I'm dragging this out of the end of Mix's dying thread about where you learn tunes because I want to get some other opinions on this matter:
In the course of Mix's thread it was mentioned (by me) that lots of musicians (Irish, that is) know "thousands of tunes." I'm looking for some support for that claim. This is NOT a how many tunes do you know thread. I'm just interested in what you all have to say regarding people you play with who know loads of tunes, etc. Or maybe you think that it's not possible to know that many. I maintain that it is fairly common for musicians to know that many tunes.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Just missed me on the other thread.
Present. Ditto on Rev and Chrishty. Often I've had the pleasure of playing with a veteran who knows each and every thing that is played, and plays along with it. These are the folks who will play a monster set of reels for a half an hour without missing a note and then tell you that they don't know the name of a single one of them, and they're not being smart-asses, they really don't know.
Actually, I count her as a very dear friend. She plays concertina and not only can play every tune in an Irish session, with proper style and sound, but not miss a beat and go sit in with the Old Timey folks and do the same thing. Who knows how many she knows? Impossible to tell.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I sort of look at it like remembering stories from your school days. On any given day you may remember X number of stories and on another day you may remember some more that you couldn't recall earlier, but maybe you forgot about a couple that you remembered the other day...
so on an any given day anybody might be on top of several hundred tunes, but a thousand tunes is an effing lot. I dont even know if you can play 1000 tunes in a single sitting, so who can really say?
I'm sure there are guys who have forgot over 1000 tunes by now too
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Maybe I should clarify what I mean by "know." I mean that if somebody started it you could play it, and if they all dropped out, you would be fine on yer own. (Thanks to Mix for that def.)
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
yes, in our session there's a wonderful PA player who knows so just about every tune I've ever heard played, including at sessions far from home. If he doesn't know a tune, he slips into it pretty quickly. There are a few here like that, and invariably they are generous and encouraging.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Chrishty -
Since you've started this thread as a result of a comment that I made in my own discussion, I thought I should respond!
My definition of "know" was actually slightly tougher than you quoted. I also said that you would have to be capable of starting the tune yourself as well.
A few months ago, I sat through a very long (8 hours) pub session at a festival. The material played was a mixture of Irish, Scottish, English and American old-timey. Throughout the session, musicians were leaving and arriving, thus ensuring plenty of fresh material. Apart from several breaks for songs, the playing was virtually continuous. Amazingly, very few tunes were repeated. By the time we got to the end, the calluses on the tips of my fingers had developed calluses!
Sometimes, when someone led a tune, everyone was playing.
By contrast, at other times, (apart from the person who was leading), only one other person knew it, and was able to join in.
That person was me.
I actually knew almost every tune that was played in that 8 hour session. Afterwards, a couple of people complemented me on my vast tune knowledge.
But do I know thousands of tunes? I certainly do not. But if i knew more tunes than anyone else at that session, my tune knowlege must presumably be quite good - maybe better than most.
So how many tunes do I know? I probably have a better idea of the actual number than most people, as I have to write out music scores for people who cannot (like me) play by ear.
So if I count up my huge pile of music scores, that gives me the number. The last time I counted them it came to about 750. On top of that, I could add all the tunes that I play only in sessions, (which I've never needed to write out). But I can't imagine that would amount to more that about a couple of hundred. So - maybe - 1000 - tops.
There would of course be quite a few more that I could join in with, but could not lead.
So if not many people know 1000 tunes, how many people know "thousands of tunes".
A few people perhaps, but certainly not "lots of people".
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I'd be surprised if I knew 1,000 tunes, it's probably less. but there's no real way of telling. But I'm not a tune collector for the sake of it. I'm very picky about the tunes I learn.
But plenty of my mates are avid tune collectors and they certainly know thousands. A few times a night, a tune will get played that my mates join in on and I quiz them, "I didn't care for that tune much", and most of the time the answer is "yeah, it's not a great tune is it." "So why d'you learn it then?" "Dunno."
I think that on average, where I like to play, probably two thirds of the tunes that get played each week are crackers, with the other third not so good. With the not so good tunes obviously getting less outings and the latest favourites being played most weeks for a couple of months or so.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Aye AQ, it would, it would.
Also, I have lots of musical friends, we have lots of tunes in common, and we each have tunes the rest of us don't know, but are learning. Keeps us plenty busy and quite amused.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
There are known knowns - the tunes we know we know. Then there are known unknowns - the tunes we know we don't know. But then there are the unknown unknowns - the tunes we don't know we don't know (paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld). I know a lot of tunes but I'm pretty sure there are way more tunes I don't know I don't know than I either know or know I don't know.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know someone who used to claim that he knew 5000 tunes. Thankfully it's been several years since I've seen him, so I would imagine that he's probably disappeared up his own arse by now, bless him.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
"Knowing tunes" is a very fluid thing. I have a list of five or six hundred tunes that I've played to at least passable standard (by my reckoning) over the last 15 years at some time or other. I drew that list up about seven or eight years ago in my late evangelical phase. I rarely look at the list these days, but when I do I see tunes that I haven't played for yonks, and when I try to play them I get them confused, arse about face, can't remember half the bloody B part, stick the B part of one tune on the A part of another and so on. Yet when someone comes to our session and starts one of these long-lost tunes I find I'm back into it in no time, and the beautiful thing is that I'm listening to and picking up from the other bloke's version. Magic it is. So I reckon I can play about 150 tunes confidently enough to demonstrate the bloody thing to someone else. Another 3-400 that I can pick up in a jiffy, given the right bloke at the right session. Maybe another 100 that I have heard and liked and noodled but am not too confident with as yet. Another approx. 1000 that every bugger in the world except me seems to know and which make me therefore feel woefully inadequate.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I would be willing to bet that at least five regulars at our local session know more than a thousand tunes. (Estimated by comparing the number of Irish tunes I can start that they don't know with the much huger number that they can start that I don't know.) I don't know about 2,000+, though, that seems like quite a lot.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know thousands of tunes - I just can't play them all, that's all.
It's ok though, there's plenty of others that can do that - while I watch the Guinness settle.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know someone who used to claim that he knew 5000 tunes. Thankfully it's been several years since I've seen him, so I would imagine that he's probably disappeared up his own arse by now, bless him.
That may have been me. I disapeared up my own arse once but I popped out of my mouth 6 hours later
But I don't think I have heard 5000 tunes, never mind know them
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
If you know a few hundred tunes, you can fudge your way
though another few hundred. I infer from this that if you can
play a thousand you can fudge another thousand or so.
However, I doubt anybody can fudge their way through a Liz
Carroll, Paddy Fahey, Altan, Flook or Ed Reavy tune!
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Some people have what is known as eidetic memory (or total recall). Also, some individuals with autism display extraordinary memory, including those with related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome.
Anyone possessing eidetic memory (who could also play an instrument) would certainly be able to commit thousands of tunes to memory, and subsequently reproduce any one of them on demand.
But such a capability is rare, and most of us just don't have this kind of memory.
I've been to plenty of sessions where the majority of musicians present, (whilst joining in with tunes led by others), never lead a single tunes themselves. And the session tune leaders (even those whom I would regard as being first-rate musicians) seem to play a lot of the same tunes week after week, which would seem to suggest that their repertoire might be limited. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
To my mind, off-the-wall speculations on how many tunes such-and-such person might know are meaningless, unless that person has kept a list, and can demonstrate their ability to play any tune on that list.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
We don't let people get away without starting tunes. Part of the whole thing of it is to see what kind of tunes other people like.
