Approximately how many tunes do you know and how does it measure up to how long you've been playing? I've heard disgusting rumors that Really Awesome Professional Musicians store thousands of tunes in their heads, and if they're the Ultimate kind of pro, they can keep them all straight. So far, I know about 50 tunes, maybe more, and sometimes with the random French Canadian or bluegrass tune thrown in. I think that's pretty good for the two years or so I've been working at this. So just take a moment to ponder, then respond with your assesment of yourself...
Emmaline's good question leads me to ponder what do I mean when I say I "know" a tune.
Is it, "ah! I've heard that one before/seen the dots in O'Neill" - but I've never played it?
Is it a tune which, when someone else starts it I can join in, and then blow a fuse half-way through the B-part, until the third time round when I get it right?
Is it a tune which, when someone starts it off, I join in and play reasonably well, without significant mistakes?
Is it a tune I can lead off with in a session fairly confidently?
Is it a tune I would be confident/good enough to play on stage or make a cd of for public distribution?
In specific answer to Emmaline's question, I've been playing for nearly 3 years, and the number of tunes I "know" (depending on the definition) is probably anywhere between about a dozen and 150-200, but leaving aside my last definition!
Good question! But remember, the real question is not how many, but how you play them!That's what makes for a session.
Also, it's unfair to think that only RAPMs can store thousands in their head. Traditional players have massive repertoires.
I'm not a pro and would say that over the last few years, because of location and isolation, all geographical (two years on Lundy in the Atlantic! No other musicians to play with) that I might have lost a few, but I'd reckon to have kept quite a few! There are members of The Session who know what I mean.
Once, when I stayed with a respected fiddler, playing house sessions all day, then going out to play at night, we spent 8 days playing, and never once played the same tune twice!
So let's have it for traditional players. They too have memories, not just pros!
If you want to play, there's nothing and no one to stop you. Dead simple really. It's how much you want to.
At last count 235. Most of them I can play along with at session, but a few of them are tunes I barely know (tunes to which I know all the notes, but can't yet play up to speed). It seems like a lot, but at sessions I still find myself sitting on my hands about half the time.
I've been playing (B/C accordion) now for 15 months (after 40 years of piano & 10 years of listening to Irish tunes). There's about 170 tunes that I know, in the sense that I can play them at home from memory (though I may need 10 minutes to recall how they start or may need to hear or look at a bar or two as a refresher) at a leisurely but not plodding pace with up to a half dozen wrong notes each time through and little or no ornamentation/variations/basses. If I'm solo/leading and on the spot, it's harder to estimate, as I don't have the opportunity to do the necessary experiment. As a guess, I'd say 25-50. In a session, following, it depends on the speed. I can handle East Clare speeds on maybe 80% of the tunes I know and Sligo speeds on maybe 10% or less.
I liked Trevor's break down of what might constitute 'knowing' a tune.
The tunes I really know I can play have to have a name. I have to search the data bank (brain) with the name and then usually it just pops out. If not, then my second tactic to recall is the first three of four notes, or a lilt from a memorable phrase. (Currently about 150 tunes after 10 years playing and 40 listening!).
I know lots of tunes to play along to, but can't play them without someone else leading! Isn't that daft? But there you go. I've never counted these as they are not available in the data bank, obviously!
Counting those that I can play all by myself from beginning to end at a reasonable speed I'll be somewhere near the 100 mark. Which is lousy considering the number of years I've been at it.
But - nobody I play music with gives a d**n whether I know 100 or 200 so long as I can spit out a matching tune to follow a song or another tune.
I very much doubt that players before the age of mechanical recording knew several hundred or thousands of tunes.
I think this counting and speeding lark is very much a sign of modern competitiveness. Not particularly traditional at all.
Kuec, I think you've put your finger right on it.
I'll make a gues that in the old days (pre-recordings, pre-radio), the average trad musician in a village probably wouldn't have known much more than 50 or 60 tunes (but he would have known these very well indeed), and they would have been the ones needed for accompanying dancers (set or step) and for playing in house sessions. And that would have been largely it.
The people in his village would in all probability have been quite satisfied with this, based on the good old human tradition of people liking what they know and knowing what they like - and that still goes on in every session I've been to!
