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Tune List


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I like to keep a written list of all the tunes I play with reasonable efficiency and when I practice, I try to work on them to update my memory banks and try not to forget the old ones. I am curious to know ... Do you find yourself a jack of many tunes..... but master of few? How do you draw the line, knowing too many tunes can dilute your focus? If you have been studing the concertina for .....lets say....3-5yrs or longer how many tunes do you have?

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I like to keep a written list of all the tunes I play with reasonable efficiency and when I practice, I try to work on them to update my memory banks and try not to forget the old ones. I am curious to know ... Do you find yourself a jack of many tunes..... but master of few? How do you draw the line, knowing too many tunes can dilute your focus? If you have been studing the concertina for .....lets say....3-5yrs or longer how many tunes do you have?

An interesting question, which might well have threads running off in different directions.

 

Firstly, it depends on the definition of "know". For me, it would be the number of tunes which I am able to play, from memory, (including those which I have not played for years, and require a little polishing).

 

A friend who has been a professional folk musician for most of the years that I've known him, claimed to "know" hundreds of tunes some 25 years ago. I suspect that he meant that, in a session, if someone started any of these tunes, he would be able to play along.

 

For those who play from music, how do you define "know"? Maybe the ability to play the piece fluently.

 

Music, particular folk tunes, can be functional. Often, the need to learn a tune, for a purpose, drives you forward. When I first joined a Morris team (end 1982), it was with a view to becoming the main musician. This is something which I wanted, and the teams (male and female) needed. The men had about 30 dances in their repertoire (don't ask about dance standard!) and the women about 10 dances. I made my debut at Easter 1983, and by the summer was confident on about two thirds of the repertoire. So, a steep learning curve. In theory, I still "know" all of these tunes.

 

How many tunes does a musician need? This depends on whether the musician plays as a full-time professional, does occasional bookings, or just plays for enjoyment.

 

Nowadays, I log my repertoire (largely excluding Morris and session tunes) on the computer, so that I have a rough idea of my repertoire, plus any "work in progress". So, I would claim to "know" less than 100 tunes.

 

Regards,

Peter.

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Hmm, I have no idea how many tunes or songs I know...lots. They are cycled in and out of the rotation I enjoy playing for gigs or session and that rotation is effected by which group of chums I'm doing a project or just knocking about with.

 

There are periods of collecting new material and then of course I'm playing them over and over (harder and harder to burn them onto the mental hard-drive). On that subject, my 20 year old who is a fine singer accompanied me to the last of the season gig at Blanchard's with Obi's Boys. I'm so proud of him so I bragged to the owner how well my lad could sing. She asked him for a song. He slipped out to the car and listened to a cut on the car stereo. Fifteen minutes later he was back, we figured out the best key for him and he pulled it off without mistake ;) . Was a time when I could do that with a tune, but no more :( .

 

There is for me no system, but it might be fun to make a few lists of the material arranged by genre (assuming I remember most).

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Do you find yourself a jack of many tunes..... but master of few? How do you draw the line, knowing too many tunes can dilute your focus? If you have been studing the concertina for .....lets say....3-5yrs or longer how many tunes do you have?

 

I play mainly for my own enjoyment, but have accompanied our parish choir a couple of times. After about 2 years of playing I find I can play about 30 tunes from memory. I don't know if this is low, high, or average. But only a handful of these do I considered finished pieces, i.e., I play them well and with all the ornamentation that goes with them. Also, I do find that after I leave a tune for a couple of months, I have to practice it a bit to get the playing of it back to where I left it. I try to learn one or two new tunes a month even if I haven't perfected all the previous tunes. I find this keeps my desire to practice high.

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I've played irish fiddle for 15 years, diatonic harmonica for 3 years, and just last October began learning concertina. I run a weekly session at one of our local pubs. I would really like to play music full time, but that just isn't possible where I live. I would have to live on foodstamps :) I work for a software company 40 hours a week... I consider my tune lists vital to the long term maintenance of my repertoire. I keep a seperate tune list for my irish repertoire and my old time/appalachian repertoire. As nerdy as it sounds, I have them on an Excel spreadsheet which allows me a lot of flexibility. I have tune names in rows and different columns for key (G/C/D/A), mode (Aeloian/Major/Dorian), type (reel/jig/hornpipe), instrument, and source. This allows me to sort them using these categories. A couple times a year I will sit down and go through every tune on my list. If I cannot start, repeat, and finish a tune completely on my own, I demote it, pull it off my tune list, and put it on my TODO list... My TODO list is always overwhelmingly long, but I feel it is important to keep my work-in-progress tunes seperate from my solid tunes. Sometimes I'll learn a tune that I end up just not liking anymore, then I'll delete it entirely. There are tons of other tunes that I have heard hundreds of times that I have never officially committed to memory. I just consider these bonus tunes. If I think of it, I'll write down the name, then add it to my TODO list, and practice starting and finishing. If I can handle it on my own, it then gets promoted to my repertoire list. For a while, many years ago, I was learning a new tune each week. Anymore, I'm lucky if I learn a new tune every month or two. I have a couple hundred tunes on my irish list and almost that many on my old time list. I can only play about 40 or 50 of my irish tunes on the concertina now. I have been heckled by many other traditional musicians for even having a list, let alone in spreadsheet format. But, if I couldn't start any of my tunes or remember which ones I knew, I think I'd be worse off. The trick is to leave it in your case, or at home, and not need it when you are at a session. I encourage everyone to have a working tune list. If I hadn't started keeping one years ago, I would have easily lost over half my tunes by now.

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A couple times a year I will sit down and go through every tune on my list. If I cannot start, repeat, and finish a tune completely on my own, I demote it, pull it off my tune list, and put it on my TODO list... My TODO list is always overwhelmingly long, but I feel it is important to keep my work-in-progress tunes seperate from my solid tunes.

