my repertoire

[MTGuru]

Now there's a concept I can get my head around!

Hello ... hello ... hello ... hello ...

[john]

another related quesion worth asking is how many tunes we each consider it possible to learn if our endeavour is to do our utmost to do justice to each new tune - personally for me, getting to the stage where i feel i have made a real stab at getting the most out of a tune is a very slow, laborious process - also, it takes me ages to get to the stage where i can play a tune without having to refer to the first few bars in print as an aide-memoire -at the same time i've seen other people soak up new tunes with incredible ease

[Katharine]

My entire repertoire now seems to consist of tunes titled "What Was That?"

Oh good, I'm not the only one with that repertoire! We should do a session some time (it'll go something like, "hey, let's play that one that goes like 'da-da dadada da!'")

I'm bad sometimes at remembering tune names. I've picked out a bunch of bagpipe tunes by ear on my whistle, and usually I think of them as "that one I like that the band I used to dance with played in a retreat set" or "that one they played in a set with Scotland the Brave" or even "that one the local piper usually plays when we do the Highland Fling." (<--- I happen to have finally learned that that one is usually Orange and Blue. I am slowly learning the real names to the dance tunes, rather than "you know, the one for the Scottish Lilt.")

another related quesion worth asking is how many tunes we each consider it possible to learn if our endeavour is to do our utmost to do justice to each new tune - personally for me, getting to the stage where i feel i have made a real stab at getting the most out of a tune is a very slow, laborious process - also, it takes me ages to get to the stage where i can play a tune without having to refer to the first few bars in print as an aide-memoire -at the same time i've seen other people soak up new tunes with incredible ease

Again, for me it depends on whether you wish to be able to say "play X tune" or "play that tune that goes like 'doo de doo de doobie doo-da doo'"!! LOL

[Innocent Bystander]

Questions I would rather not answer:

How many tunes can you play that you cannot (EVER) remember how the A part starts and can only recall by starting with the B part and going through the whole thing in your head? ( Too many. )

How many sets have you learned because you mixed up the first and second tunes and now play them together because that's the only way you can be sure you named one of them correctly? ( Too many. )

[Katharine]

How many sets have you learned because you mixed up the first and second tunes and now play them together because that's the only way you can be sure you named one of them correctly? ( Too many. )

Yes. The Brown-Haired Maiden + High Road to Gairloch are like that to me. It wasn't until I saw the sheet music that I realized they weren't the A and B parts to the same tune. They just go together in my head (there's a third part that I still haven't figured out the name of).

[Hotblack]

How many tunes can you play that you cannot (EVER) remember how the A part starts and can only recall by starting with the B part and going through the whole thing in your head? ( Too many. )

Then there's the tunes that are second in a set and you can't play as a standalone tune. You have to play the first one before it registers.

[Infernaltootler]

There's the tunes you know until you get to the end of the B part, then you don't.

[Innocent Bystander]

There's the tunes you know until you get to the end of the B part, then you don't.

Yes. Or even the A part.

[Celticexile]

As a child I found that music helped me memorise words (songs committed to memory easier than poems), and as an adult that words helped with music (songs memorised easier than tunes).

Working to expand my repertoire, it seemed an advantage that many ITM tunes used different combinations of the same few dozen phrases. Unfortunately I’ve allowed this “advantage” to develop into a problem by failing to reinforce the mental links between A and B parts of a tune. There are no local sessions, so I rarely play with others and I am now quite prone to start a tune but finish it with a B part that, though it flows on naturally, comes from a different tune entirely.

Without ABC or staff-notation as an aide memoire, I now string together mixed medleys that sound “right” to me, but owe more to an MP3 “shuffle” button than to the tunes the various parts originate from. I’d be in trouble in a session so it looks like ad nauseam repetition of a single tune will be the eventual answer (when I get round to it!). There are no local Trad Police, though so until then, ignorance is bliss and my favourite set is “What diddly, diddly dee tune, and was that X?".