Trevor
I probably know about 45 that I'd play well in session. I learned most of those in about the first 6-8 months of playing, and I've been picking up one about every other week since then (I only started learning them by heart when I went to my first session which was close to a year ago).
My problem is that I keep finding that I want to play the tunes I know better than I do. So, I'll go back and work on groups of three till the cows come home and I feel really comfortable with them and can slip into them at the drop of a hat. Problem is - the longer I play the more I realize I'm not where I want to be so then I go back over everything again.
While it's true that you're better off playing a few tunes well than many tunes poorly, it *is* possible to play lots and lots of tunes well.
Sessions are fun when you can choose to join in on tunes or not, based less on which ones you know and more on whether you feel like playing or chatting up the good looking punter at the bar. Plus, the more tunes you know, the easier it gets to come up with variations, string tunes together in interesting ways, and find ways to include other players (starting less common tunes that you know someone else knows). Besides, the more tunes you know, the easier it is to learn more tunes--kind of a self-perpetuating circle.
And I'm not sure Trevor's hypothesis is accurate about players back in the day not knowing many tunes. The stories passed down are often of players who could go all night and never repeat a tune. Some of the dance players, like Francie and Mickie Byrne, knew hundreds of tunes. It does seem likely that the advent and rise of fleadhanna and sessions in the last 60 years has nurtured the circulation of a great many tunes, and some of today's players can lay claim to knowing a thousand tunes or more. But a hundred years ago, players weren't distracted by television, the internet, travel, etc. Beyond work and survival, the highlight of the week was a ceili or house dance. A player might be called onto to play for four hours straight, or all night long. So it's possible and plausible that some knew hundreds upon hundreds of tunes.
When I first started playing, I used to keep a tally of tunes. I quit that about 15 years ago because, for me, there's no point to it. And after a couple hundred tunes, it's a logistical nightmare--better to spend that time and energy playing.
In short: I know the tunes I do, I pick up new ones every chance I get, and all the others are on my "short" list, heh.
Fifteen years ago my instructor in Irish music gave me "Mountain Road". It took me a couple years before I felt comfortable leading it and I still can't play it the way he taught me. That was one of my first and although I have had many lessons since, the lesson of that tune keeps nagging at me. I play my own version of it and suppose I'll never be satisfied. But I am enjoying the process all the same. There are plenty of tunes that fit in "my version" category, and many of them, I couldn't tell you whether they were "correct" or faithfully reproduced. I never play from sheet music but I can tell if the tune doesn't go the way I heard it from live session or from a recording. When I try making a playlist for a gig I draw a circle at the end of each listing and if I really can lead the tune I place a dot in the middle of the circle. Lots and lots of circles, not so many dots.
It does make sense to know lots of tunes if you've got a session to go to. (Which I don't.) It might even be a matter of politeness towards your fellow players to learn new tunes.
I just wanted to avoid to give the kids the impression that they weren't any good unless they knew x-hundred tunes.
after 3 years of bashing the fiddle( its bound to give in sooner or later) id have about 26 tunes in my head( i only know cos i counted how many i have written on the back of my manuscript book. i write them there as i learn so none get neglected in practice) most are baisic and id say i cant play any really well. i still love to work at it though. my goal is to one day be like billy, the accordion player at my local session. to watch him play youd say he has no tunes in his head, but his fingers know thousands. and on the odd occasion when theyre stumped, he closes his eyes for a few seconds, consults the great cosmic tune library and his fingers are away! much respect billy... anyhoo, my point is that i dont think it matters how many tunes you have memorised, as long as your having some fun and get a tune in here and there.
Will, thanks for putting me right on that hypothesis of mine. As I said, I was guessing, and that's not a bad way of getting the correct info out of someone!
Trevor
On the first 2 years I was counting but today I don't see logic doing that and if you ask me I don't know how many tunes have I stored in my head, well I can play all nigth and that is good for me!
Thinking about Kuec's idea of people maybe not knowing loads of tunes way back, posssibly it's the fact that CDs, radio, etc. all give us glimpses of the perfect idea of of how 'I' could sound...if only.
