I've always kept tune lists, and I have lots of them - on folded up sheets of paper in instrument cases, various notebooks, and little mini composition books. They're sorted by key, but I'm not organized enough to use different typefaces, or have separate lists for different purposes. Mine include tunes I like and can play, tunes I can play but don't like, tunes I can almost play, and those I'd like to learn someday. They are sort of "aspirational" lists, and might not be very useful in the wrong hands.

Yep.

I began making list(s) because I was forgetting to play tunes, and if I left it long enough I would forget HOW to play them. Like Doug, my lists go back decades and it's only recently I started to put the tunes in their categories; jigs, reels, polkas, waltzes, OT/BG, (wait, I need to refer to the lists). Popular songs, Irish, Aussie, Americana. Other popular folk tunes, like Ash Grove, Mussieden, I know they're easy and could rattle them off in any key, but the point is to list as many I can remember. Not only good ear practice, but it jolted my memory for a particular tune I never played before from the TV show Vander Valk, cant wait for the opportunity to play it somewhere. As you would guess my lists of light classical pieces and Gypsy tunes is quit short and I haven't played them for awhile, but re-learning is good, right. And taking a short break has also proved beneficial to learning. I just began a new list of 'popular melodies' like; Chariot of Fire and Misirlou, etc. I also have my 'to learn' and re-learn' lists, but one list I need work on is the 'dont like tune list'......

Yes, the RELEARN list.. I'm for the third time at least learning the Mineola Rag.. Not a hard tune but the details slip away..

I keep all my tunes in an app called “forScore”. Other players recommended it to me.

i learn tunes mostly by ear, but after I’ve got them down, I find the dots (as close I can get) and save them as PDF and load them into the app. ForScore can sort by category (I just looked and see that I am up to 56 jigs and 71 reels) and by “most recent” (my most recent addition is a modern slipjig called “Soggy’s”) and you can add tags - like what key it’s in, or composer. You can also compile tunes into sets.

I used to have a notebook with bits of paper falling out, but now I have almost 200 tunes stored in forScore on my iPad. ( I never use the iPad in sessions, but I like having all my tunes organized in one place. )

yes, it’s a weird mix of New Tech & Traditional Folk! 
 

And speaking of tech, the Learning Session now has their tunes in a google folder…
and when I asked for access, somebody sent me a QR code!

( We have sure come a long way from two old fiddlers sitting knee-to-knee in front of the fire…maybe that’s a little sad…)

I have a list along with the recordings I took when I studied Old Time with David Bragger. A lot of those recordings, however, are on pre-digital cassettes and I'm not really sure the cassettes still work. I'm not sure I have a working cassette player, anyway. Luckily, though, Bragger made sure that we firmly memorized them, so they're pretty much intact in my brain & fingers. It doesn't hurt, either,that fiddle tunes are usually fairly simple. Even the crooked ones...

Hmm.. just a different way of thinking i suppose. 

My lists are in various tune books. if i was going to play them with others (which i rarely do anymore), i would make a list of the tunes we would play together, usually the longest of these would have enough tunes for a gig, with info like tempo, key, etc, and practice them until i knew them by heart (weeks or months of practice). Then i wouldn't need the list anymore.

Other tunes that i sort of know but have not practiced would be too many and varied to list. (They can stay in the tune various books, or on the internet nowadays).

Then there are other tunes i don't need to practice, list, or even remember the names of, because i know them inside out. These poor tunes get operated on in various ways, to try out recently learned techniques.

I have always utilized lists. Lists include: all the fiddle tunes I have memorized and can lead, and lists for different jam sessions that I attend. Those are the main ones I keep in my fiddle case and use these days. The only list that goes back many, many years is the list of singing tunes which is primarily old-time songs. Also, have one of rock and roll stuff that still gets pulled out of the closet every so often. Almost forgot I have a list of jazz standards I keep around which I worked up on guitar at one point.

This thread has an obvious connection to "Lost Nouns" and "Why do I forget tunes I worked so hard on?" Tune lists definitely help me remember the tunes I know and what I need to keep working on.

I've got a few sets of lists. One is songs, various #grass and pop/rock songs that I play from weekly. The Daily workout list which is seven lists that I try to go through one ummm daily. I will usually play them on my fiddle but sometimes I will play them on guitar or mandolin. Then I have my case lists which are three lists a single page listed as instrumentals, secular and gospel. Then occasionally I find a "lost" list. That is always fun to see what my memory can/may stir up. Play on friends. R/

A tunes, D tunes, G tunes. old time songs, solo songs, Bluegrass

...and recordings of each in those categories (lists) along with doc files for lyrics on my smart phone - because... well, you know.

Not long ago it was a surefire way for me to Not play a tune if I put it in a list.
Recently, I made a tune list and a song list. I may or may not use it. But it's there, in the case.

I like tune lists. I don’t use them so much when I’m just playing for my own enjoyment, but if I’m providing the music for something, it’s nice to have a pre-selected range of tunes to fit the occasion. It can also be handy at short notice to have a tune list to draw from. One of the benefits to the list is that its order can be carefully selected for pacing and audience engagement. Some lists are key-focused, especially when playing with instruments that would need to retune to change key, but if that’s not a problem, you can focus on thematic elements.

