A question for all you grizzled session veterans out there:
How important is it to know the correct name of a tune?
I’m learning some tunes off my old “best of the Chieftains” tape (for some reason I’m inspired to learn Chieftains tunes these days ha ha HAAA!!!), and I get the idea some of the tune names are in the wrong order.
So, if you can play the tune, is it really considered important what it’s called? If so, I’m in serious trouble. :roll:
Tom
p.s. My real name if Jimmy Hoffa…
If the sessions I go to matter, knowing the names is only of moderate importance. We are fortunate to have a musician with a near eidetic memory for tunes and names (and enough free time to send all of the rest of us a .gif the next day if we need it!). If he doesn’t know the name, and the person who started it doesn’t know it, you run the risk of someone making a name up, or the dread Gan Ainm.
But it sure is nice when someone proposes a set, you can associate the name with the tune and move straight from one to the next without pausing to hear what the next tune is.
There is also a certain cache to knowing the names of tunes, so when a punter asks you can tell them what you just played.
We were talking about this not long ago, and I realized that I can name nearly any tune that isn’t just someone’s name. I have a ‘Fantasia’ like mental image of tunes like Maid Behind the Bar, and Saddle the Pony, and Fig for a Kiss, but I’m utterly unable to associate the name Mrs. McLeod’s Reel, or Father O’Flynn or any of the So-and-So’s Favorite with any tune. Does anyone have a technique to offer?
For me, It’s very important to know the tune name(s)…but then again, I have a tune-archive website, and it’s kind of a pain in the rear to have a bunch of tunes named “no name” in your list. I imagine it’d probably be fairly important to list it on a CD if you were selling them, also (unless you listed the tunes like “Polka set” and so on).
As far as the “exact name”, that’s kind of harder to pin down, as many tunes can share the same name (note I know two completely different tunes named Sliab na mBan, and two different tunes named Road to Lisdoonvarna). Tunes can each have several names, as well.
I started out my archive as kind of a ‘name nazi’. I was obsessed about finding the ‘right’ name for tunes..boy did I get over that in a hurry! Now I try to find the best ‘couple of’ names for tunes, based soley on my opinion and experience on what ‘best’ is (and hopefully, these will be names that most folks would know the tune by).
I have noticed for most everyone else at the Houston session, the name of the tune isn’t all that important. Occasionally someone will go “What’s the name of that tune?”…and as often as not, nobody knows. As I would expect, nobody really is ever bothered when that happenes.
The name isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, but does provide for a very handy label to stick on a tune for when you’re sharing it or talking about it. It’s usually a lot more convenient to ask “Hey, do you know The Blackthorn Stick?” than it is to ask “Hey, do you know this tune?” (followed by playing a short passage)..this is even more true when discussing things via the written word. If you only hear a tune once at session and want to learn it, it’d also be nice to have a tune name to go find it on a CD or find the sheet music for it.
Greg
The Wandering Whistler
Finding the correct name of the tune is sometimes difficult. Depending where you hear a tune, in Ireland, will have a bearing on what it’s called. So, a reel might be called ‘Steve Power’s’ (some hope) in one county and ‘The Quarrelsome Englishman’ (better chance) in another. I’ll come back when I have a real (pun intended) example.
Steve
Steve, that doesn’t surprise me one bit after driving in Ireland and having the roads called three or more different things, depending on whom you asked! Forget the numbers…NO ONE seemed to know them.
Navigation took on a whole new concept. We never did get the miles/kilometers figured out from the road signs, so we took to spreading out three different maps, and saying ‘If we go about five more minutes down this road, there should be a left, then a right and the next village should be in about 10 minutes.’
I’ve found names important at the Monday night sessions here in Ottawa. There’s a wide variety of skill levels, and if you play a tune someone doesn’t know, they’ll ask you the name and sometimes write it down, the implication being that they’re going to add it to the list to learn.
At the root of it, though, I think learning tune names is important to be able to talk about the music.
(I still have trouble associating names with tunes, and this after years of playing jazz, no less!)
One of the guys I play with regularly knows a hundred or so tunes and their names - one thing he uses to help keep track is a simple one page list (small type, multiple columns) with the name and first 3 or 4 measures in ABC format.
On 2001-12-07 10:19, Wandering_Whistler wrote:
I started out my archive as kind of a ‘name nazi’.
Oh dear that would mean you’d murder Tommy Coen’s reel now would it?
Ciaran Caran (sp?) has an interesting discussion of names in Irish Trad in his book “Last Night’s Fun”. His basic point is, the names of the tunes have nothing to do with what the tune is like, they matter little, and it’s the dorks who go arguing about what the “correct” name is for a tune.