Also, the number of CDs I own must contribute to 1000s (?) of possibilities that I could listen to and try to learn if I wished. I also think that puts pressure on us to learn this or that tune that we may not ever have encountered. Just because so many of them, are so inspiring, fun or whatever.
Mind you Trevor, I only gave my own hypothesis--just as likely to be wrongheaded. And Kuec, I agree--it's not how many tunes you know, but how you play them that matters. Then, once you can play like a banshee, the tunes just keep coming anyway.
Just I.T. tunes here - about 150 I can play fluently from memory, when a name or a few notes are given (although like Arnie in the film, my total recall is terrible). Of those 150, I only really like about half that number, and out of that half, for the ones I *really really * like I've knocked up some quite extreme variations (not session-friendly, but more for band arrangements).
I've got shedlaods of bluegrass tunes and a stack of classical also, but that's another story!
So all in all, probably not a large amount of tunes when compared to other I.T. musicians.
Shortly before he left for the big session, Alan McGregor sent me an email. Maybe this belongs on the other thread where Danny asked us to boast. In part, this is what he said:
"A guy you should check out is Jim Dorans at the
session.org. -I'll tell you [another musician who shall go unnamed here to spare any chagrin] might brag, but Jim puts his money
where his mouth is - he is stupendous -I played with
him more than twenty years ago and he was great
then.Apart from that he doesn't offend anyone.I don't
know why he isn't up there professionly but he should
be."
Jim sure is a fine player - I can vouch for that - and a nice guy, at least that's what he told me :~}
Like Miles (another fine player, and a ni...) said - it's what you do with it...agreed, but size of repertoire does help if you suddenly find yourself beamed down to an alien session, and you need to supplicate the Klingons (and I don't mean what you find in your used toilet paper after eating nuts).
ANYway. I know four tunes. That's it. Reel, Jig, Hornpipe and Slow One.
Naw, seriously. I know a fair few. I used to think I knew loads till I met Conan. However many tunes any of you know, square it, and that's C. McD's repertoire.
But doesn't yer repertoire vary? Sometimes you may be on top of your instrument, leading all sorts of tunes, then other times, things just don't seem to happen. And it could be due to any number of factors - a virus, tiredness, hangover, current blood-alcohol/other substance level, or simply the vibe at a particular session. Or you might find yourself at a cliquey intimidating session, where you can't find your tune memory - this being a function of self-editing the tune memory. I hate those kinda sessions and I hope their exponents get boiled alive and thereafter rot in hell forevermore - nothing personal, mind you, I just hate them.
Yes, Zina, Danny and Will, I'm blushing loudly!!! I didn't expect to see anything like that in print! You guys are full of surprises. Danny, you had me creased up with laughter when I read your Klingons definition. Only a Glasgow man could think up something like that!
Everyone here is welcome at my sessions. That goes without saying. Good tunes and laughs are guaranteed. (We've even suspended killing people for the whole of 2004).
Oh, and I had a silly and overpowering urge to change my session name (before I read today's entries on this thread). So have a laugh!
Here we go again admiring people whose heads are tune dictionarys. There are far too many tunes, and we'd all help the world of diddly music imensly if we forgot some of them rather that learning even more.
If you're still counting the number of tunes, you probably haven't leaned enough of them yet. I wouldn't agree that we should forget lots of the tunes but we *will* anyway. Hopefully, they will come back to us, if we ever need them e.g in a different session. Quite often,though, most of us just seem to play a "hard core" selection of tunes which happen to be in vogue, depending on the particular session or company.
'Tune dictionary'? Well my head feels more like a tune poem, one of those epic, changing, oral things that no one ever wrote down in all it's variety, as it rambles from love story to war to drink to boiling breakfast, navigating the mythic countryside all the while, and features a cast of hundreds, and you don't so much memorize it as call up the general outlines, and the details and synaptic triggers come flooding in even as you're retelling it, so it's recreated whole each time, not a clone of itself but a fresh new fire, and comes out alive and unrestrained and fairly levitating with the sheer energy and joy and breath of life in it.
