Following on from an earlier discussion about remembering names of tunes; a jazz-playing friend says that a good jazz musician should know at least a thousand standards. Now if I struggle, maybe I could manage 250 or 300 tunes. But a thousand..? Is the jazz version of 'knowing' a tune different to mine, or do I need to lock myself away in a darkened room for a few years? How many tunes do you know?
i've been 'at the racket' for about 12 years, in a serious and focussed way, and my tunelist has between 4- & 500 entries. but i was just going down my list of reels yesterday, and i don't really have a lot of them anymore -- and many of the ones i do retain in my head/fingers are incomplete. some seem to be complete strangers; we must've shaken hands in passing and moved on. if i were honest i'd take them off the list, but i keep hoping they will return.
i asked an accomplished fiddle teacher a few years ago, how many tunes he had in his list, and he wasn't able to say. i've watched him at sessions, and it looks to me like (and he may have explained it this way at the time) he has a deep and practised comprehension of the vocabulary common to most of the tunes, and is able to pick up on the fly, even if he doesn't truly recall a tune, so that he sounds just fine.
Breathnach estimated (somewhere) that 'master' musicians had 250-300, but I think that this is an out-of-date estimation, and far below what some players might have today. I'm sure that there are musicians out there with at least 1000 tunes; perhaps not all at their fingertips, but where the tune could be 'refreshed' very quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if I had 1000 - but have never sat down and worked it out!
I've been a jazz musician for about 50 years and I would say I probably don't know more than about 100 standards. I do, however, know every scale you'd care to think of. Most good jazz is improv so you really don't need to know any tunes.
My touch pad is driving me nuts. I hadn't finished.
The point I was trying to get to is that making comparisons across genres may not be useful. For the jazz musician, knowing chord structures and scales is far more important than knowing tunes. For the trad musician, on the other hand, knowing tunes and appropriate embellishments is the hallmark of excellence along with skill in the playing of their particular instrument. I've played for hours at a time in a jazz session without ever actually playing a tune. Try that at your local trad session some time and see how long it takes to be shown the door.
I just recently updated my repertoire list, and I tried to be honest with myself and took away the ones I either really can't play, or those I don't like well enough practice. So, my list has only about 135 tunes on it.
My "excuses" are three-fold. First, I work full-time and have life outside of music. Secondly, I live in an area where the only sessions there might possible be are at least 400 miles away. And third, the closest thing I could find to the kind of music I have played all my adult life was when I joined a bluegrass band. So, I've been learning and playing much more bluegrass than ITM these last 7 years.
Yea, I know what you're thinking, but when there seems to be no one in a town of over 100,000 who plays Irish music, you go with what you can find. But, I just been accepted into a fairly new Irish band here in town, and I've been working my guts out the last three weeks learning 25 new tunes - which I haven't yet added to my "I-can-definately-play-this" list.
Continuo wrote that:
> Breathnach estimated (somewhere)
> that 'master' musicians had 250-300,
> but I think that this is an out-of-date
> estimation, and far below what some
> players might have today.
I might venture two guesses in agreement. First, that Breathnach's estimate really *is* a good number for a master musician to know, if s/he cherishes and loves the tunes and the tradition. Some, especially musicians who were somewhere near full-time players would no more, but that is not necessary - to know nearly 300 *thoroughly* is enough to be a "master" musician (whatever that is).
Secondly, my guess is that there are quite a lot of session players these days who know a lot more because, although some do perhaps just have an exceptional talent, there are many who collect tunes out of competitiveness, a bit like we collected train numbers when I was little - anything to play on and show that you know more tunes than the person in the next seat. It goes hand-in-hand with playing faster than the next player. It's very uninteresting.
All just my opinion of course, and opinions are cheap.
Maybe, but it would be wrong to assume that anyone who habitually learns loads of tunes just to be competitive. Personally I just love tunes and learn loads of them. i learn loads to play in the house without ever feeling the need to play them in public. Being competitive in your own living room is a bit pointless.
when i 'get' a new tune (often the other way around: i wake up with a tune in my head, itching to get out my fingers), i feel like a dog with a fresh lamb shank in its jaws (ears back, eyes snapping -- whoopee!). it's not about competing, it's about owning something beautiful that i didn't pay anything for except pleasure. of course it can help at sessions, so you don't spend the evening sitting on your hands, but i don't think it's that much fun to be the one at a session with the most tunes; looks like a lot of work.
