era it may be an interesting listen. I enjoyed it enough to buy it, lose it, and buy it again.

I played with a group, Cowboy Celtic, for 10+ years. Our leader, David Wilke, wrote a song called "Custer Died A Runnin' and it is a big hit for him. Custer and his men were actually running for their lives when they decided to attack the natives that were gathered at the Little Big Horn. It's been proven based on cartridge shell placements on the battle sight. We used to play MMM's Westfests quite regularly and Michael would always have a Native Chief open the daily ceremonies. At one Westfest, one Native Chief approached Michael Martin Murphey after one daily ceremony. Murphey said that this Chief rarely speaks and when he approached him he was expecting some great, sage advice or wisdom. The Chief says, "Mr. Murphey (yes with an E), "you know that song "Custer Died A Runnin"'?" Murphey anciously answers "yes" and await the wise words to follow. The Chief says, "Can you get me a copy of it?" Then quietly saunters away! I love re-telling this story!