Q: "Approximately how many tunes do you know" A: I've no idea. Q: "how does it measure up to how long you've been playing?" A: Whose measure are we using?
Here's what my teachers told me when I asked about this when I first started out: Shannon, we approximated, knew about 2500 to 3000 tunes or so when I first started playing. After 5 years, I would be surprised if she doesn't know a couple thousand more. Once upon a time, she told me, it was fine and in fact quite normal for a player in Ireland to know maybe 25-50 tunes more or less, because they rarely got outside of their home environments. Because we all travel so much more now, and IF YOU WANT TO PLAY OUT AT MORE THAN YOUR HOME SESSION, you need to know more tunes, because every session has a different rep.
So don't worry about looking a tune dweeb (or for that matter, admiring tune dweebs) by wanting to have more than 50 or 100 or 200 or 2000 tunes, because if you like to play as much as possible at any session you walk into, the more tunes you know the better. But don't mistake number of tunes for quality playing (not that I think anyone is making that mistake, but it should really be pointed out) -- the good players can pull a tune out of a 20 year hiatus and it'll still sound good. And start with the session standards (for your own home sessions and the sessions you attend away from home) first. Not that that should stop you if you hear a tune and love it and want to play it. But learning the standards for your area first will serve you better in the long run.
Hmmm, where should we draw the line at too many tunes?
I think it's when they start to sound the same. Which is subjective of course. But there difinately is a point of no return here. It's when you hear a tune and rather than thinking, "wow, what a great melody," you think, "Hmm, that sounds abit like such and such except the B part is a little different and it's in a different key." Of course the more you get into diddley music, the greater your tollerance the "all sounding the same sindrome," so there is a degree of flexibility here. It's just that we should be more vigilant to the "new melody" as apposed to "variation."
Michael, following on from that point about variation, etc, some tunes work well when changed from major to minor key - I've done that with "St.Anne's Reel" (and maybe other have as well), and "Buttons and Bows" band did a good treat on "Boys of Malin", played in A minor...but it's all subjective, as you say ........some like it, some don't.
There's another way of looking at this question - the number of tunes you really need to know very well.
I'll give you a scenario which many will recognise, and which any one of us could find ourselves in. You turn up for your regular session at a pub where the session is established and popular, and after a while it becomes obvious that tonight there could be a problem. The leader has just phoned to say he can't make it, and four other regulars haven't turned up - and it's nearly an hour past the start time. You realise you're the only melody instrument present, the other musicians being a couple of guitars and a bodhr
Sorry Trevor, you know I'm no fan of knowing every tune ever written, but I think you missed a point here. When you're sat diddling in a session and it's your turn to start the last set, the last thing you want to be doing is playing the last three reels you know.
What's your current tune total?
What's your current tune total?
Approximately how many tunes do you know and how does it measure up to how long you've been playing? I've heard disgusting rumors that Really Awesome Professional Musicians store thousands of tunes in their heads, and if they're the Ultimate kind of pro, they can keep them all straight. So far, I know about 50 tunes, maybe more, and sometimes with the random French Canadian or bluegrass tune thrown in. I think that's pretty good for the two years or so I've been working at this. So just take a moment to ponder, then respond with your assesment of yourself...
# Posted on January 23rd 2004 by Emmaline
Re: What's your current tune total?
Emmaline's good question leads me to ponder what do I mean when I say I "know" a tune.
Is it, "ah! I've heard that one before/seen the dots in O'Neill" - but I've never played it?
Is it a tune which, when someone else starts it I can join in, and then blow a fuse half-way through the B-part, until the third time round when I get it right?
Is it a tune which, when someone starts it off, I join in and play reasonably well, without significant mistakes?
Is it a tune I can lead off with in a session fairly confidently?
Is it a tune I would be confident/good enough to play on stage or make a cd of for public distribution?
In specific answer to Emmaline's question, I've been playing for nearly 3 years, and the number of tunes I "know" (depending on the definition) is probably anywhere between about a dozen and 150-200, but leaving aside my last definition!
Trevor
# Posted on January 23rd 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: What's your current tune total?
Good question! But remember, the real question is not how many, but how you play them!That's what makes for a session.