[Cathy Wilde]

so it looks like ad nauseam repetition of a single tune will be the eventual answer (when I get round to it!).

And that's probably what a lot of sets sound like to the casual listener anyway, so hey! Folks like us are just taking the direct route.

[Katharine]

so it looks like ad nauseam repetition of a single tune will be the eventual answer (when I get round to it!).

And that's probably what a lot of sets sound like to the casual listener anyway, so hey! Folks like us are just taking the direct route.

Yup! i still can't wrap my head around The Green Hills of Tyrol and... that other tune that sounds just like The Green Hills of Tyrol except a couple things are different. Every time I think I hear Green Hills I get excited 'cause I like the tune... and then half the time it's the other one, which I don't like so well... Why not just play Green Hills, then? Why???

[Cathy Wilde]

I remember when I first started playing at sessions I would faithfully ask what a tune's name was and write it down somewhere. Whenever someone, especially one of my heroes, would say "I don't know what that's called" I'd be amazed. I mean, HOW could they sound so BRILLIANT and NOT KNOW WTH THEY WERE PLAYING???

Alas, I still don't have the wonderful part but I have proudly achieved the "Not Knowing WTH This Tune I'm Playing Is" pinnacle. I hope that counts as progress, but I'm afraid all it really means is that my head is full. Like Celticexile, I blame it on the iPod and "shuffle." Now they're all just called "this one ... this one ... and this one."

[Nanohedron]

I remember when I first started playing at sessions I would faithfully ask what a tune's name was and write it down somewhere. Whenever someone, especially one of my heroes, would say "I don't know what that's called" I'd be amazed. I mean, HOW could they sound so BRILLIANT and NOT KNOW WTH THEY WERE PLAYING???

A local gal, brilliant player, is so famous for not knowing tune names that we practically call the press when she has one. At a party one fellow asked her what a tune's name was, and she snapped, "How the f@&% should I know?"

I'm forgetting tune names. I hope it's just the sign of an overflowing inner library, and not my greying head.

[Azalin]

I remember when I first started playing at sessions I would faithfully ask what a tune's name was and write it down somewhere. Whenever someone, especially one of my heroes, would say "I don't know what that's called" I'd be amazed. I mean, HOW could they sound so BRILLIANT and NOT KNOW WTH THEY WERE PLAYING???

A local gal, brilliant player, is so famous for not knowing tune names that we practically call the press when she has one. At a party one fellow asked her what a tune's name was, and she snapped, "How the f@&% should I know?"

I'm forgetting tune names. I hope it's just the sign of an overflowing inner library, and not my greying head.

The thing is these days I mainly get my tunes from old session recordings or Comhaltas clips online, and the tune names are rarely mentioned. I need to make my own research, using Tunepal, to find what the tune is and who composed it. I don't care much about titles, but I care a lot about who composed the tune. I love it when I find out I'm playing a Ed Reavy, Coleman, Paddy Fahy, Junior Crehan, Paddy O'Brien etc tune. It's also very interesting to find the history of a tune, and in what key it was originally composed (too many tunes have been converted to the key of Am, Em, G, etc to make fluters and pipers happy!).

Tune names are great for communicating with fellow sessioners though, sometimes when you want to discuss what to play together.

[Nanohedron]

Tune names are great for communicating with fellow sessioners though, sometimes when you want to discuss what to play together.

Nah, at the end of the day I'm a fan of the lingua franca, which is to say the beginning notes: "What shall we play?" "How about [twiddly twiddly] and [twiddly twiddly]?" "Sounds good. What else?" "I'm stuck." "How about [twiddly twiddly], then?" "Brilliant. Hup..."

For me, tune names have almost grown into just an attached curiosity, because one tune can have so many of them. When someone asked if I knew Donnybrook Fair, at the time that name was unknown to me, so I could only reply, "I dunno; play it for me." And lo and behold, I knew it, but not by that name. Ah, well; I suppose it all works out in the end.