I think my short answer would be “yes.” I wound qualify that slightly by saying that the way you approach learning will have a huge impact on it, though. For instance, if you focus your attention on trying to pick up tunes by doing so regularly, actively listening and working on methods to map tunes out mentally to learn their syntax, you will develop greater ability with time and experience. If, however, you’re more passive and aren’t putting effort into tune learning, you will still likely make progress, but it will be at a slower pace and over a much greater amount of time.

There’s a certain amount of pattern recognition involved as well. The more tunes you learn, the easier it gets to predict how phrases will turn out as you’re listening or playing along. There are common idioms in every playing style, so as you learn those, it gets easier to pick unfamiliar tunes up because they’re composed with the same building blocks.

I find it pretty easy nowadays to play new tunes, like at a jam session, I pick them up easily, but since it is so easy to pick them up, they don't stick in my head. So I suppose I would say that there are several levels of playing and the easy level is easy to get to, the middle level is harder, the hardest is hardest, but all in all, it comes a lot easier than it once did years ago

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Originally posted by capefiddle

My basic question is do you find the longer you’ve been playing the “easier” and quicker it is to get the gist of a new tune? I’m finding myself learning, what I’d consider, more notey tunes, but it seems to take quite a bit of practice time to absorb it. I’m (hopefully) assuming the more experienced a player gets maybe it gets a little easier, maybe less of a struggle? Thoughts?
Thanks
John

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Yes. I also do quite a bit of jamming. I consider that, sort of in a constant learn mode. Not only do I learn the tune, I usually learn the chord progression, so to play a second to another fiddler. Disclaimer being, stuff like Lightening Hornpipe, or some such. But don't bet I'm not catching the chords, so I can at least have an answer. The whole unpredictable aspect of a jam makes me relish tunes in odd keys and or time signatures. 

Oh, BTW this is done in real time. No bragging. This is the format of the jams I attend: hear the tune, play the tune. 

I think it does get easier with time. I've been playing violin for a few years now and still struggle with remembering new tunes sometimes lol. I can usually pick up bits of a melody, but getting the whole thing to stick takes a lot more practice. Playing the same tune a little each day seems to help me more than trying to learn it all in one sitting.

  doodle baseball

Thank you, all, for your thoughts. I'm kind of at the stage where the more I learn, the more difficult playing seems to get. I'd say maybe I'm getting more sensitive to the various nuances of playing the instrument..... which there seems to be many. And combining this with learning to read music (and play faster).... caused me to ask my original question.

It does get easier (at least in genre I play, Irish stuff) because you begin to recognize repeated patterns in tunes. So for example, you know that it’s coming to an end, and once you hear a few notes you realize it’s going for THAT type of ending vs the other probable ending. You’re able to make ‘educated guesses’ or think, “It’s just like ( tune name ) but it goes up in that part”.

But I think there’s nothing wrong to take time to learn a tune slowly and well, working on all the details. Those are usually the tunes I’m happiest with, vs the ones I picked up quickly on the fly at a session. I think you learn more and become a better player by focusing on quality (vs how many tunes you can pack in).