The only way to tell how many tunes I do know would be to sit and try and play them back to back. But jesus christ, how tedius would that be. And it wouldn't even be acurate anyway, because you'd forget you'd already played some, and repeat them. And there'd be swayths you'd forgot you know. And it's important to note that you can play the ones you forgot you know just as well as the others
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Llig - "We don't let people get away with starting tunes"
How do you enforce that one?
The best sessions are those where everyone present leads tunes, IMHO.
So I'm always suggesting to people at sessions that they start tunes - especially if they are newcomers to the session.
Sometimes they do. But quite often they refuse, giving such reasons as:
- there are better players here than me! I wouldn't dare!
- I can't play sets.
- I'm too nervous to do that!
- I'm concerned that people wouldn't know the tune, (or know it and not join in). And I can't play solo ...
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I reckon I have forgotten many more than I know (currently play).
I can't remember tunes without a name.
I can resurrect tunes I haven't played for 40 years.
As mentioned above, I can immediately play along with tunes I have never heard (providing they are in the ITM idiom), and if I stop immediately, I can write them down. If I don't write them down (or get the name of the tune), I probably won't remember them the next morning, but with the name, I will try to look them up online.
As an avid tune collector all my life, I take great delight in opening my old jotters from decades back and revisiting tunes that aren't in my reportoire or more likely never got into it.
And there will always be tunes that you "know" and can't play.
By the same token, it never ceases to amaze me that I can go into an Irish session and play loads of older tunes the youngsters don't know and vice-versa - which is how the tradition works and what it is all about.
I would rather go to a session where I didn't know most of the tunes and get a dozen tune-names to learn, than a session where I had heard all the tunes before.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Oh dear!
.. I hope that it wasn't a Freudian slip ...
The truth is that the newcomers at our local sessions actually don't stand a chance. As soon as one set finishes, one of the regulars immmediately starts up another. The newcomers usually walk out in disgust about half-way through, alas, never to return again ...
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I've been playing trad for about 14 years. But I think I acquired the bulk of my repertoire in about the first 6 or 7 years of those - going to every session within reach, spending every summer fleadh-hopping in Ireland, religiously learning every tune on each new recording I bought or borrowed, browsing through printed and online collections, soaking up tunes like a sponge. If I had continued to build up my repertoire at the same rate as I was doing at my peak of tune acquisition - say 10 years ago - perhaps I would have a couple of thousand tunes by now. Inevitably, that lifestyle wasn't sustainable and I now settle for a few hundred tunes (I couldn't possibly be any more precise than that). That gives me enough repertoire that I can play most tunes in most (Irish) sessions I go to, but still have the pleasure of sometimes hearing tunes I have not heard before, or being reminded of ones that I never quite got round to learning.
Something which has not yet been addressed here is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that everyone here plays and listens to (or hears) nothing but Irish Traditional Music. No doubt many of us have, at some point, created our own artificial environment in which Irish Trad *is* all there is, but you can't ignore the fact that all of us have been exposed to and absorbed other music as well and most of us could probably pluck out of the air fragments of classical music, TV theme tunes, nursery rhymes, jazz standards, popular songs... if we felt like it. They may not be what we like to play in sessions, but they are still *tunes* and they are still stored somewhere in our memory banks along with the jigs and reels. Furthermore, where I live now, the staple in sessions is English music, with a smattering of Welsh, French, Breton, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Old Time, Bulgarian... (in contrast to London where I lived before, where I could find an Irish session most nights of the week. Why did I move? you ask.) I also play in a Klezmer band. So I've been expanding my repertoire in other directions over the last couple of years. I would say that the sum total of my 'other' repertoire, in terms of number of tunes, does not come close to my Irish repertoire - but that is partly due to the number of tunes I am exposed to (and perhaps partly due to the fact that I am 10 years older than I was 10 years ago and have lost some of my sponge-like qualities). But they're all tunes, nevertheless.
So perhaps, if a somewhat eclectic musician like myself can amass a repertoire of various different genres (and I do not claim to play any of them particularly well), is it inconceivable that someone who has genuionely been exposed to nothing but Irish trad all their life (probably a rarity nowadays) could have a repertoire of several thousand tunes?
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Ragaman - in this (and the earlier discussion) my definition of tunes was intended to inculde tunes from other traditions (e.g. Scottish, Welsh, English) - as well as Irish.
I didn't intend "tunes" to include song melodies, pop songs, classical pieces - in short, just tunes that might possibly be played at sessions or for traditional dances.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Actually Joanie Madden and Mike Rafferty know thousands of tunes, at a session I was with them once, and they knew every tune that was being played, and I asked them how many they knew, and they told me thousands(and they weren't exaggerating). The lead fiddler at our sessions also knows every tune being played, and she said she knew over a thousand.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Thanks for all of your thoughtful replies to this inquiry! Reading your responses made me think of a couple of things --
Different people learn tunes in very different ways. Some people sit down with a recording or dots and spend some considerable amount of time getting the tune into their memory. Other people "learn" tunes that they've never played before because they've heard a tune x number of times and now they just know it. (This happens when one is truly "fluent" at their instrument -- just like if you want to express a thought in your head with words, you don't have to rehearse it. Though you could argue that you might have to pause and think for a moment before expressing very complicated thoughts, analogous to the more complicated Reavy type tunes out there...) So if you're in the former camp, and learning one or two tunes a week is a lot, then I imagine it would seem impossible that someone might know thousands of tunes. But if you're in the latter camp, maybe with some kind of special talent for remembering music (like Mix mentioned before, maybe), then how many tunes you know is only limited by how much time you spend listening to the music. It's not a matter of learning 2.6 tunes a week on average. After three years of doing nothing but playing music, going to a lot of differnet peoples sessions a lot of times, I had heard LOTS of tunes so many times that I knew them without ever sitting down and learning them. Again, similar to learning language.
I consider myself very lucky that I had this time in my life. A lot of the musicians that I know had similar experiences, too. And although we've never talked about learning tunes, I expect they have a similar experience to mine. It sounds, for example, like ragaman had this kind of experience. How many tunes you end up with (which doesn't matter for sh*te in the end) is just a function of how long and intense your experience is and maybe how good your computer is at storing information.
I think that it's fair to say that you know a tune even if you have to be reminded of the first couple of notes. In the same way that you have memories of things from your past that might lay dormant for years until a friend says, "Remember that time when...", and you do remember. That memory is yours, even if it only comes back to life with the help of a friend. You still "know" what happened in that memory.
Mix - you use the phrase "lead a tune" a lot, like it's different from playing a tune... I'm not really sure what this means. If this means start a tune in a session, then I do. At any rate, I wouldn't play at all if I couldn't continue if everyone else stopped. I personally don't like it when people bluff tunes. What often happens is someone has a fragment of a memory of some tune... maybe part of the name or part of the tune, and they might say, "What was that one that we played that one time..." or "What was the one that you-know-who used to play after that one..." or "What was that one that has this bit in the turn..." and they might be asking me, because I have a good memory for that sort of thing. And then I say, "Is it this one?" And play some tune I would never have thought of on my own, whether it's the right one or not, and they might say. "Yeah, that's it!" or "No, Chrishty, you crap, but let's play that one anyway even though it's one of those sh*te tunes that llig would never learn." And then I might start it, or they might. Anyway I claim that this is a tune that I know, just like a whole bunch of memories from my childhood that I can't think of right now.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Chrishty - I'm very tempted to say that your penulimate post might amount to the same thing either way, but I'm much too kind
I gather that you are based in the USA. Terminology can vary from region to region. But in my neck of the woods, if we said that such-and-such a person could lead a tuneset, we would mean that that person could initiate a tune (without conferring with anyone else) then repeat it two or three times - immediately followed by at least one other tune repeated similarly. They would have to be capable of making the tune changes without any stumbling or faltering, and be able to keep going even if no-one else joined in.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix -
I am based in the USA. And in all the sessions that I have been to in the States and in Ireland, I have never heard of someone "leading" a "tuneset". People "start" "a set" or "a set of tunes." What a peculiar voabulary you have in Bristol. Also, I have never been anywhere where there are such strict rules governing whether or not someone knows something. Are you all epistemologists? Do you have judges on hand to dtermine if someone falters just enough in that transition to scratch a tune from their alleged repertoire? Or to overhear someone quietly lilting a bit of a tune into someone elses ear? Really, Mix, it sounds absurd.
