After forty years playing this music....

[johnkerr]

Do you need to play the whole tune into this gizmo? Is a few measures enough? Can you simply lilt the tune? Do you have to strip the tune of all ornamentation? Does it matter which key you play it in? Will the app continue to improve in its recognition? As a rather dedicated luddite, I find the whole notion most intriguing, and a little unnerving.

I don't know about any of that, Mark, but here's one thing I did notice about it. After you play the tune in, the first step is that the gizmo transcribes what it heard into ABC notation. Then you can play it back, either as recorded (i.e. an echo of you) or as transcribed (in MIDI format). I found that when I played back the transcription, it gave me variations on the tune I'd played in. But they weren't nearly as tasty as what Brendan Mulvihill would have generated for the same price of a pint.

[eskin]

John:

1) Turn on your iPhone/iPod Touch

2) Hold down the TunePal icon until it starts shaking.

3) Click the X to delete it.

4) Go enjoy a beer while thumbing through O'Neil's

I don't know what else to say. You seem stuck in your point of view and unwilling to have a reasonable discussion. I've described at least one scenario where the tool can be useful for reasons completely unrelated to your objections or assertions, there are certainly others. Nobody is advocating using this or any other tool as just a parlor trick or disrupting sessions.

On a much more common note, I've seen more sessions disrupted by people fiddling with trying to get their recording device of choice to start record (wait, the red light isn't on..., oh hold on, I have to clear some space off my voice recorder) than pretty much anything else. A good rule for everyone to follow if you don't want to constantly p*ss everyone off is if you are going to bring technology into a session, make sure it is invisible and never expect your session mates to wait while you muddle your way around operating some device that you didn't spend the time learning to use at home.

M

[Denny]

I guess that TunePal doesn't do beer runs for ya while ya play then?

[eskin]

Y'know that would be a real tune pal, now wouldn't it...

[jemtheflute]

Just a small defence of tune names and their use. IMO the names of tunes are very much a part of what they are, inherent to them in the tradition. I also think they are useful mnemonic tags - I am myself very bad at remembering tune names and also at how tunes start. Often, if I can recall the title I can also recall the first 2-3 notes (usually all I need), and if not, knowing the name lets me ask someone else to start the tune - a near impossibility without it, or at best necessitating "oh, you know, the one that so-and-so plays on that album/ played last week at......" vagueness.

In particular, I like the proper names for tunes, the descriptive or story/image telling or event or location-based ones or the ones named for a person as a gift or memorial, which are often very evocative (is why they are mnemonic?). The sub-tradition of re-naming a tune for the person you got it from or who famously played it ("X's favourite") is also interesting and partly helpful, though I think it can be obfuscatory and it's a bit of a pity when a tune with a perfectly good original name loses that in favour of one of the latter type in common usage, and of course they are hard to distinguish from ones named for their (sometimes putative) composer or from ones in the "gift" category. If I learn a tune as "so-and-so's (favourite)" but subsequently discover it was named "The Baby and the Bathwater" in an older source/by its composer, I'll go with the latter. And then there's a whole other field of interest in tracing tunes which are the same or related but have different names in different places or different tunes which share a name..... etc. etc. - which links back into the sort of thing Michael was saying about making connections, whether for set-building or for finding a preferred setting or whatever.

So, I disagree rather with John about tune-names..... I'm all in favour of knowing them as well as the melodies of the tunes they attach to/identify/say something about. I know a good many tunes that I only play at sessions when someone else starts them - I know how they go, have learnt them by ear (as John approves), but can't remember them for myself (or even that I know them!) in isolation or to pass on to anyone else without being aurally cued - having a name for such tunes (I usually don't) helps me begin to anchor them more accessibly in my mental catalogue.

[Wanderer]

I don't know about y'all, but I'm sick of every discussion on this site turning into a quasi-religious war where everything has to be either white or black. It seldom is.

Dude, I hear ya. I've been tired of that for years. There's a reason I don't post here very often any more.

If I had an iPad, I'd absolutely get this app. I often hear tunes at session I'd love to know the name of. You don't want to break the flow of the music to ask what the tune was. Often at the end of the night, people (the few who are left when things wind down) just simply don't remember what was played a couple hours ago. Something like this, even if it only hit 25% of the time, would be awesome for me.

I don't live in Doolin (pop approx 500) or walking distance from the pub. It's just not reasonable in the sessions around here to go "oh, hey, do you mind sticking around after everyone's stopped playing and teach me this tune". It's not like I can just pop on over a couple streets over and catch the fiddler sitting on his front porch Saturday afternoon and get the tune from him that way either, unfortunate as that is. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that not only do I not live walking distance from any session player in my city, but that simply meeting up with any of them would require a half-hour drive and a huge coordination of schedules. Some of us have to try to catch the music any way we can. If that means grabbing the dots from a web page, learning enough of the skeleton of the tune that you can pick up the session's version/flavor/variation of it next time you hear it, then that's what you have to do sometimes.

It'd be nice for some people to realize that their experience is not everyone's experience, and that the resources they have available, not everyone has available.

[MTGuru]

I don't know about y'all, but I'm sick of every discussion on this site turning into a quasi-religious war where everything has to be either white or black. It seldom is.

For the record, Michael is echoing my private comments to him the other day, almost verbatim.

[jemtheflute]

"Jaw, jaw, not war, war."

[johnkerr]

If your session is so big that it's not possible to ask the person who plays a tune you'd like to learn what the name of it is right after the set it's played in is done, then your session is too big. Split it into two or three or four smaller and more manageable sessions and everyone will have more fun. And if the person who just played a tune is too rude to tell you the name of it or at least where he/she got it from, then it's not worth learning anyway. Or if it is worth learning, it will show up again some other time and you can grab it then. The really good tunes have a way of doing that. Remember, there are more than enough good tunes for even the best musician to learn in a lifetime, so it's no use to wear yourself out trying to get them all - because you won't. Just grab all the good tunes you can, learn them well, and you can play anywhere. Maybe not right away, but eventually.

[uillmann]

There's a reason I don't post here very often any more.

in fact, not a single word has ever been spoken.

~Muso Soseki

[eskin]

I don't know about y'all, but I'm sick of every discussion on this site turning into a quasi-religious war where everything has to be either white or black. It seldom is.

For the record, Michael is echoing my private comments to him the other day, almost verbatim.

But to be clear, my opinions are my own, not outing John. We share the same concern, he just help me crystalize what I've feeling for a long time. I've been dealing with a lot of uncivil communication on various boards recently and am just tired that's it's tolerated.

[MTGuru]

Yes, thanks Michael. Much appreciated.

[johnkerr]

I'm shocked that my alleged criticism of the use of an iPhone app is considered uncivil by anyone. Indeed, I haven't criticized the use of the iPhone app, I've just questioned the need for it. Certainly anyone should feel free to use whatever app they want in any session they want. It's a free country, after all.

[uillmann]

I'm shocked

...shocked to find that alleged criticism is going on in here!

[johnkerr]

Something's missing in that photo. Could it be....a cigarette?