Also, it's unfair to think that only RAPMs can store thousands in their head. Traditional players have massive repertoires.
I'm not a pro and would say that over the last few years, because of location and isolation, all geographical (two years on Lundy in the Atlantic! No other musicians to play with) that I might have lost a few, but I'd reckon to have kept quite a few! There are members of The Session who know what I mean.
Once, when I stayed with a respected fiddler, playing house sessions all day, then going out to play at night, we spent 8 days playing, and never once played the same tune twice!
So let's have it for traditional players. They too have memories, not just pros!
If you want to play, there's nothing and no one to stop you. Dead simple really. It's how much you want to.
Brianx
# Posted on January 23rd 2004 by briantheflute
Re: What's your current tune total?
At last count 235. Most of them I can play along with at session, but a few of them are tunes I barely know (tunes to which I know all the notes, but can't yet play up to speed). It seems like a lot, but at sessions I still find myself sitting on my hands about half the time.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by whistlemanhimself
Re: What's your current tune total?
I've been playing (B/C accordion) now for 15 months (after 40 years of piano & 10 years of listening to Irish tunes). There's about 170 tunes that I know, in the sense that I can play them at home from memory (though I may need 10 minutes to recall how they start or may need to hear or look at a bar or two as a refresher) at a leisurely but not plodding pace with up to a half dozen wrong notes each time through and little or no ornamentation/variations/basses. If I'm solo/leading and on the spot, it's harder to estimate, as I don't have the opportunity to do the necessary experiment. As a guess, I'd say 25-50. In a session, following, it depends on the speed. I can handle East Clare speeds on maybe 80% of the tunes I know and Sligo speeds on maybe 10% or less.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by GaryAMartin
Re: What's your current tune total?
I'm playing both of my tunes pretty well now, after a couple of years.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by glauber
Re: What's your current tune total?
I liked Trevor's break down of what might constitute 'knowing' a tune.
The tunes I really know I can play have to have a name. I have to search the data bank (brain) with the name and then usually it just pops out. If not, then my second tactic to recall is the first three of four notes, or a lilt from a memorable phrase. (Currently about 150 tunes after 10 years playing and 40 listening!).
I know lots of tunes to play along to, but can't play them without someone else leading! Isn't that daft? But there you go. I've never counted these as they are not available in the data bank, obviously!
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by Fiiddle R
Re: What's your current tune total?
Counting those that I can play all by myself from beginning to end at a reasonable speed I'll be somewhere near the 100 mark. Which is lousy considering the number of years I've been at it.
But - nobody I play music with gives a d**n whether I know 100 or 200 so long as I can spit out a matching tune to follow a song or another tune.
I very much doubt that players before the age of mechanical recording knew several hundred or thousands of tunes.
I think this counting and speeding lark is very much a sign of modern competitiveness. Not particularly traditional at all.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by kuec
Re: What's your current tune total?
Kuec, I think you've put your finger right on it.
I'll make a gues that in the old days (pre-recordings, pre-radio), the average trad musician in a village probably wouldn't have known much more than 50 or 60 tunes (but he would have known these very well indeed), and they would have been the ones needed for accompanying dancers (set or step) and for playing in house sessions. And that would have been largely it.
The people in his village would in all probability have been quite satisfied with this, based on the good old human tradition of people liking what they know and knowing what they like - and that still goes on in every session I've been to!
Trevor
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: What's your current tune total?
It all sounds the same anyway!
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by glauber
Re: What's your current tune total?
I probably know about 45 that I'd play well in session. I learned most of those in about the first 6-8 months of playing, and I've been picking up one about every other week since then (I only started learning them by heart when I went to my first session which was close to a year ago).
My problem is that I keep finding that I want to play the tunes I know better than I do. So, I'll go back and work on groups of three till the cows come home and I feel really comfortable with them and can slip into them at the drop of a hat. Problem is - the longer I play the more I realize I'm not where I want to be so then I go back over everything again.
Eric
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by Jayhawk
Q. Have you got a big one?
A. Size doesn't matter. It's what you do with it that counts.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by milesnagopaleen
Re: What's your current tune total?