By the way, you should try playing a tune more than three times every once in a while. ; )
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
No judges, Chrishty -
Some session "faux pas" to watch out for:
1) Failing to complete a tuneset that you have started.
2) Playing a tune that someone else played earlier.
3) Singing "The Wild Rover".
4) Playing an American "old-timey" tune.
5) Making an unsubstantiated claim about being able to play 3000 tunes.
If you do any of the above, you have to buy a round of drinks for your mates.
6) Telling your mates that you would be "starting a tune", then - starting it but not finishing it, then making the the excuse "Well, I only said that I would be starting it - I didn't promise to finish it!"
- Buy two rounds of drinks for your mates.
By the way, I'm surprised that you would want to play a tune three times, if you are able to master it by playing it just once ...
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Oh dear, this is going nowhere now. The point of this thread never was about how many tunes you know or I know. It is supposed to be about how many tunes people tend to know, or I suppose, how many tunes people with very large repertoires have. I'm afraid that my claim is unsubstantiable. Unless you can think of a clever way for me to substantiate it without having to write them all down. What do you think my motivation is for lying about this?
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I can lie in bed of a Saturday morning, listening to Sounds of the Sixties presented by Brian Matthew on Radio 2, and sing along to the lyrics of one-hit wonders that I haven't heard for 40 years. If only my brain retained only files that I'd clicked on.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix -
I believe you are the one who goes to sessions where Irish tunes mix with Scottish and "old-timey" American tunes. Sounds dreadful to me. Of all the sessions I have been to in the states, my own and others, I've not heard one "old-timey" tune played. Not that I don't like it, I've just never heard anybody play it at an Irish session.
Anyway, Mix, I'm a good natured fellow (most of the time) and I'm sure you are as well. Maybe we'll meet someday, I'll buy you a pint (for making unsubtantiable claims.)
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Things are not always that straightforward, Chrishty ...
For example some Scottish tunes: Mason's Apron, Miss Mcleods, Tamlin, and Athole Highlanders - these all get played at "Irish Only" sessions.
And take that (Irish) tune - The Beggarman. Take the swing out of it, speed it up a bit - and - hey presto - it becomes the Red Headed Boy - a tune favoured by bluegrass players in the good ol' U S of A, so I've been told.
Don't worry too much about making extravagant claims. You're in good company. Your outgoing president, for example. I once heard him claim that Austria was actually Australia.
But an offer of a free pint is one that I would never refuse. You'll have to come to the UK though, as I don't much care for your American ertsatz beer.
Come along to our session pub, and we'll let you lead (sorry, start) all of the tunes. You'll have to be careful not to repeat a tune, mind you, or you'll have to buy everyone else a pint as well ....
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Pomme de Terre, Llig -
When you "start" tunes, presumably others would be following? So, if, they are "following", you would be "leading". Those are the semantics.
In truth, both terms are widely used - and that includes here on this board. But as "starting" has an implied suggestion of not finishing, "leading" would seem more logical - at least to my mind, anyway.
Domineering? I don't think so. At most sessions, lots of of different people would be leading/starting tunes at different points of the evening, so no-one would necessarily be dominating.
Having said that, it's been my observation that very passive or ultra timid people don't tend to lead/start tunes - no matter how good musicians they are.
So those who do initiate the tunes could be said to be dominating ...
I don't know you personally llig, but a pound to a Scottish groat that you are more of a hawk than a dove ...
Sessions in Bristol (England) ... One here every night of the week, bar Thursday. And my spies tell me that a Thursday Sesh is starting soon.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Depends..... most of the time we just join in when we realise what the tune. But then there's the 'Play that tune....you know, the one......' way of telling people what is going to be played.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
"Start" here too. Ol' Mike from Galway, our local patriarch, also uses 'start'. "Lead" sounds like something an orchestra conductor does with his little magic wand there: "tap tap tap"
Also Mix, we have this amazing thing here in America called 'beer importing', it's amazing technology! (lol!) The local has a full bar of imported goodness on tap!
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Hmm.
Before starting a tune (or more likely a tuneset), you would have had to decide:
1) What tunes to play.
2) The speed at which to play them.
3) The number of times through for each one.
4) Whether to play "straight", or with swing, perhaps.
Once you had started, the others would be "following" your "lead" in these matters. Well, in most cases, anyway!
And if you hadn't previously agreed these things with your fellow musicians before starting to play, your decisions would have been unilateral ones.
Lead - direction given by going in front (OED).
"Leading" doesn't mean that you are some kind of dictator - although of course it could do in some situations.
Anyone ever done any rock climbing? Usually done in a party of two - a "leader" and a "second" But of course, you both have to scale the same rockface. And very often, an ascent is achieved by what is known as "alternate leads"
Certainly though, I would use the word "start" as well. I might for example be discussing a particular tune (or tuneset) with the person sitting next to me. Then one of us might say:
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix, we've disagreed on harmony before. But I've never been so deeply insulted as when you denigrate my homeland's beer. Just because budweiser is sold here does not mean that thinking peoples drink it! I've lived on two continents and travelled three and the small breweries in America produce a fine quality and immense variety of beer that will leave you bewildered, weeping, and considering emigration. Within 10 miles of my house there are no less than a dozen breweries erm, 90% of which produce beer that is tasty, well-crafted, and only marginally overshadowed by the product of my homebrewing. You may wax rhapsodic about six note-scales that no-one cares about, but you may not insult our beer without coming over here and trying it.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
A: "How does such and such start ?"
Pause.
B plays first few notes tentatively. Everyone joins in.
Coming to end of such and such, several glances towards B
B: (thinks) "Oh sh*t"
Funny stuff Mix. What can I say? Everybody uses 'start' that I know, plus most of the folks here on the ye olde mustard board, apparently.
Now on the brew, you missed the 'on tap' portion of my post. Sure, you have pump it with gas, but they use the CO2 and the Nitrous mixed to get the Guinness out of the keg.
Wow, a working link from the pub! I'm shocked, thing's been up and down for months:
(Actually, this is dated, got about twice this now. Whew, this is making me thirsty for tomorrow.)
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
reenactor - no, I wasn't insulting the "beer of your homeland" - just that massed-produced stuff that some of your fellow countrymen make in factories, then ship over here. I believe that you mentioned one of those particular brands.
The advertising of that stuff is so powerful, that masses of people seem to drink it. And that damages the real beer brewers.
So you see, we're really "on the same side" - abeit not in the matter of six-note scales
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Sure Mix, it's just semantics. I'd rather start a set and have people join me. I suppose I could lead them, but if I wanted to lead people around I'd get a leash. Ho ha hardee har har.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Words. Semantics and context. Your rock climbers may be taking alternate leads Mix, but at the bottom "whos going to start then ? " is a loaded question - it means "whos going to lead the hard bit"
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Well, you've blown my cover, david_h !