I can whistle or hum more tunes than I can play.
I've worked on almost 400 'on purpose' and there are others I can
play along with in a session. Put to the test I could get through 75 or so
without help, but you might not want to hear them that way
There are people in my session who seem to know far more tunes
than I do. I can see more experienced players get sick
of Swinging on a Gate, Concertina Reel, etc etc after a while and
go after Paddy Fahey, Altan, Liz Carroll etc etc. It's impossible to keep up.
But sometimes I think people trot out a new tune because it gives them
some space to be a soloist, or it clears away some of the riff raff like me.
"I do, however, know every scale you'd care to think of. Most good jazz is improv so you really don't need to know any tunes."
I'm not that fond of Jazz, but my brother plays and so I'm reasonably well aquatinted. I think your statement there is toss. I'm thinking of artists as diverse as Monk and Fats Waller. The tunes are really important. If you are gonna have any hope of getting a good solo out of "Ain't misbehavin'", for example, if you don't know the tune, if you only know the changes, all you will ever hope to get is some vague trundle of notes that fit the chords, and nothing else. If you think that that is jazz, well, you are welcome to your slide into obscurity and self flagellation.
And if you think that you can get anything anywhere near approaching a decent solo out of a tune like Blue Monk, without actually learning it first, you are merely one of the ubiquitous horde of chancers that give Jazz the bad name it shouldn't really deserve
My own perspective on this is to have 10 sets that I can play well and practice often, 10 Jig sets, reel Sets, Hp sets etc..
At least then you've got tunes that you can play competently, Every time I get a new tune/Set then something drops off the botom of the list, into a less frequently practiced type of category.
the further down the list it goes the less it gets played, until somebody plays it at a session then hopefully I can still muster the tune, but from the distant memory.
So how many tunes just 10 sets played well and loads of tunes in the vagaries of my memory.
Great quote that - thoroughly agree. In fact, you could also say that if you know all the tunes that you can play, that you don't know enough either!
Basically though it comes down to the type of session you're playing at. If it's with a load of tune hogs then you need to know a wide range in order not to sink quickly. If on the other hand it's a fairly standard session with standard players then your 2-300 will see you through.
I think also that it's more likely that professional players - especially people playing a lot of sessions and festivals and the like - will have built up masses of tunes, so that they can sit in and be confident that they can cope with whatever is thrown at them.
For instance, I played a few sessions recently with a fiddler from a well-known band, and the session had a definite sense of exploration about it, we were out of our comfort zones a lot, and dredging the memory for unusual stuff. Very satisfying and inspiring.
I couldn't possibly say how many tunes I have - somewhere between 200 and 600, perhaps, but probably closer to 200. If a musician manages to accumulate a repertoire numbering in the 1000s, fair play to them - it's a mark of their passion and dedication. But are they any better off for it? Having 200-300 tunes may be better than only having 50, as it helps develop familiarity with the music, gives you more material to draw on for building variations and increases the chances of finding tunes in common with other musicians. But the flipside is, the bigger your repertoire, the less chance you have of coming across a tune you haven't heard before. This could make going to sessions excruciatingly boring (even with my small-to-average sized repertoire, I am often frustrated to hear the same tunes being churned out week after week).
...I am not seeking to discourage anyone from learning more tunes - on the contrary, there are too many good tunes out there that need resurrecting. I am merely saying that *size doesn't matter* (whilst also knowing full well how easy it is to get hung up on such things). Increasing one's repertoire to monstrous proportions shouldn't be an end in itself.
How many tunes?
How many tunes?
Following on from an earlier discussion about remembering names of tunes; a jazz-playing friend says that a good jazz musician should know at least a thousand standards. Now if I struggle, maybe I could manage 250 or 300 tunes. But a thousand..? Is the jazz version of 'knowing' a tune different to mine, or do I need to lock myself away in a darkened room for a few years? How many tunes do you know?
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by gam
Re: How many tunes?
"a good jazz musician should know at least a thousand standards"
I think the difference is, that if a jazz musician doesn't know the tune, he can always improvise ...