While it's true that you're better off playing a few tunes well than many tunes poorly, it *is* possible to play lots and lots of tunes well.
Sessions are fun when you can choose to join in on tunes or not, based less on which ones you know and more on whether you feel like playing or chatting up the good looking punter at the bar. Plus, the more tunes you know, the easier it gets to come up with variations, string tunes together in interesting ways, and find ways to include other players (starting less common tunes that you know someone else knows). Besides, the more tunes you know, the easier it is to learn more tunes--kind of a self-perpetuating circle.
And I'm not sure Trevor's hypothesis is accurate about players back in the day not knowing many tunes. The stories passed down are often of players who could go all night and never repeat a tune. Some of the dance players, like Francie and Mickie Byrne, knew hundreds of tunes. It does seem likely that the advent and rise of fleadhanna and sessions in the last 60 years has nurtured the circulation of a great many tunes, and some of today's players can lay claim to knowing a thousand tunes or more. But a hundred years ago, players weren't distracted by television, the internet, travel, etc. Beyond work and survival, the highlight of the week was a ceili or house dance. A player might be called onto to play for four hours straight, or all night long. So it's possible and plausible that some knew hundreds upon hundreds of tunes.
When I first started playing, I used to keep a tally of tunes. I quit that about 15 years ago because, for me, there's no point to it. And after a couple hundred tunes, it's a logistical nightmare--better to spend that time and energy playing.
In short: I know the tunes I do, I pick up new ones every chance I get, and all the others are on my "short" list, heh.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
Fifteen years ago my instructor in Irish music gave me "Mountain Road". It took me a couple years before I felt comfortable leading it and I still can't play it the way he taught me. That was one of my first and although I have had many lessons since, the lesson of that tune keeps nagging at me. I play my own version of it and suppose I'll never be satisfied. But I am enjoying the process all the same. There are plenty of tunes that fit in "my version" category, and many of them, I couldn't tell you whether they were "correct" or faithfully reproduced. I never play from sheet music but I can tell if the tune doesn't go the way I heard it from live session or from a recording. When I try making a playlist for a gig I draw a circle at the end of each listing and if I really can lead the tune I place a dot in the middle of the circle. Lots and lots of circles, not so many dots.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by wvwhistler
Re: What's your current tune total?
It does make sense to know lots of tunes if you've got a session to go to. (Which I don't.) It might even be a matter of politeness towards your fellow players to learn new tunes.
I just wanted to avoid to give the kids the impression that they weren't any good unless they knew x-hundred tunes.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by kuec
Re: What's your current tune total?
after 3 years of bashing the fiddle( its bound to give in sooner or later) id have about 26 tunes in my head( i only know cos i counted how many i have written on the back of my manuscript book. i write them there as i learn so none get neglected in practice) most are baisic and id say i cant play any really well. i still love to work at it though. my goal is to one day be like billy, the accordion player at my local session. to watch him play youd say he has no tunes in his head, but his fingers know thousands. and on the odd occasion when theyre stumped, he closes his eyes for a few seconds, consults the great cosmic tune library and his fingers are away! much respect billy... anyhoo, my point is that i dont think it matters how many tunes you have memorised, as long as your having some fun and get a tune in here and there.
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by ev
Re: What's your current tune total?
Will, thanks for putting me right on that hypothesis of mine. As I said, I was guessing, and that's not a bad way of getting the correct info out of someone!
Trevor
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: What's your current tune total?
On the first 2 years I was counting but today I don't see logic doing that and if you ask me I don't know how many tunes have I stored in my head, well I can play all nigth and that is good for me!
# Posted on January 24th 2004 by pitnekit
Re: What's your current tune total?
Thinking about Kuec's idea of people maybe not knowing loads of tunes way back, posssibly it's the fact that CDs, radio, etc. all give us glimpses of the perfect idea of of how 'I' could sound...if only.
Also, the number of CDs I own must contribute to 1000s (?) of possibilities that I could listen to and try to learn if I wished. I also think that puts pressure on us to learn this or that tune that we may not ever have encountered. Just because so many of them, are so inspiring, fun or whatever.
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Fiiddle R
Re: What's your current tune total?