Back in those dim and distant days when I was climbing, I was always careful to read up the guidebook description well in advance, and thus knew on which pitch the crux of the climb occurred.
So if, for example, the crux was on say pitch #2, when we got to the foot of the climb I would say something like "I'm on good form this morning, I'll take first lead, if that's allright with you!!"
If on the other hand I knew that the crux was on pitch #3, I'd say something like: "You can take first lead, if you like!"
Climbing, (like sessions) is all about strategy ...
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I just want to say that SWFL's list of beers made me laugh. It's like a who's who of dodgy UK beers and would make any die-hard cask ale snob run for their life! I like how the UK imports its sh*te beers to the US. Fair enough, considering the US sends the UK it's sh*tty beers like Coors and Budweiser. One guy was amazed when I told him Bud was the uber student drunk party beer because you can get lots of it CHEAP. Like Tennants here in Scotland, which I guess is all cool and imported in the States. Hilarious.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
What were we talking about? I've forgotten. Climbing? I used to wangle the hard pitch!
Oh leading vs starting. Well, yes, I can't think of anyone not handy enough at our session (which shall remain the worst-kept secret in Bristol) to lead a set. So 'leading' isn't really an issue. So it all comes down to starting. Regarding that nice list earlier:
1) What tunes to play. - Um, whatever comes into my head while playing the last one.
2) The speed at which to play them. - The RIGHT speed of course.
3) The number of times through for each one. - Depends on if people have started to exchange glances in readiness - you know the moment when it's right.
4) Whether to play "straight", or with swing, perhaps. - Hmmm. I had better start pondering these issues more deeply methinks.
And halfway through a set I might well cast my eyes about and look for the eager intense face with a tune waiting in the wings and nod and pass the buck.
It gets grim when it gets too regimented and serious imho. Our method may sound chaotic, but it works most of the time, and when it doesn't, we have a laugh.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
If anyone comes to where I play with a strategy, we'd just refuse to play with them.
The only two ways sets start are:
1. Someone starts and everyone joins in (if the know it) and every one plays together.
2. "Let's play such and such?" And everyone starts together.
I like 2. I like the slightly faltered first two or three notes and the quick acceleration out of first gear and the settling down by the second or third bar. There's quite a few tracks on that brilliant malloy peoples brady album that do that. You can so tell that they didn't do that really annoying studio thing of counting 1, 2, 3, and then the silent 4 so it makes the count easier to edit out. They just picked up their instruments, looked at each other and started.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Yeah, quite agree, Michael. I find I flinch at those albums where everything comes in with a false punch - sometimes so false you can hear where they've simply chopped off the previous trip through the tune... Just start. Like getting into the bath - you don't take a running jump.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Earth-Apple-
If ye haven't already done so, I suggest ye write a tune and call it "Wrangle the Hard Pitch". (seriously)
Silver Spear- yer right about all that imported beeer nonsense-but with one exception, the Beck's here is as good as it is any where else
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I can "fudge" my way through tunes if it is chocolate fudge (yes I am a Chocoholic) but I rarely have to start and/or lead a tune because I am the piano player. At our local sessions, we almost always have enough melody players who play more traditional melody instruments who can lead and/or start tunes.
Since I am primarily an accompanist/sideman/backup musician, I think of most tunes as sequences or progressions of chords instead of as melodies.
Freudian slips are worn only by Frau Freud.
Speaking of leading.....A successful politician is usually a politician who tries to lead the people in the direction in which they (otherwise known as the people), want to go.
I heard "Red-Haired Boy" first at a folk music session and then I learned that it supposedly was based on an Irish song called "The Little Beggarman" (or Johnny Dhu).
SWFL Fiddler, on your list of imported beers at the Celtic Ray, I noticed that my favorite imported beer, Shiner Bock (from Texas) isn't on the list. If I ever visit the Celtic Ray, I guess I will just have to suffer and drink water instead of beer.
I think there is something fishy about the idea of a bass (guitarist) leading the band.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
All this talk about how to start off a set reminds of a number of years back I was in Brogan's in Ennis on Holiday's. There were two young lads, can't remember their names but one had a banjo and the other a box. I think they might have been brothers. Anyway, I sat in with them with me guitar at the time. They way they started sets was brilliant. The banjo play would very quietly plink the first couple of notes of a tune, the box play would nod. the banjo play would do the same a few more times. and then they were off! About a half hour of reels at a wonderful pace and lift!
Hardly a word was spoken between them but they had a great understanding of the tunes.
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix, I'm not so sure that the sort of memory you cite for people on the autism spectrum is rare. I think most of us have that capacity, we just don't bother using it fully. And it's not so much the memory anyway, but the *retrieval* of stored items that can make us stumble.
In my purely limited, anecdotal, and probably misleading experience, most people I've sessioned with underestimate how many tunes they know and can play. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fill 6 or 8 hours of steady sessioning with just 300 or 400 tunes.
I'm guessing that I know and can play in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,200 tunes, but what matters much more is that I know nearly all of the tunes that each of my session mates plays.
Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I'm dragging this out of the end of Mix's dying thread about where you learn tunes because I want to get some other opinions on this matter:
In the course of Mix's thread it was mentioned (by me) that lots of musicians (Irish, that is) know "thousands of tunes." I'm looking for some support for that claim. This is NOT a how many tunes do you know thread. I'm just interested in what you all have to say regarding people you play with who know loads of tunes, etc. Or maybe you think that it's not possible to know that many. I maintain that it is fairly common for musicians to know that many tunes.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Just missed me on the other thread.
Present. Ditto on Rev and Chrishty. Often I've had the pleasure of playing with a veteran who knows each and every thing that is played, and plays along with it. These are the folks who will play a monster set of reels for a half an hour without missing a note and then tell you that they don't know the name of a single one of them, and they're not being smart-asses, they really don't know.
Actually, I count her as a very dear friend. She plays concertina and not only can play every tune in an Irish session, with proper style and sound, but not miss a beat and go sit in with the Old Timey folks and do the same thing. Who knows how many she knows? Impossible to tell.
"Hey Gail, what were those last three called?"
[shrug, sheepish smile, chuckle]
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/20319/comments#comment425145
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I sort of look at it like remembering stories from your school days. On any given day you may remember X number of stories and on another day you may remember some more that you couldn't recall earlier, but maybe you forgot about a couple that you remembered the other day...
so on an any given day anybody might be on top of several hundred tunes, but a thousand tunes is an effing lot. I dont even know if you can play 1000 tunes in a single sitting, so who can really say?
I'm sure there are guys who have forgot over 1000 tunes by now too
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Nate Ryan
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Maybe I should clarify what I mean by "know." I mean that if somebody started it you could play it, and if they all dropped out, you would be fine on yer own. (Thanks to Mix for that def.)
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
yes, in our session there's a wonderful PA player who knows so just about every tune I've ever heard played, including at sessions far from home. If he doesn't know a tune, he slips into it pretty quickly. There are a few here like that, and invariably they are generous and encouraging.
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Brown Creeper
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Chrishty -
Since you've started this thread as a result of a comment that I made in my own discussion, I thought I should respond!
My definition of "know" was actually slightly tougher than you quoted. I also said that you would have to be capable of starting the tune yourself as well.
A few months ago, I sat through a very long (8 hours) pub session at a festival. The material played was a mixture of Irish, Scottish, English and American old-timey. Throughout the session, musicians were leaving and arriving, thus ensuring plenty of fresh material. Apart from several breaks for songs, the playing was virtually continuous. Amazingly, very few tunes were repeated. By the time we got to the end, the calluses on the tips of my fingers had developed calluses!