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by Rick Payman
Re: How many tunes?
i've been 'at the racket' for about 12 years, in a serious and focussed way, and my tunelist has between 4- & 500 entries. but i was just going down my list of reels yesterday, and i don't really have a lot of them anymore -- and many of the ones i do retain in my head/fingers are incomplete. some seem to be complete strangers; we must've shaken hands in passing and moved on. if i were honest i'd take them off the list, but i keep hoping they will return.
i asked an accomplished fiddle teacher a few years ago, how many tunes he had in his list, and he wasn't able to say. i've watched him at sessions, and it looks to me like (and he may have explained it this way at the time) he has a deep and practised comprehension of the vocabulary common to most of the tunes, and is able to pick up on the fly, even if he doesn't truly recall a tune, so that he sounds just fine.
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by 'tinamatt
Re: How many tunes?
Breathnach estimated (somewhere) that 'master' musicians had 250-300, but I think that this is an out-of-date estimation, and far below what some players might have today. I'm sure that there are musicians out there with at least 1000 tunes; perhaps not all at their fingertips, but where the tune could be 'refreshed' very quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if I had 1000 - but have never sat down and worked it out!
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by continuo
Re: How many tunes?
2 tunes per week for 10 years = 1,040 tunes.
[1,001 tunes every ten years?]
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by Ben Steen
*
that's not me though. I know 35 or 36 - but that was before I joined thesession.
~ smiliey head ~
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by Ben Steen
Re: How many tunes?
I've been a jazz musician for about 50 years and I would say I probably don't know more than about 100 standards. I do, however, know every scale you'd care to think of. Most good jazz is improv so you really don't need to know any tunes.
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by dlkes
Re: How many tunes?
My touch pad is driving me nuts. I hadn't finished.
The point I was trying to get to is that making comparisons across genres may not be useful. For the jazz musician, knowing chord structures and scales is far more important than knowing tunes. For the trad musician, on the other hand, knowing tunes and appropriate embellishments is the hallmark of excellence along with skill in the playing of their particular instrument. I've played for hours at a time in a jazz session without ever actually playing a tune. Try that at your local trad session some time and see how long it takes to be shown the door.
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by dlkes
Re: How many tunes?
I just recently updated my repertoire list, and I tried to be honest with myself and took away the ones I either really can't play, or those I don't like well enough practice. So, my list has only about 135 tunes on it.
My "excuses" are three-fold. First, I work full-time and have life outside of music. Secondly, I live in an area where the only sessions there might possible be are at least 400 miles away. And third, the closest thing I could find to the kind of music I have played all my adult life was when I joined a bluegrass band. So, I've been learning and playing much more bluegrass than ITM these last 7 years.
Yea, I know what you're thinking, but when there seems to be no one in a town of over 100,000 who plays Irish music, you go with what you can find. But, I just been accepted into a fairly new Irish band here in town, and I've been working my guts out the last three weeks learning 25 new tunes - which I haven't yet added to my "I-can-definately-play-this" list.
# Posted on November 16th 2008 by Quarter Irish
Re: How many tunes?
I have only recently realized that the more I find out about about this music, the fewer are the tunes that I actually know.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Rick Payman
Re: How many tunes?
Continuo wrote that:
> Breathnach estimated (somewhere)
> that 'master' musicians had 250-300,
> but I think that this is an out-of-date
> estimation, and far below what some
> players might have today.
I might venture two guesses in agreement. First, that Breathnach's estimate really *is* a good number for a master musician to know, if s/he cherishes and loves the tunes and the tradition. Some, especially musicians who were somewhere near full-time players would no more, but that is not necessary - to know nearly 300 *thoroughly* is enough to be a "master" musician (whatever that is).
Secondly, my guess is that there are quite a lot of session players these days who know a lot more because, although some do perhaps just have an exceptional talent, there are many who collect tunes out of competitiveness, a bit like we collected train numbers when I was little - anything to play on and show that you know more tunes than the person in the next seat. It goes hand-in-hand with playing faster than the next player. It's very uninteresting.
All just my opinion of course, and opinions are cheap.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Alex Wilding
Re: How many tunes?
Maybe, but it would be wrong to assume that anyone who habitually learns loads of tunes just to be competitive. Personally I just love tunes and learn loads of them. i learn loads to play in the house without ever feeling the need to play them in public. Being competitive in your own living room is a bit pointless.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by bogman
Re: How many tunes?
when i 'get' a new tune (often the other way around: i wake up with a tune in my head, itching to get out my fingers), i feel like a dog with a fresh lamb shank in its jaws (ears back, eyes snapping -- whoopee!). it's not about competing, it's about owning something beautiful that i didn't pay anything for except pleasure. of course it can help at sessions, so you don't spend the evening sitting on your hands, but i don't think it's that much fun to be the one at a session with the most tunes; looks like a lot of work.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by 'tinamatt
Re: How many tunes?