Mind you Trevor, I only gave my own hypothesis--just as likely to be wrongheaded. And Kuec, I agree--it's not how many tunes you know, but how you play them that matters. Then, once you can play like a banshee, the tunes just keep coming anyway.
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
Just I.T. tunes here - about 150 I can play fluently from memory, when a name or a few notes are given (although like Arnie in the film, my total recall is terrible). Of those 150, I only really like about half that number, and out of that half, for the ones I *really really * like I've knocked up some quite extreme variations (not session-friendly, but more for band arrangements).
I've got shedlaods of bluegrass tunes and a stack of classical also, but that's another story!
So all in all, probably not a large amount of tunes when compared to other I.T. musicians.
Jim
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: What's your current tune total?
Shortly before he left for the big session, Alan McGregor sent me an email. Maybe this belongs on the other thread where Danny asked us to boast. In part, this is what he said:
"A guy you should check out is Jim Dorans at the
session.org. -I'll tell you [another musician who shall go unnamed here to spare any chagrin] might brag, but Jim puts his money
where his mouth is - he is stupendous -I played with
him more than twenty years ago and he was great
then.Apart from that he doesn't offend anyone.I don't
know why he isn't up there professionly but he should
be."
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
Are you blushing Jim? Are you, huh? Are you, huh? Huh? LOL
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: What's your current tune total?
Jim sure is a fine player - I can vouch for that - and a nice guy, at least that's what he told me :~}
Like Miles (another fine player, and a ni...) said - it's what you do with it...agreed, but size of repertoire does help if you suddenly find yourself beamed down to an alien session, and you need to supplicate the Klingons (and I don't mean what you find in your used toilet paper after eating nuts).
ANYway. I know four tunes. That's it. Reel, Jig, Hornpipe and Slow One.
Naw, seriously. I know a fair few. I used to think I knew loads till I met Conan. However many tunes any of you know, square it, and that's C. McD's repertoire.
But doesn't yer repertoire vary? Sometimes you may be on top of your instrument, leading all sorts of tunes, then other times, things just don't seem to happen. And it could be due to any number of factors - a virus, tiredness, hangover, current blood-alcohol/other substance level, or simply the vibe at a particular session. Or you might find yourself at a cliquey intimidating session, where you can't find your tune memory - this being a function of self-editing the tune memory. I hate those kinda sessions and I hope their exponents get boiled alive and thereafter rot in hell forevermore - nothing personal, mind you, I just hate them.
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Rudall the time
Re: What's your current tune total?
Yes, Zina, Danny and Will, I'm blushing loudly!!! I didn't expect to see anything like that in print! You guys are full of surprises. Danny, you had me creased up with laughter when I read your Klingons definition. Only a Glasgow man could think up something like that!
Everyone here is welcome at my sessions. That goes without saying. Good tunes and laughs are guaranteed. (We've even suspended killing people for the whole of 2004).
Oh, and I had a silly and overpowering urge to change my session name (before I read today's entries on this thread). So have a laugh!
Jim Dorans
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: What's your current tune total?
It's very fetching, er, Sue.
# Posted on January 25th 2004 by Q
Re: What's your current tune total?
Here we go again admiring people whose heads are tune dictionarys. There are far too many tunes, and we'd all help the world of diddly music imensly if we forgot some of them rather that learning even more.
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by ...
Re: What's your current tune total?
If you're still counting the number of tunes, you probably haven't leaned enough of them yet. I wouldn't agree that we should forget lots of the tunes but we *will* anyway. Hopefully, they will come back to us, if we ever need them e.g in a different session. Quite often,though, most of us just seem to play a "hard core" selection of tunes which happen to be in vogue, depending on the particular session or company.
John
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Johnny Jay
Re: What's your current tune total?
'Tune dictionary'? Well my head feels more like a tune poem, one of those epic, changing, oral things that no one ever wrote down in all it's variety, as it rambles from love story to war to drink to boiling breakfast, navigating the mythic countryside all the while, and features a cast of hundreds, and you don't so much memorize it as call up the general outlines, and the details and synaptic triggers come flooding in even as you're retelling it, so it's recreated whole each time, not a clone of itself but a fresh new fire, and comes out alive and unrestrained and fairly levitating with the sheer energy and joy and breath of life in it.