Sometimes, when someone led a tune, everyone was playing.
By contrast, at other times, (apart from the person who was leading), only one other person knew it, and was able to join in.
That person was me.
I actually knew almost every tune that was played in that 8 hour session. Afterwards, a couple of people complemented me on my vast tune knowledge.
But do I know thousands of tunes? I certainly do not. But if i knew more tunes than anyone else at that session, my tune knowlege must presumably be quite good - maybe better than most.
So how many tunes do I know? I probably have a better idea of the actual number than most people, as I have to write out music scores for people who cannot (like me) play by ear.
So if I count up my huge pile of music scores, that gives me the number. The last time I counted them it came to about 750. On top of that, I could add all the tunes that I play only in sessions, (which I've never needed to write out). But I can't imagine that would amount to more that about a couple of hundred. So - maybe - 1000 - tops.
There would of course be quite a few more that I could join in with, but could not lead.
So if not many people know 1000 tunes, how many people know "thousands of tunes".
A few people perhaps, but certainly not "lots of people".
# Posted on January 15th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I'd be surprised if I knew 1,000 tunes, it's probably less. but there's no real way of telling. But I'm not a tune collector for the sake of it. I'm very picky about the tunes I learn.
But plenty of my mates are avid tune collectors and they certainly know thousands. A few times a night, a tune will get played that my mates join in on and I quiz them, "I didn't care for that tune much", and most of the time the answer is "yeah, it's not a great tune is it." "So why d'you learn it then?" "Dunno."
I think that on average, where I like to play, probably two thirds of the tunes that get played each week are crackers, with the other third not so good. With the not so good tunes obviously getting less outings and the latest favourites being played most weeks for a couple of months or so.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Thousands of people know lots of tunes. Wouldn't that be good enough?
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Aye AQ, it would, it would.
Also, I have lots of musical friends, we have lots of tunes in common, and we each have tunes the rest of us don't know, but are learning. Keeps us plenty busy and quite amused.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
There are known knowns - the tunes we know we know. Then there are known unknowns - the tunes we know we don't know. But then there are the unknown unknowns - the tunes we don't know we don't know (paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld). I know a lot of tunes but I'm pretty sure there are way more tunes I don't know I don't know than I either know or know I don't know.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by John Culhane
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Some people are collectors by nature, significantly more than others. I suppose that applies in the tune world.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by nicholas
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know someone who used to claim that he knew 5000 tunes. Thankfully it's been several years since I've seen him, so I would imagine that he's probably disappeared up his own arse by now, bless him.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
"Knowing tunes" is a very fluid thing. I have a list of five or six hundred tunes that I've played to at least passable standard (by my reckoning) over the last 15 years at some time or other. I drew that list up about seven or eight years ago in my late evangelical phase. I rarely look at the list these days, but when I do I see tunes that I haven't played for yonks, and when I try to play them I get them confused, arse about face, can't remember half the bloody B part, stick the B part of one tune on the A part of another and so on. Yet when someone comes to our session and starts one of these long-lost tunes I find I'm back into it in no time, and the beautiful thing is that I'm listening to and picking up from the other bloke's version. Magic it is. So I reckon I can play about 150 tunes confidently enough to demonstrate the bloody thing to someone else. Another 3-400 that I can pick up in a jiffy, given the right bloke at the right session. Maybe another 100 that I have heard and liked and noodled but am not too confident with as yet. Another approx. 1000 that every bugger in the world except me seems to know and which make me therefore feel woefully inadequate.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
"An Irish Traditional Musician lives in a perpetual state of low-level anxiety over the amount of tunes he does not know."
Er, sumfin like dat. From Barry Foyle, "Field Guide to the Irish Session"
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I would be willing to bet that at least five regulars at our local session know more than a thousand tunes. (Estimated by comparing the number of Irish tunes I can start that they don't know with the much huger number that they can start that I don't know.) I don't know about 2,000+, though, that seems like quite a lot.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Sol Foster
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know thousands of tunes - I just can't play them all, that's all.
It's ok though, there's plenty of others that can do that - while I watch the Guinness settle.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I know someone who used to claim that he knew 5000 tunes. Thankfully it's been several years since I've seen him, so I would imagine that he's probably disappeared up his own arse by now, bless him.
That may have been me. I disapeared up my own arse once but I popped out of my mouth 6 hours later
But I don't think I have heard 5000 tunes, never mind know them
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by greg sheils
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
No, it's not you Harry. Unless you recently moved to - - - - - - - -, and play the - - - - - .
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Dragut Reis
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
If you know a few hundred tunes, you can fudge your way
though another few hundred. I infer from this that if you can
play a thousand you can fudge another thousand or so.
However, I doubt anybody can fudge their way through a Liz
Carroll, Paddy Fahey, Altan, Flook or Ed Reavy tune!
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Hup
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Some people have what is known as eidetic memory (or total recall). Also, some individuals with autism display extraordinary memory, including those with related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome.
Anyone possessing eidetic memory (who could also play an instrument) would certainly be able to commit thousands of tunes to memory, and subsequently reproduce any one of them on demand.
But such a capability is rare, and most of us just don't have this kind of memory.
I've been to plenty of sessions where the majority of musicians present, (whilst joining in with tunes led by others), never lead a single tunes themselves. And the session tune leaders (even those whom I would regard as being first-rate musicians) seem to play a lot of the same tunes week after week, which would seem to suggest that their repertoire might be limited. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
To my mind, off-the-wall speculations on how many tunes such-and-such person might know are meaningless, unless that person has kept a list, and can demonstrate their ability to play any tune on that list.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I can't fudge my way through tunes because all the ones I know are the Liz Carroll, Paddy Fahey, Altan, Ed Reavy type tunes.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
We don't let people get away without starting tunes. Part of the whole thing of it is to see what kind of tunes other people like.
The only way to tell how many tunes I do know would be to sit and try and play them back to back. But jesus christ, how tedius would that be. And it wouldn't even be acurate anyway, because you'd forget you'd already played some, and repeat them. And there'd be swayths you'd forgot you know. And it's important to note that you can play the ones you forgot you know just as well as the others
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Llig - "We don't let people get away with starting tunes"
How do you enforce that one?
The best sessions are those where everyone present leads tunes, IMHO.
So I'm always suggesting to people at sessions that they start tunes - especially if they are newcomers to the session.
Sometimes they do. But quite often they refuse, giving such reasons as:
- there are better players here than me! I wouldn't dare!
- I can't play sets.
- I'm too nervous to do that!
- I'm concerned that people wouldn't know the tune, (or know it and not join in). And I can't play solo ...
etc.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I reckon I have forgotten many more than I know (currently play).
I can't remember tunes without a name.
I can resurrect tunes I haven't played for 40 years.
As mentioned above, I can immediately play along with tunes I have never heard (providing they are in the ITM idiom), and if I stop immediately, I can write them down. If I don't write them down (or get the name of the tune), I probably won't remember them the next morning, but with the name, I will try to look them up online.
As an avid tune collector all my life, I take great delight in opening my old jotters from decades back and revisiting tunes that aren't in my reportoire or more likely never got into it.
And there will always be tunes that you "know" and can't play.
By the same token, it never ceases to amaze me that I can go into an Irish session and play loads of older tunes the youngsters don't know and vice-versa - which is how the tradition works and what it is all about.
