Yes, this seems to work for me as well. 
You don’t always have a choice on how many tunes to work on. Circumstances dictate.
Two scenarios:
Once a year, my wife & I go over to Leeds for an RSCDS musicians’ workshop. This is an all-day practice session for an evening dance, so the music will consist of around 15 - 18 sets of tunes, total anywhere between 60 and 90 tunes. You get sent the music in advance, several weeks if you’re lucky, only a fortnight or so if unlucky. The first couple of years I went along more as a chauffeur, and didn’t expect to keep up with much of the music. I was gobsmacked the first time I attempted to learn the lot: 77 tunes, at least 60 of which were totally new to me. Bear in mind with sets, you’re not only learning the tunes, you’re learning the transitions, which can be trickier than the tunes. I would say this is too many to work on at once, but if circumstances dictate, hard work results - and progress!
Second scenario - my sister gave me William Winter’s Quantocks Tune Book last Christmas, and it’s full of terrific tunes. I went through, trying this, trying that, and ended up with about ten starred favourites, which I played over & over, not really trying to learn them, just enjoying them, but of course before long I had learned them. That seemed to me a comfortable number to ‘work on’, except that it didn’t feel like work.
Other scenarios might fall between these two extremes.
OK, 60 new tunes in two weeks, plus refresher on 17 old ones.
Could you be a little more specific than “hard work”? Did you play each tune over and over until you fell from exhaustion, with instructions for a family member to douse you with water so you could rise up and keep going?
Was there some sort of method or system you used?
I didn’t say I succeeded in learning them all! (only a few, the first year)
Nor is my ‘method’ necessarily one I would recommend.
But roughly what I would normally do is: first, play through all the tunes just to find out which whistle to use on each one, which ones I like, which ones are specially tricky, which ones are more or less (for me) unplayable. It might take a couple of sessions just to work all the way through.
Then, on the next session I might go through all the tunes that need the D whistle, possibly playing tunes 2-3 times each, maybe more. I really don’t like playing a tune umpteen times at once. If I find a set that can all be played on one whistle (a relative rarity in this particular workshop), then I might try playing the tunes 1-2-3-4-2-3-4-1 which is a fairly standard order.
Another time I might play all the tunes that need the C whistle, or the E, or the A…
And the length of each session depends on external constraints rather than what is ideal for learning. But I wouldn’t normally continue if I wasn’t enjoying it.
The ultimate aim for me with that workshop is survival: in other words to be able to hang in there and keep up. To be able to play the tunes well, or stylishly, is more than I would hope for. But each year I pick up a half-dozen new tunes that I’ll go on playing, just because I really like them.
sackbut, if this is RSCDS you’re talking about, are you playing from sheet music for the dance? I’d consider learning 60 tunes well enough I could play them from sheet music in three weeks to be hard but pretty reasonable, whereas trying to memorize 60 tunes in three weeks would be insanely hard.
My usual systematic approach for learning tunes is to make a playlist of things I want to work on. Right now my current one has 22 tracks, of which 7 are songs and the rest tunes or airs. The tunes are about a 50/50 mix of tunes I want to learn and tunes I know on which I want to continue working on improving my style. The tracks are the best versions of the tunes I have access to, players like Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford, Peter Horan, Rufus Guinchard, Liz Carroll, Mick O’Brien, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh. I try to listen to the playlist at least three or four times a week.
That said, usually I only actively work on learning one or two tunes at a time. For instance, last week I grabbed a whistle and started playing along with one of the polkas on the playlist. Once I had it, I started playing it without the recording, trying to work it into my memory. Since then I’ve also started fiddling around with one of the reels, but not seriously yet.
From music, but to a degree memorising, as I can’t read accurately at full dance tempo. The ones that in the end I play successfully (ie keeping up with the others without too many fluffs) will in fact have been more or less memorised; but I agree, learning 60 new tunes by ear alone in a couple of weeks would be in the genius category.
And unexpectedly I’ve just been handed another similar challenge - playing on Saturday for a friend’s 80th, in a scratch band made up of her friends, most of whom I don’t know, the music being led by one of the people I don’t know. I had guessed it would mostly be familiar tunes in the English/eclectic ceilidh/barn dance tradition. Last night I got copies of the music: of the 40 tunes we’ll ‘probably’ use, I know 6; of the 28 ‘probably not’ tunes, I know 10, sort of.
The tunes are in the tradition I expected, but mostly newish compositions (ie composers credited). At a cursory glance they seemed mostly straightforward, but the first one I tried to play proved challenging - in C, with some F sharps, some G sharps, some D sharps, and some C sharps. I don’t think it was written by a whistle player.