I can whistle or hum more tunes than I can play.
I've worked on almost 400 'on purpose' and there are others I can
play along with in a session. Put to the test I could get through 75 or so
without help, but you might not want to hear them that way
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Hup
Re: How many tunes?
There are people in my session who seem to know far more tunes
than I do. I can see more experienced players get sick
of Swinging on a Gate, Concertina Reel, etc etc after a while and
go after Paddy Fahey, Altan, Liz Carroll etc etc. It's impossible to keep up.
But sometimes I think people trot out a new tune because it gives them
some space to be a soloist, or it clears away some of the riff raff like me.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Hup
Re: How many tunes?
"I do, however, know every scale you'd care to think of. Most good jazz is improv so you really don't need to know any tunes."
I'm not that fond of Jazz, but my brother plays and so I'm reasonably well aquatinted. I think your statement there is toss. I'm thinking of artists as diverse as Monk and Fats Waller. The tunes are really important. If you are gonna have any hope of getting a good solo out of "Ain't misbehavin'", for example, if you don't know the tune, if you only know the changes, all you will ever hope to get is some vague trundle of notes that fit the chords, and nothing else. If you think that that is jazz, well, you are welcome to your slide into obscurity and self flagellation.
And if you think that you can get anything anywhere near approaching a decent solo out of a tune like Blue Monk, without actually learning it first, you are merely one of the ubiquitous horde of chancers that give Jazz the bad name it shouldn't really deserve
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by ...
Re: How many tunes?
My own perspective on this is to have 10 sets that I can play well and practice often, 10 Jig sets, reel Sets, Hp sets etc..
At least then you've got tunes that you can play competently, Every time I get a new tune/Set then something drops off the botom of the list, into a less frequently practiced type of category.
the further down the list it goes the less it gets played, until somebody plays it at a session then hopefully I can still muster the tune, but from the distant memory.
So how many tunes just 10 sets played well and loads of tunes in the vagaries of my memory.
Andy
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Andyras1
Re: How many tunes?
A quote from a friend of mine (very good irish box player) : if you know the name of all the tunes you play, well, you don't know enough tunes...
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by Nikita Pfister
Re: How many tunes?
Great quote that - thoroughly agree. In fact, you could also say that if you know all the tunes that you can play, that you don't know enough either!
Basically though it comes down to the type of session you're playing at. If it's with a load of tune hogs then you need to know a wide range in order not to sink quickly. If on the other hand it's a fairly standard session with standard players then your 2-300 will see you through.
I think also that it's more likely that professional players - especially people playing a lot of sessions and festivals and the like - will have built up masses of tunes, so that they can sit in and be confident that they can cope with whatever is thrown at them.
For instance, I played a few sessions recently with a fiddler from a well-known band, and the session had a definite sense of exploration about it, we were out of our comfort zones a lot, and dredging the memory for unusual stuff. Very satisfying and inspiring.
# Posted on November 17th 2008 by continuo
Re: How many tunes?
I couldn't possibly say how many tunes I have - somewhere between 200 and 600, perhaps, but probably closer to 200. If a musician manages to accumulate a repertoire numbering in the 1000s, fair play to them - it's a mark of their passion and dedication. But are they any better off for it? Having 200-300 tunes may be better than only having 50, as it helps develop familiarity with the music, gives you more material to draw on for building variations and increases the chances of finding tunes in common with other musicians. But the flipside is, the bigger your repertoire, the less chance you have of coming across a tune you haven't heard before. This could make going to sessions excruciatingly boring (even with my small-to-average sized repertoire, I am often frustrated to hear the same tunes being churned out week after week).
# Posted on November 19th 2008 by CreadurMawnOrganig
Re: How many tunes?
...I am not seeking to discourage anyone from learning more tunes - on the contrary, there are too many good tunes out there that need resurrecting. I am merely saying that *size doesn't matter* (whilst also knowing full well how easy it is to get hung up on such things). Increasing one's repertoire to monstrous proportions shouldn't be an end in itself.
# Posted on November 19th 2008 by CreadurMawnOrganig