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?
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.
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!
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!
Thanks, that’s good information, people. Another tune that crossed the Atlantic is Bonnie Blue Flag of the Confederacy. The original version is an Irish tune know as The Jaunting Irish Car (I think). The Irish Brigade put their own words to it. For that matter, Marching through Georgia, a tune often played by Sherman’s men as they tore through the South has an Irish version as well. Whiskey in the Jar has an Irish Brigade version too, which I really like.
Tyler, Google David Wilke and Cowboy Celtic for more examples…Dave researched the connection between the Cowboy world and Irish and Scottish music. He created a new sound…our harpist did her masters in ethnomusicology on the band…one prime example is the famous Cowboy song “The Streets of Laredo” that came from the 1600’s Ireland and was originally called “The Bard of Armagh” Michael Martin Murphey sang it on our Wrangler awarded album for outstanding album of the year for 1999… Arthur Cormac also sang a track that was the last known Cowboy song written in gaelic, in Montana…countless examples on the 7 albums we released if you are curious.
Peter Kennedy once did an interview with Scan Tester (the Sussex concertina player), and Scan’s numbering of tunes (No. 1 step dance etc) came up. He explained that when he was invited to play at Cecil Sharpe House (headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society - EFDSS) he was asked what the names of the tunes were. This was at the end of the 1950’s I think. Anyway, he couldn’t remember the names (or never knew them, or maybe had no reason to know them), so he said that he hit upon the idea of numbering them. The only problem was that next time he was there, he couldn’t remember which number he’d given to which tune so confusion has reigned ever since
I play a tune that for a while I thought was called the “Wiltshire Six Hand Reel.” Then I heard the “Wiltshire Six Hand Reel”, and realised that it wasn’t. I then took to calling it “Not the Wiltshire Six Hand Reel” for want of anything to identify it, and the name has been learnt by band members and session goers. A kind soul once told me the “actual” name of the tune, but I cannot for the life of me remember it, so it goes on in life as “Not the Wiltshire Six Hand Reel”, which is of course now its real reel name
That’s a very interesting subject, tracing American folk-songs back to their roots in other countries.
One can trace the same song (the words, the text) from America to various English, Scottish, and Irish versions. The melody will sometimes be similar, but oftentimes a song acquires an entirely different melody at some point.
It’s fascinating to trace some of the Child ballads, like the one that first appears as Locke Hospital in Scotland and spread and evolved in various countries and regions to become songs as diverse as Saint James Infirmary and Streets Of Laredo.
The same melody will show up as an instrumental piece with different titles, and as the tune for various sets of words.
One example is the tune of an Irish jig that was used as the melody for The Yellow Rose Of Texas.
The famous West Virginia fiddler Edden Hammons (b 1875) played an instrumental tune he called Queen Of The Earth And Child Of The Skies which is a version of the Irish tune The Blackbird. (Well, one of them, there are various Irish tunes with that name.)
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 