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
Q: "Approximately how many tunes do you know" A: I've no idea. Q: "how does it measure up to how long you've been playing?" A: Whose measure are we using?
Here's what my teachers told me when I asked about this when I first started out: Shannon, we approximated, knew about 2500 to 3000 tunes or so when I first started playing. After 5 years, I would be surprised if she doesn't know a couple thousand more. Once upon a time, she told me, it was fine and in fact quite normal for a player in Ireland to know maybe 25-50 tunes more or less, because they rarely got outside of their home environments. Because we all travel so much more now, and IF YOU WANT TO PLAY OUT AT MORE THAN YOUR HOME SESSION, you need to know more tunes, because every session has a different rep.
So don't worry about looking a tune dweeb (or for that matter, admiring tune dweebs) by wanting to have more than 50 or 100 or 200 or 2000 tunes, because if you like to play as much as possible at any session you walk into, the more tunes you know the better. But don't mistake number of tunes for quality playing (not that I think anyone is making that mistake, but it should really be pointed out) -- the good players can pull a tune out of a 20 year hiatus and it'll still sound good. And start with the session standards (for your own home sessions and the sessions you attend away from home) first. Not that that should stop you if you hear a tune and love it and want to play it. But learning the standards for your area first will serve you better in the long run.
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: What's your current tune total?
Oh. Re: 'too many tunes' - pray tell where we should draw the line.
Sorry, that just makes no sense to me. Like saying there is too much air...
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
Hey, stop talking at the same time as me, Harmon. *snort*
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: What's your current tune total?
Head like a tune poem, eh...
Only peom I know from round your parts will, is the old traditional Frank Zappa favourite
I might be movin' to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of Dental Floss Raisin' it up
Waxen it down
In a little white box
I can sell uptown
Sorry(!)
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Ottery
Re: What's your current tune total?
Are you sure that isn't "tone poem" instead?
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: What's your current tune total?
peom?
I must stop smoking the dental floss
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Ottery
Re: What's your current tune total?
Mark, that would be FZTM, and that's a whole 'nother web site.
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Will Harmon
Re: What's your current tune total?
When a Grandmaster at chess asked how many moves he thought ahead, his reply was "Only one, but it's always the right one."
Same with tunes ...
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by Eliot
Re: What's your current tune total?
Hmmm, where should we draw the line at too many tunes?
I think it's when they start to sound the same. Which is subjective of course. But there difinately is a point of no return here. It's when you hear a tune and rather than thinking, "wow, what a great melody," you think, "Hmm, that sounds abit like such and such except the B part is a little different and it's in a different key." Of course the more you get into diddley music, the greater your tollerance the "all sounding the same sindrome," so there is a degree of flexibility here. It's just that we should be more vigilant to the "new melody" as apposed to "variation."
# Posted on January 26th 2004 by ...
Re: What's your current tune total?
Michael, following on from that point about variation, etc, some tunes work well when changed from major to minor key - I've done that with "St.Anne's Reel" (and maybe other have as well), and "Buttons and Bows" band did a good treat on "Boys of Malin", played in A minor...but it's all subjective, as you say ........some like it, some don't.
Jim
# Posted on January 27th 2004 by Worldfiddler
Re: What's your current tune total?
There's another way of looking at this question - the number of tunes you really need to know very well.
I'll give you a scenario which many will recognise, and which any one of us could find ourselves in. You turn up for your regular session at a pub where the session is established and popular, and after a while it becomes obvious that tonight there could be a problem. The leader has just phoned to say he can't make it, and four other regulars haven't turned up - and it's nearly an hour past the start time. You realise you're the only melody instrument present, the other musicians being a couple of guitars and a bodhr
# Posted on January 28th 2004 by Trevor Jennings
Re: What's your current tune total?
Sorry Trevor, you know I'm no fan of knowing every tune ever written, but I think you missed a point here. When you're sat diddling in a session and it's your turn to start the last set, the last thing you want to be doing is playing the last three reels you know.
# Posted on January 28th 2004 by ...