I occasionally make such lists for working purposes when preparing for a gig. I'm doing that right now for a shanty festival. I could easily do the whole thing without a list, but doing a list helps me avoid missing some nice songs (and tunes) that otherwise I might momentarily overlook. It also helps me plan sets, though I'm never rigid about following a set plan.

 

But my list has three levels, or possibly four:

  1. Solid
  2. Needs brushing up
  3. Needs serious work (this includes new ones to learn)
  4. Don't bother (preparation would require more time than I can afford to spend)

And some songs or tunes may be on more than one list. E.g., a tune that's solid on the whistle but not on the concertina, or a song that's solid a capella but which I could also accompany on the concertina... if I work on that a bit more.

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I have been heckled by many other traditional musicians for even having a list, let alone in spreadsheet format. But, if I couldn't start any of my tunes or remember which ones I knew, I think I'd be worse off. The trick is to leave it in your case, or at home, and not need it when you are at a session. I encourage everyone to have a working tune list. If I hadn't started keeping one years ago, I would have easily lost over half my tunes by now.

 

I agree with keeping a list. I also use an Excel spreadsheet and tunes are kept in two categories; actual repertoire tunes and those that I need a lot of work on yet. Like you, John, I promote a tune to my repertoire list if I can play it though from beginning to end with whatever repeat sections and ornamentations I have currently worked out for it. Without the list I find I forget what I know and what I need to work on. Its been very useful to me and as a beginner I find it encouraging to see my repertoire list grow over time.

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Regarding my tune list. I may grind away at some horrible tune just because of the techniqality of it. Others may consider it repulsive but I`ll force it in hopes of achieving the final finished product (it may never come). It is hard to humble yourself in realizing your talent may not be there yet. God only allows so much progress in such an allotted time. We need to back off sometimes to re-evaluate our progress.

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Regarding my tune list. I may grind away at some horrible tune just because of the techniqality of it. Others may consider it repulsive but I`ll force it in hopes of achieving the final finished product (it may never come). It is hard to humble yourself in realizing your talent may not be there yet. God only allows so much progress in such an allotted time. We need to back off sometimes to re-evaluate our progress.

 

I hear you.

I think the big problem among those of us who don't play out regularly, or with others, is stagnation. The main cathalizer of progress is sence of urgency.

My approach so far has been to move from 15 minutes program to 15 minutes program.

I consider my repertore "done" after a show (like a Talent Show, or Accordion Club recital) and now I'm working on different one. I tend to let the "used" tunes disappear as new set is coming in. My reasoning is that I outrgow old sets, and keeping them will drag me back. Re-learning the old tunes with more sophisticated arrangements is same as learning new, and will effectively leave me with better sounding, but 'old' repertore. I prefer better sounding "new".

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  • 4 weeks later...
I like to keep a written list of all the tunes I play with reasonable efficiency and when I practice, I try to work on them to update my memory banks and try not to forget the old ones. I am curious to know ... Do you find yourself a jack of many tunes..... but master of few? How do you draw the line, knowing too many tunes can dilute your focus? If you have been studing the concertina for .....lets say....3-5yrs or longer how many tunes do you have?

 

I am simply repeating my previous post because I am 100% sure this works!

 

haven't had much to say lately, but this is something that I realized help me make great strides forward

 

A small sony digital voice recorder. So convenient and painless

 

Advantages-

 

*I can conveniently record and listen back to the songs I know

 

*I can explain the "tricky parts" to myself for future reference

 

*Can use the music to record, then quickly put itaway, never really needing to refer to it again

 

* I can pick the tempo to learn which is comfortable

 

*SOOO much better than notecards to think of songs to play

 

*can categorize songs, but I don't do that

 

*I can bring it to group jam and not freak out about remebering how a song starts... a few notes and I'm in the zone smile.gif

 

*If I'm short on time, I just play along, if not, I add 1 or 2 to the playlist It's FUN

 

Bottom line- I got better over a couple of weeks

 

Hope this helps. the unit I use is a tiny ICD-p210 sony, fairly cheap voice recorder, but it does the job. Not high fidelity, but suits the purpose

 

Thats it. My .02% of a dollar and hopes this helps

 

Steve

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When I sit down at a session (as I had the pleasure of doing several times this weekend in various locations), I am often amazed at how many tunes I know that I had entirely forgotten about. Sometimes they are tunes I first learned on other instruments (hammered dulcimer, banjo, pennywhistle, etc.) and haven't played since taking up the concertina 20+ years ago, but I find I can just play them right off all the same.

 

But this is a different thing from having put effort into learning a tune, coming up with an arrangement of my own (this is a duet concertina, remember) and saying something unique and personal with my performance of it. I have been through this process with every Morris Dance tune I have learned since starting to play for Morris (about the same time as I started with the concertina) and many English Country Dance tunes and Contradance tunes.

 

Now that I am faced with the task of coming up with a program of tunes to record for the "Duet International" project, I find I am having to ask myself unpleasant questions about just how well I know certain tunes, and just what I can do with them.

 

The closest I have ever come to documenting my tune list, however, was before I started playing the concertina, when I programmed every tune I could think of into a music software program (that doesn't run on any modern computer--don't get me started). The list of titles is a record of all the tunes I could play in the mid 1980s (on the hammered dulcimer).

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David-Remember a dulcimer in Lark Street Music for the longest time? That was mine. We are going way back now when I lived in Albany- we may know each other

Steve-

 

I live a block from the location of where Lark St. Music was (I'm at the corner of Chestnut & Dove), but I rarely went in. I don't remember the dulcimer. What period are you talking about? If you click on my name at left, you will see a picture of me (in 1994).

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