I would rather go to a session where I didn't know most of the tunes and get a dozen tune-names to learn, than a session where I had heard all the tunes before.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by geoffwright
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Hey Mix, I think you forgot the 'out' on Llig's 'with'.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
(tee he)
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Oh dear!
)
.. I hope that it wasn't a Freudian slip ...
The truth is that the newcomers at our local sessions actually don't stand a chance. As soon as one set finishes, one of the regulars immmediately starts up another. The newcomers usually walk out in disgust about half-way through, alas, never to return again ...
( only joking
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I've been playing trad for about 14 years. But I think I acquired the bulk of my repertoire in about the first 6 or 7 years of those - going to every session within reach, spending every summer fleadh-hopping in Ireland, religiously learning every tune on each new recording I bought or borrowed, browsing through printed and online collections, soaking up tunes like a sponge. If I had continued to build up my repertoire at the same rate as I was doing at my peak of tune acquisition - say 10 years ago - perhaps I would have a couple of thousand tunes by now. Inevitably, that lifestyle wasn't sustainable and I now settle for a few hundred tunes (I couldn't possibly be any more precise than that). That gives me enough repertoire that I can play most tunes in most (Irish) sessions I go to, but still have the pleasure of sometimes hearing tunes I have not heard before, or being reminded of ones that I never quite got round to learning.
Something which has not yet been addressed here is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that everyone here plays and listens to (or hears) nothing but Irish Traditional Music. No doubt many of us have, at some point, created our own artificial environment in which Irish Trad *is* all there is, but you can't ignore the fact that all of us have been exposed to and absorbed other music as well and most of us could probably pluck out of the air fragments of classical music, TV theme tunes, nursery rhymes, jazz standards, popular songs... if we felt like it. They may not be what we like to play in sessions, but they are still *tunes* and they are still stored somewhere in our memory banks along with the jigs and reels. Furthermore, where I live now, the staple in sessions is English music, with a smattering of Welsh, French, Breton, Irish, Welsh, Scots, Old Time, Bulgarian... (in contrast to London where I lived before, where I could find an Irish session most nights of the week. Why did I move? you ask.) I also play in a Klezmer band. So I've been expanding my repertoire in other directions over the last couple of years. I would say that the sum total of my 'other' repertoire, in terms of number of tunes, does not come close to my Irish repertoire - but that is partly due to the number of tunes I am exposed to (and perhaps partly due to the fact that I am 10 years older than I was 10 years ago and have lost some of my sponge-like qualities). But they're all tunes, nevertheless.
So perhaps, if a somewhat eclectic musician like myself can amass a repertoire of various different genres (and I do not claim to play any of them particularly well), is it inconceivable that someone who has genuionely been exposed to nothing but Irish trad all their life (probably a rarity nowadays) could have a repertoire of several thousand tunes?
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Ragaman - in this (and the earlier discussion) my definition of tunes was intended to inculde tunes from other traditions (e.g. Scottish, Welsh, English) - as well as Irish.
I didn't intend "tunes" to include song melodies, pop songs, classical pieces - in short, just tunes that might possibly be played at sessions or for traditional dances.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
paddy o'brien is well known to be a human dictionary of tunes. he claims to know over 3,000:
http://www.chulrua.com/pobbio.html
now, i dont know if that is a fair number, because he often knows several versions of each tune.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by daiv
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Actually Joanie Madden and Mike Rafferty know thousands of tunes, at a session I was with them once, and they knew every tune that was being played, and I asked them how many they knew, and they told me thousands(and they weren't exaggerating). The lead fiddler at our sessions also knows every tune being played, and she said she knew over a thousand.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by pipersgrip
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Thanks for all of your thoughtful replies to this inquiry! Reading your responses made me think of a couple of things --
Different people learn tunes in very different ways. Some people sit down with a recording or dots and spend some considerable amount of time getting the tune into their memory. Other people "learn" tunes that they've never played before because they've heard a tune x number of times and now they just know it. (This happens when one is truly "fluent" at their instrument -- just like if you want to express a thought in your head with words, you don't have to rehearse it. Though you could argue that you might have to pause and think for a moment before expressing very complicated thoughts, analogous to the more complicated Reavy type tunes out there...) So if you're in the former camp, and learning one or two tunes a week is a lot, then I imagine it would seem impossible that someone might know thousands of tunes. But if you're in the latter camp, maybe with some kind of special talent for remembering music (like Mix mentioned before, maybe), then how many tunes you know is only limited by how much time you spend listening to the music. It's not a matter of learning 2.6 tunes a week on average. After three years of doing nothing but playing music, going to a lot of differnet peoples sessions a lot of times, I had heard LOTS of tunes so many times that I knew them without ever sitting down and learning them. Again, similar to learning language.
I consider myself very lucky that I had this time in my life. A lot of the musicians that I know had similar experiences, too. And although we've never talked about learning tunes, I expect they have a similar experience to mine. It sounds, for example, like ragaman had this kind of experience. How many tunes you end up with (which doesn't matter for sh*te in the end) is just a function of how long and intense your experience is and maybe how good your computer is at storing information.
I think that it's fair to say that you know a tune even if you have to be reminded of the first couple of notes. In the same way that you have memories of things from your past that might lay dormant for years until a friend says, "Remember that time when...", and you do remember. That memory is yours, even if it only comes back to life with the help of a friend. You still "know" what happened in that memory.
Mix - you use the phrase "lead a tune" a lot, like it's different from playing a tune... I'm not really sure what this means. If this means start a tune in a session, then I do. At any rate, I wouldn't play at all if I couldn't continue if everyone else stopped. I personally don't like it when people bluff tunes. What often happens is someone has a fragment of a memory of some tune... maybe part of the name or part of the tune, and they might say, "What was that one that we played that one time..." or "What was the one that you-know-who used to play after that one..." or "What was that one that has this bit in the turn..." and they might be asking me, because I have a good memory for that sort of thing. And then I say, "Is it this one?" And play some tune I would never have thought of on my own, whether it's the right one or not, and they might say. "Yeah, that's it!" or "No, Chrishty, you crap, but let's play that one anyway even though it's one of those sh*te tunes that llig would never learn." And then I might start it, or they might. Anyway I claim that this is a tune that I know, just like a whole bunch of memories from my childhood that I can't think of right now.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Ha ha! The machine turned B o l l o c k s into crap!
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Chrishty - I'm very tempted to say that your penulimate post might amount to the same thing either way, but I'm much too kind
I gather that you are based in the USA. Terminology can vary from region to region. But in my neck of the woods, if we said that such-and-such a person could lead a tuneset, we would mean that that person could initiate a tune (without conferring with anyone else) then repeat it two or three times - immediately followed by at least one other tune repeated similarly. They would have to be capable of making the tune changes without any stumbling or faltering, and be able to keep going even if no-one else joined in.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix -
I am based in the USA. And in all the sessions that I have been to in the States and in Ireland, I have never heard of someone "leading" a "tuneset". People "start" "a set" or "a set of tunes." What a peculiar voabulary you have in Bristol. Also, I have never been anywhere where there are such strict rules governing whether or not someone knows something. Are you all epistemologists? Do you have judges on hand to dtermine if someone falters just enough in that transition to scratch a tune from their alleged repertoire? Or to overhear someone quietly lilting a bit of a tune into someone elses ear? Really, Mix, it sounds absurd.
By the way, you should try playing a tune more than three times every once in a while. ; )
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
No judges, Chrishty -
Some session "faux pas" to watch out for:
1) Failing to complete a tuneset that you have started.
2) Playing a tune that someone else played earlier.
3) Singing "The Wild Rover".
4) Playing an American "old-timey" tune.