I have seen several CDs that will give this credit: “Thanks to Brendan Breathnach for help with the tune names.”
When Planxty recorded a polka set with what is now usually known as “Ryan’s Polka” (or the bum-bum polka) they wrote in the liner notes something like: “… followed by a polka we don’t know a name for, however we heard Dennis Ryan play it.”
I think that knowing the name of a tune you play is a big bonus. It’s nice to be able to have an answer when someone asks the name of a song I’ve just played. A rare occurence, might I add. I also find it neat to track down refreshingly different versions of the same song. If I absolutely love one of Joannie Madden’s tunes and see it listed on one of a fiddler’s CDs, it might make me a bit more curious to give it a listen.
As to differing names for the same tune…I suppose over the years I’ll learn the alternate names, but I sure wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
Jef
PS Anyone know any alternate names for “Blue Suede Shoes?”
So, if I don’t know the name, can I just make one up? (some of you might remember the row on clips and snips a few month’s back about “Mack’s Jig.” We didn’t remember the real name.)
I like knowing tune names, mostly because they’re just fun to say, if nothing else. But it sounds like their importance is mostly just a matter of expediency.
Tom
p.s. Azure Processed animal skin Footwear?
On 2001-12-07 16:27, WyoBadger wrote:
I like knowing tune names, mostly because they’re just fun to say, if nothing else. But it sounds like their importance is mostly just a matter of expediency.
What did you expect? Vast mystical significance? 
Over at thesession.org we had a discussion a couple of months back where we all made up silly names for tunes. It was great fun. One of my favorite ones was “Toss the Fiddles”. If there is interest, I’ll post the list here.
I agree that knowing the name of the tune helps when discussing tunes with other musicians. On the other hand, at all the sessions I play in, tune follows tune follows tune and nobody introduces the names. In fact after a string of 5 or 6 reels, it is often difficult to remember which one you played 2nd or 3rd. Part of the tradition though is to credit the source (hence the tunes named after a person)
We’ve sought out weird, but actual, names of tunes in our group. The strangest I’ve heard is The Banshee’s Wail over the Mangle Pit.
Tony
Over at thesession.org we had a discussion a couple of months back where we all made up silly names for tunes. It was great fun. One of my favorite ones was “Toss the Fiddles”. If there is interest, I’ll post the list here.
Please do 
I must agree that tune names are very amusing. Also, just a thought, but wouldn’t it be a lot easier to distinguish different tunes if you had names for them (if not the correct name)?
SO TOm,
What tracks are you working on? IF you don’t know the names just give me the track numbers
I grew up listening to my grandfather (a first generation Scot) and two of his brothers playing fiddle and concertina at various dances and such around the States. I, who had been raised on the cassette and the mtv music video, would always ask "What's that tune called?"whenever they played something that struck my fancy.
To which they would invariably reply, looking rather puzzled that someone had even bothered to ask, "I don't know...it's just...a song..." and then catapult into the next set. Which sort of puts it into perspective, doesn't it?
On the other hand, I compensate for my lack of playing ability by maintaining a huge mental catalogue of all the tunes I've gleaned from my trad CD library, their names, their variants, who plays what on what album, etc. with which I amuse the other members of the session I sometimes join.
Hey, if I can't actually play the tune, I might as well know 20 different names for it! :wink:
~Firefly
Hey Tom,
I remember this debate. The tune is track 9 on their “best of” album. “The Job of Journeywork” they call it. Though I STILL don’t know if that refers to the first slow air they play, or the faster jig/slide thingy they do at the end, which we have forever christened our dear Mack with.
Anyway, I don’t have anything really to add to the discussion, but if you find out would ya let me know?!
B~
Well, Bloomfield, I wasn’t really expecting mystical significance. But I can hope, can’t I?
Ron, the problem is, I’m working from a tape, here. So I can’t really tell you the track numbers with any accuracy. And, as Brian mentioned, there are many tracks with multiple tunes, and the names seem to be mixed up. Anyway, I’m trying to learn at least one or two tunes per week between now and January 20th. I’m working off the “Best of” tape and a CD called “The Chieftains Collection” which, I have a feeling, is a set of older tunes.
I really like knowing the names of tunes I’m learning if possible. But I get the distinct idea that simply playing a tune without knowing the name will not get one thrown out of most sessions. Which answers my original question. Thanks, everybody!
Tom
[ This Message was edited by: WyoBadger on 2001-12-09 10:37 ]
You are right Tom, the collection cd is all stuff from albums 1-4