No lists here. Tried that decades ago, all I wound up with is a list of titles where I had no idea of what tune they represented. What did the "Fraidycat Armadillo" or "General McWhateverthehellhisnameis' Farewell to His Regiment" sound like? Who knows! THats the problem when one can figure out tunes on the fly almost 1st time around. I have a bubble of tunes I play regularly, and add more when one is particularly memorable. But for example, to memorize every tune learned at a camp or say Fiddle Hell? Sometimes that is many dozen tunes! No way I could do that.

I admire those who keep records, lists and recordings of tunes learned!

I usually hit a session with a sticky note of 3-5 sets I’ve been playing lately. That’s because I would be coming home and was like, “Darn…I forgot that I wanted to try playing xxxx with them!”

Rare Use of forScore app:
”Annette wants to play Frank’s Reel…anybody remember how to start it?” If everybody is drawing a blank, I can dig in the “forScore brain” and pull it up quick, haha.

My latest thing is making short lists with notation for the first bars of each tune, as many as I can fit on a page, maybe 6 or 10. I'll print a list and fold it in my shirt pocket and walk down to the creek with my fiddle on sunny mornings, and use it to remember how tunes start, especially when I'm trying to memorize new ones.

There should be an app that you can put all your lists in and it spits out which tunes you have in common...Tuneder...Lol

I have a tune list on my phone (Notes in Apple)
In categories by Key
Lots of repeats because for now, multiple keys means multiple songs in my head...lol.
It's super easy to misplace or forget these tunes. So every morning,
I sit down with coffee from 5:30-6:05 and play tunes from that list.
I don't add it until I can play along with it
Even then, I'll stink at it for awhile

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Originally posted by NCnotes

I usually hit a session with a sticky note of 3-5 sets I’ve been playing lately. That’s because I would be coming home and was like, “Darn…I forgot that I wanted to try playing xxxx with them!”

Rare Use of forScore app:
”Annette wants to play Frank’s Reel…anybody remember how to start it?” If everybody is drawing a blank, I can dig in the “forScore brain” and pull it up quick, haha.

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Did you get "Franks Reel" McCusker i s one of my favs going to have a go at this one meself

around 4:12 on this vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc78A9o51-k

sorry wrong topic. Reading back through "what tunes are you playing" topic,  but i still like it

quote:

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

There should be an app that you can put all your lists in and it spits out which tunes you have in common...Tuneder...Lol

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Don't worry.  In a few years AI will clandestinely check our playing an compile just such as thing..

Pete, I do play Frank’s reel (by McCusker), and I like it a lot! 
(sorry for drift)

Btw thesession.org does have a function where you can see what tunes you have in common with other users!
But I don't update my tunebook in there...so,it always tells me I have like one tune in common, The Kesh jig - hahaha.

(And great video, thanks Pete!)

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Originally posted by wrench13

No lists here. Tried that decades ago, all I wound up with is a list of titles where I had no idea of what tune they represented. What did the "Fraidycat Armadillo" or "General McWhateverthehellhisnameis' Farewell to His Regiment" sound like? Who knows! THats the problem when one can figure out tunes on the fly almost 1st time around. I have a bubble of tunes I play regularly, and add more when one is particularly memorable. But for example, to memorize every tune learned at a camp or say Fiddle Hell? Sometimes that is many dozen tunes! No way I could do that.

I admire those who keep records, lists and recordings of tunes learned!

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I would say the list didn't serve it's purpose because you let songs on it fall out of your head, so to speak. I had a couple on my list that had fallen from my head and lo and behold, because they were in the list, with a title, I found them on YouTube and ~bam~ back in the head and now in the practice rotation.

My biggest problem is the cross tunings don't get worked as often as they should. Not enough of that sort of jam happening in my world these days.

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Originally posted by TuneWeaver

quote:

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Originally posted by pete_fiddle

There should be an app that you can put all your lists in and it spits out which tunes you have in common...Tuneder...Lol

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Don't worry.  In a few years AI will clandestinely check our playing an compile just such as thing..

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I'm waiting for the neural link. No more forgetting anything. Heck, I won't even have to learn the tune...   just play it on demand.  

I have a long list in an Excel Spreadsheet. Primarily it's sorted by key. But because it's in Excel I can filter by information in columns and create other lists. So I have a Master Set List column that I can filter on. And then I create set lists from that master list that I can order the way I want by what I put in the column.

The end of the list is less organized, as it's stuff I need to work on or simply haven't filled in all the information to add it to the main list.

I mostly work from a hard-copy that I red-line throughout the year. I keep track of how well I think I can play the tunes, and that gets updated. Several times a year I get on the computer and update the list. I'm going to do that right now as I haven't touched it since January and I have the day off.

I need to start a new, different kind of list. (Probably a new tab in the Excel spreadsheet.) My big list of mostly Old-Time tunes is essentially a list of tunes I have became aware of via jam sessions. But I want a new list of only tunes Ernie wants to play the way Ernie wants to play them. I need to cull a much shorter list from the big list and start over. However, that will be a lot of work so I'll probably kick that can down the road until I have more time.