5) Making an unsubstantiated claim about being able to play 3000 tunes.
If you do any of the above, you have to buy a round of drinks for your mates.
6) Telling your mates that you would be "starting a tune", then - starting it but not finishing it, then making the the excuse "Well, I only said that I would be starting it - I didn't promise to finish it!"
- Buy two rounds of drinks for your mates.
By the way, I'm surprised that you would want to play a tune three times, if you are able to master it by playing it just once ...
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Oh dear, this is going nowhere now. The point of this thread never was about how many tunes you know or I know. It is supposed to be about how many tunes people tend to know, or I suppose, how many tunes people with very large repertoires have. I'm afraid that my claim is unsubstantiable. Unless you can think of a clever way for me to substantiate it without having to write them all down. What do you think my motivation is for lying about this?
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Chrishty -
This is discussion number 20333. Quite a high number, yes?
You should know by know that nothing can ever be incontrovertibly solved by starting a discussion on this (or indeed any other) web site.
If it could, there would be no point in continuing to have further discussions, and all the fun would be gone
And you disappoint me. You didn't take the bait about having a penalty for playing American tunes
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I can lie in bed of a Saturday morning, listening to Sounds of the Sixties presented by Brian Matthew on Radio 2, and sing along to the lyrics of one-hit wonders that I haven't heard for 40 years. If only my brain retained only files that I'd clicked on.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I use the word "sing" advisedly, by the way.
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Steve Shaw
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix -
I believe you are the one who goes to sessions where Irish tunes mix with Scottish and "old-timey" American tunes. Sounds dreadful to me. Of all the sessions I have been to in the states, my own and others, I've not heard one "old-timey" tune played. Not that I don't like it, I've just never heard anybody play it at an Irish session.
Anyway, Mix, I'm a good natured fellow (most of the time) and I'm sure you are as well. Maybe we'll meet someday, I'll buy you a pint (for making unsubtantiable claims.)
# Posted on January 16th 2009 by Chrishty
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Things are not always that straightforward, Chrishty ...
For example some Scottish tunes: Mason's Apron, Miss Mcleods, Tamlin, and Athole Highlanders - these all get played at "Irish Only" sessions.
And take that (Irish) tune - The Beggarman. Take the swing out of it, speed it up a bit - and - hey presto - it becomes the Red Headed Boy - a tune favoured by bluegrass players in the good ol' U S of A, so I've been told.
Don't worry too much about making extravagant claims. You're in good company. Your outgoing president, for example. I once heard him claim that Austria was actually Australia.
But an offer of a free pint is one that I would never refuse. You'll have to come to the UK though, as I don't much care for your American ertsatz beer.
Come along to our session pub, and we'll let you lead (sorry, start) all of the tunes. You'll have to be careful not to repeat a tune, mind you, or you'll have to buy everyone else a pint as well ....
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
At the session I go to in Bristol, we definitely start tunes rather than lead. 'Lead' sounds so domineering don't you think?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Pomme de Terre
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Yep, we start tunes/sets too. We don't lead
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Pomme de Terre, Llig -
When you "start" tunes, presumably others would be following? So, if, they are "following", you would be "leading". Those are the semantics.
In truth, both terms are widely used - and that includes here on this board. But as "starting" has an implied suggestion of not finishing, "leading" would seem more logical - at least to my mind, anyway.
Domineering? I don't think so. At most sessions, lots of of different people would be leading/starting tunes at different points of the evening, so no-one would necessarily be dominating.
Having said that, it's been my observation that very passive or ultra timid people don't tend to lead/start tunes - no matter how good musicians they are.
So those who do initiate the tunes could be said to be dominating ...
I don't know you personally llig, but a pound to a Scottish groat that you are more of a hawk than a dove ...
Sessions in Bristol (England) ... One here every night of the week, bar Thursday. And my spies tell me that a Thursday Sesh is starting soon.
So which one(s) do you go to, Pomme de Terre?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Actually, it's quite specific: one starts a tune, then you all play it together. There is no leader.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
So, do you tell them in advance what you are going to be playing? Or do they join in when they realise what the tune is?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Depends..... most of the time we just join in when we realise what the tune. But then there's the 'Play that tune....you know, the one......' way of telling people what is going to be played.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by minijackpot
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
"Start" here too. Ol' Mike from Galway, our local patriarch, also uses 'start'. "Lead" sounds like something an orchestra conductor does with his little magic wand there: "tap tap tap"
Also Mix, we have this amazing thing here in America called 'beer importing', it's amazing technology! (lol!) The local has a full bar of imported goodness on tap!
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Hmm.
Before starting a tune (or more likely a tuneset), you would have had to decide:
1) What tunes to play.
2) The speed at which to play them.
3) The number of times through for each one.
4) Whether to play "straight", or with swing, perhaps.
Once you had started, the others would be "following" your "lead" in these matters. Well, in most cases, anyway!
And if you hadn't previously agreed these things with your fellow musicians before starting to play, your decisions would have been unilateral ones.
Lead - direction given by going in front (OED).
"Leading" doesn't mean that you are some kind of dictator - although of course it could do in some situations.
Anyone ever done any rock climbing? Usually done in a party of two - a "leader" and a "second" But of course, you both have to scale the same rockface. And very often, an ascent is achieved by what is known as "alternate leads"
Certainly though, I would use the word "start" as well. I might for example be discussing a particular tune (or tuneset) with the person sitting next to me. Then one of us might say:
"Will you start it, or shall I?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
SWFL - yes, I'm aware that you import beer. But wouldn't that be in bottles, and therefore be carbonated?
Over here, we have what is generally called "real ale". No CO2. In some pubs, you can even get it straight from a wooden barrel.
Ant real ale available in your neck of the woods?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix, we've disagreed on harmony before. But I've never been so deeply insulted as when you denigrate my homeland's beer. Just because budweiser is sold here does not mean that thinking peoples drink it! I've lived on two continents and travelled three and the small breweries in America produce a fine quality and immense variety of beer that will leave you bewildered, weeping, and considering emigration. Within 10 miles of my house there are no less than a dozen breweries erm, 90% of which produce beer that is tasty, well-crafted, and only marginally overshadowed by the product of my homebrewing. You may wax rhapsodic about six note-scales that no-one cares about, but you may not insult our beer without coming over here and trying it.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by reenactor
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
oh, and yes, Mix, we have cask ale here. I had some last week at a session.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by reenactor
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
A: "How does such and such start ?"
Pause.
B plays first few notes tentatively. Everyone joins in.
Coming to end of such and such, several glances towards B
B: (thinks) "Oh sh*t"
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by David50
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Holy semantic obsessive compulsive disorder Batman!
Funny stuff Mix. What can I say? Everybody uses 'start' that I know, plus most of the folks here on the ye olde mustard board, apparently.
Now on the brew, you missed the 'on tap' portion of my post. Sure, you have pump it with gas, but they use the CO2 and the Nitrous mixed to get the Guinness out of the keg.
Wow, a working link from the pub! I'm shocked, thing's been up and down for months:
(Actually, this is dated, got about twice this now. Whew, this is making me thirsty for tomorrow.)
"Draught selection subject to change
Lagers:
Smithwicks
Tennent's (Scotland)
Amstel Light (Holland)
Stella Artois (Belgium)
Stouts:
Guinness Stout (Ireland)
Ales:
Newcastle (England)
Bitters:
Boddington's Ale (England)
Hand-Drawn:
Fuller's E.S.B. (England)
Ciders:
Strongbow (Ireland)"
http://www.celticray.com/frames_lev2_draught.htm
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
reenactor - no, I wasn't insulting the "beer of your homeland" - just that massed-produced stuff that some of your fellow countrymen make in factories, then ship over here. I believe that you mentioned one of those particular brands.