So for the next four days I will be working on at least 34 new tunes…
Depends on what you mean by ‘learn’ a tune really.
I can get a tune pretty fast by ear and play it OK ina day but come to a session and it’s completely gone. I think it actually is a matter of allowing it time to bed into your brain.
As for remembering all those tunes… goodness knows how i do it but once it’s in my head it stays there and I can play it when I hear it played. I can’t always fish it out on it’s own though.
I have been playing for 8 years now, starting on tin whisle, moving to the flute 6 yrs ago.
To be honest, I am still learning - I usually practice 2 tunes for 2 weeks, unless I get another tune on my mind that ‘wants to be played first’.
Unless I got a good recording on my iPod, I usually find the tune on my smartphone from an app called Tunepal (www.tunepal.org) – it finds the tunes, showing me the sheet music, abc and play the midi, and I can control the speed.
It really helps me out leaning tunes.
The speed I learn the tunes in, depends completely on the key. Dmaj, and Emin is fairly easy, while Bmin or A-mixolydian is pretty hard for me to play on a D-flute, but still possible as there are usually no half holes.
But it really depends on the flow of the tune, and how it is composed..
As someone else said – it is the transitions you learn, and when you have been playing over 200 tunes (I would say I can play around 60 without practising them first), you are learning the language of irish music, and then you tend to copy/paste certain transitions from other tunes where the transitions are used.
3 rules of thumbs to pass on from me:
- Take it easy and play in your own pace (you got PLENTY of time on 70 bpm).
- Attend sessions and gigs when you are able to (when playing with others, the tune you are playing, gets carried by the others, making it easier to play on ‘autopilot’.
- Practice 2 tunes at a time and good a playing them over some weeks, then continue!
I’m going to answer this again, because I’m attending a slow session in which we learn 2 new tunes every 2 weeks. I find that manageable, except that of course I’m also learning tunes on my own. It isn’t a problem remembering the notes, but on concertina it’s more about remembering the fingering. and on whistle it is too, only less difficult. to really play them well, I should probably cut back, to give each tune more time. But I get other tunes stuck in my head, and I just HAVE to figure them out, because I like them so much!
I started playing whistle and playing in a slow session about six months ago. We learn two new tunes a month but they already knew some tunes when I joined so I currently have two dozen tunes in various stages of learnedness. I recently stumbled upon a tactic that seems to help me when feeling overwhelmed by the number of tunes in progress. I practice in one key a day. I start with the scale and exercises in that one key and then move on to 3 to 5 tunes in the same key. I may be learning the skeleton of a new tune, ornamenting a second tune, memorizing a third tune, and increasing speed on a fourth tune. But they are all in the same key so it reinforces the same fingering patterns, particularly transitioning from the lower to higher register. This tactic seems to provide the benefit of repetition without the boredom of playing the same tune for an hour.
Wow, you lot are too good for me. I am currently learning about twenty tunes. Most of them have been in my learning list for nigh on ten years - about as long as I have been learning to play. Come to think of it, I do not think that I have ‘learnt’ a single tune. I am not even sure how I will know when I have learnt a tune. How does one tell? What does it feel like?
Maybe it is different with dance tunes, but I am always hearing new variations, improvements or different phrasing to try out. And my beauty of what I hear in my head never quite makes it out into the real world the way I want it. My joy in playing is always tinged with an aspiration to improve.
I dream of knowing one tune, I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to know thousands.
I wanted to thank everyone for the contributions to this thread thus far. It’s been interesting and very helpful to me to read the about the different tactics, methods, and numbers of tunes whistlers take on at once.
I’d like to agreed with DrPhill’s concept that you are never DONE learning a tune. Tunes evolve, get enhanced, improved, etc. For me, I have “learned” a tune when I can get through the entire tune by memory. After that, the fun starts- experimenting with ornaments, tempo, different keys, etc.
Thanks for sharing everyone! Love to hear from more!
Steve
I am not even sure how I will know when I have learnt a tune. How does one tell? What does it feel like?
For me, I have “learned” a tune when I can get through the entire tune by memory.
Reminds me of a Frank Zappa quote:
“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.”
the “right” notes are the information
knowing a tune is beyond the right notes
…
playing a tune musically is beyond knowing it
…
I consider that I have learnt a tune when I do not have think about the notes, only what I or we are saying with them.
It is quite obvious that you know a tune is this way (which I have not explained very well), but perhaps not so obvious if you don’t know tunes this way.
thoughts on the quote
it does not really apply to learning a tune
a tune does not have one meaning, or one truth, or one anything - it is partly what makes music so wonderful
different players, different listeners, different time and the music is different