The advertising of that stuff is so powerful, that masses of people seem to drink it. And that damages the real beer brewers.
So you see, we're really "on the same side" - abeit not in the matter of six-note scales
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
SWFL - glad to here that you are able to buy (and, more importantly, drink!) the stuff without the fizz!
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
All - as I said before, it's all a matter of context:
Start: e.g. "Why don't you start the next set"
Lead: e,g. "X is a strong fiddler, and can lead sets"
And I'm not the "only" session member to use use that word in that context, e.g. :
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/13957/comments#comment287292
(one example of many) ..
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Sure Mix, it's just semantics. I'd rather start a set and have people join me. I suppose I could lead them, but if I wanted to lead people around I'd get a leash. Ho ha hardee har har.
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Off at a tangent ...
... If the leader of a band happens to be the bass guitarist, who is actually leading? - the bass guitarist, the lead guitarist or the lead singer?
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Words. Semantics and context. Your rock climbers may be taking alternate leads Mix, but at the bottom "whos going to start then ? " is a loaded question - it means "whos going to lead the hard bit"
# Posted on January 17th 2009 by David50
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Well, you've blown my cover, david_h !
Back in those dim and distant days when I was climbing, I was always careful to read up the guidebook description well in advance, and thus knew on which pitch the crux of the climb occurred.
So if, for example, the crux was on say pitch #2, when we got to the foot of the climb I would say something like "I'm on good form this morning, I'll take first lead, if that's allright with you!!"
If on the other hand I knew that the crux was on pitch #3, I'd say something like: "You can take first lead, if you like!"
Climbing, (like sessions) is all about strategy ...
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I just want to say that SWFL's list of beers made me laugh. It's like a who's who of dodgy UK beers and would make any die-hard cask ale snob run for their life!
I like how the UK imports its sh*te beers to the US. Fair enough, considering the US sends the UK it's sh*tty beers like Coors and Budweiser. One guy was amazed when I told him Bud was the uber student drunk party beer because you can get lots of it CHEAP. Like Tennants here in Scotland, which I guess is all cool and imported in the States. Hilarious.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
*By "imports" I mean "exports." Oops.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Fuller's can be a good pint though... dunno after crossing the Atlantic mind...
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Pomme de Terre
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
What were we talking about? I've forgotten. Climbing? I used to wangle the hard pitch!
Oh leading vs starting. Well, yes, I can't think of anyone not handy enough at our session (which shall remain the worst-kept secret in Bristol) to lead a set. So 'leading' isn't really an issue. So it all comes down to starting. Regarding that nice list earlier:
1) What tunes to play. - Um, whatever comes into my head while playing the last one.
2) The speed at which to play them. - The RIGHT speed of course.
3) The number of times through for each one. - Depends on if people have started to exchange glances in readiness - you know the moment when it's right.
4) Whether to play "straight", or with swing, perhaps. - Hmmm. I had better start pondering these issues more deeply methinks.
And halfway through a set I might well cast my eyes about and look for the eager intense face with a tune waiting in the wings and nod and pass the buck.
It gets grim when it gets too regimented and serious imho. Our method may sound chaotic, but it works most of the time, and when it doesn't, we have a laugh.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Pomme de Terre
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
If anyone comes to where I play with a strategy, we'd just refuse to play with them.
The only two ways sets start are:
1. Someone starts and everyone joins in (if the know it) and every one plays together.
2. "Let's play such and such?" And everyone starts together.
I like 2. I like the slightly faltered first two or three notes and the quick acceleration out of first gear and the settling down by the second or third bar. There's quite a few tracks on that brilliant malloy peoples brady album that do that. You can so tell that they didn't do that really annoying studio thing of counting 1, 2, 3, and then the silent 4 so it makes the count easier to edit out. They just picked up their instruments, looked at each other and started.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Yeah, quite agree, Michael. I find I flinch at those albums where everything comes in with a false punch - sometimes so false you can hear where they've simply chopped off the previous trip through the tune... Just start. Like getting into the bath - you don't take a running jump.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Pomme de Terre
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Sorry, llig - one of my many typos - when I said "strategy", I meant of to say, "strathspey".
Yes, I've seen your method (1) and (2) - but which is the more common, do you suppose?
I quite like the nod/casting eyes around method myself. Even though it doesn't always work - telepathy being an imperfect science ...
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
?
"Climbing, (like sessions) is all about strathspey ... "
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by llig leahcim
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Earth-Apple-
If ye haven't already done so, I suggest ye write a tune and call it "Wrangle the Hard Pitch". (seriously)
Silver Spear- yer right about all that imported beeer nonsense-but with one exception, the Beck's here is as good as it is any where else
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by pipewatcher
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Your guess is as good as mine, lads, I just drink the brown. Yellow stuff belongs back in the bladder from whence it came.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
There is, however, good climbing in Strathspey.
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by DrSilverSpear
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Well climbing might be, if undertaken on a crag on the banks of the Spey ..
.. and after a succesful ascent, you could go along to a local session and play some Strathspeys ..
# Posted on January 18th 2009 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
I can "fudge" my way through tunes if it is chocolate fudge (yes I am a Chocoholic) but I rarely have to start and/or lead a tune because I am the piano player. At our local sessions, we almost always have enough melody players who play more traditional melody instruments who can lead and/or start tunes.
Since I am primarily an accompanist/sideman/backup musician, I think of most tunes as sequences or progressions of chords instead of as melodies.
Freudian slips are worn only by Frau Freud.
Speaking of leading.....A successful politician is usually a politician who tries to lead the people in the direction in which they (otherwise known as the people), want to go.
I heard "Red-Haired Boy" first at a folk music session and then I learned that it supposedly was based on an Irish song called "The Little Beggarman" (or Johnny Dhu).
SWFL Fiddler, on your list of imported beers at the Celtic Ray, I noticed that my favorite imported beer, Shiner Bock (from Texas) isn't on the list. If I ever visit the Celtic Ray, I guess I will just have to suffer and drink water instead of beer.
I think there is something fishy about the idea of a bass (guitarist) leading the band.
# Posted on January 22nd 2009 by fauxcelt
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
All this talk about how to start off a set reminds of a number of years back I was in Brogan's in Ennis on Holiday's. There were two young lads, can't remember their names but one had a banjo and the other a box. I think they might have been brothers. Anyway, I sat in with them with me guitar at the time. They way they started sets was brilliant. The banjo play would very quietly plink the first couple of notes of a tune, the box play would nod. the banjo play would do the same a few more times. and then they were off! About a half hour of reels at a wonderful pace and lift!
Hardly a word was spoken between them but they had a great understanding of the tunes.
# Posted on March 29th 2009 by mumhain abu
Re: Lots of people know thousands of tunes, right?
Mix, I'm not so sure that the sort of memory you cite for people on the autism spectrum is rare. I think most of us have that capacity, we just don't bother using it fully. And it's not so much the memory anyway, but the *retrieval* of stored items that can make us stumble.
In my purely limited, anecdotal, and probably misleading experience, most people I've sessioned with underestimate how many tunes they know and can play. On the other hand, it's easy enough to fill 6 or 8 hours of steady sessioning with just 300 or 400 tunes.
I'm guessing that I know and can play in the neighborhood of 800 to 1,200 tunes, but what matters much more is that I know nearly all of the tunes that each of my session mates plays.
# Posted on March 29th 2009 by Will Harmon