How to arrange sets of tunes & Irish traditional music session etiquette

[@dorannachristenson592]

One of our favorite players in our small group plays hammered dulcimer with great skill. We learn a lot from him!

[@charitylouisa]

Here's a set I like - Dusty Bob's Jig, Hag's Purse and Road to Lisdoonvarna. They work well together.

[@heero7yui]

Funnily enough, my first session in a Scottish pub had an upright bass player but they played a bluegrass/trad hybrid. Fun times! Great tips, thanks!

[@niamha6079]

I'm Irish but was in NYC for a few days and found a session, and there was also a bass player who played Canon in D i'm pretty sure, under a tune we were playing. It was beautiful

[@johnoneill813]

Great tips for going into a sessions in new pubs. Shedding some light onto some unspoken rules of the session. Lovely stuff :)

[@BenjaminHockenberry]

Great video! A common key change idea I've heard is to identify the last note of one tune, and go into a tune that starts a step up from that. A little formulaic, but it makes for great transitions. Even simpler, just to go to a tune in a key that's a step or two up -- say start in D, go to Em, to G, to Am, etc. I kind of think of the Tarbolten set as an inspiration for this kind of set arrangement: end Tarbolten with an E, use a passing note on the F# on the way up to G for Longford, and Sailor's starts with an A in the melody, even though it's a D tune.

[@whistletutor]

Makes sense to me, good idea!

[@bmurch71]

One of my favorite jig sets is Carmen's Amber/The One that was Lost/The Luachrachan - it's nice as the keys change from D/Em/back to D, and the Luachrachan has a descending line that echoes one in the previous tune!

[@whistletutor]

I know the Luachrachan, not sure if I know those others off the top of my head. I'll look them up though!

[@dmacseain]

Thx again. Helpful stuff for us near-beginners in a small city with NO sessions, seeking out interested musicians to learn tunes and play them in our homes. With 7 random tunes that we just liked, we're now thinking how ti string em together. So... very helpful!

[@whistletutor]

Cool, glad to hear it!

[@patrickcoyne8624]

Best youtube video on session etiquette. Very well done

[@FiddlingwithmyWhistle]

Great... How many tune should you have in a set? 3 or 4, more. could you list a few sets that you know, think work.... tunes that I can find on the session.org and put together. I only have one set, and I don't know if they really work, just the way I learned them. Spanish Ladies, Uncle Bernard's, Crosshand Polka, Marie's Wedding followed by the good old Rattling Bog.... Cheers

[@whistletutor]

A set can just be 2 tunes or it can be a half hour long monstrosity of a dozen, just depends on the session, the players, and what everyone's feeling - that said, I'd focus on sets of 2-3 tunes, that's a good starting point for sure.

[@billp5292]

Good to know. I'll sit back and enjoy the music much more now. I won't bust in a session. I live near Nashville. Thanks for the tips. I'm not good enough to even be in the same room. But I love the music.

[@whistletutor]

Well I can't speak for every session but at ours everyone's welcome to come and listen and by all means jump in if they know the tunes!

[@billp5292]

whistletutor nice. But that's will be like putting a guy in major league baseball game that can't bat or catch a ball. Down here in Lawrenceburg. The music shop has sessions of bluegrass music. Just have to get there at the right time. I'm still in the learning to which side of the bat to hit with. But I did pass through Nashville last night.

[@tbucker2247]

Hey man, just getting into this crazy trad music stuff, and I'm pretty pumped to one day enjoy a few beers and tunes around town. Loving the content!

[@alessandrastellacaporale5256]

Hi! Thank you for this inspiring and really useful video! I am practicing this set of slipjigs: 'A fig for a kiss/Butterfly/Humors of Whiskey', as well as 'My mind will never be easy/The cock and the hen'. But I am going to look up the keys because I don't remember them and it is something I might need for the next session I am going to join! By the way, I learnt 'A fig for a kiss' from one of your videos!!! :) So thank you :)

[@staror890]

fantastic video, would love to see more like it :)

[@jamesdumbelton]

Great video, I think I’m going to find this useful to share with a few people, thank you.

[@clownboy3333]

Quick question after I tell you that this is great information! I am relearning the B/C button accordion. There is no way in hell that I will go to a session anytime soon and PLAY. What is the etiquette for going and listening? There was a session that I went to recently and the owner of the bar gave me permission to sit in a booth that was near the session. The session was in a smaller room and really there wasn't a lot of room to sit and listen. People playing in the session didn't seemed to mind that I was there, but perhaps it was because the owner sent me there and brought me drinks all night. What would be the etiquette for taking up booth space that is supposedly for friends and family of the people in the session but are completely empty? I know this was long-winded. Thanks for all the information!

[@whistletutor]

Great question! I was thinking of doing a whole "session etiquette" video but I'll leave the tl;dr here by way of answering - I spent the first 2 years of my whistle/flute playing career by leaving the flute on the table and just listening. In my experience, if you introduce yourself as a player (even as a prospective/hopeful/beginning player) then the musicians will be happy to have you sit and listen. I'd add to that it's good to ask if you can record the session so that you'll know some tunes that they play that you might want to learn. Avoid holding your phone up like you're 14, filming at a concert, but instead turn on your voice recorder app and go to town. But ask first. 99% of the time people will be thrilled that you're interested enough to care. Best of luck!

[@cosbard9148]

Cheers for that onw for the future

[@feadogmhor5170]

Out on the ocean/Jim Wards/Garrett Barry’s; definitely not a cool set, but one that’s always welcomed after a couple of tunes that only the most experienced session regulars know.

[@whistletutor]

It'll work though!

[@amidala3927]

Side note: I love the Get To Work poster.

[@whistletutor]

Glad someone noticed hahaha

[@soslothful]

No hornpipes? I'm a nascent whistle player and have been working on making a few sets. My initial approach is 2 jigs then a reel, following this pattern for several goes. I also play more mellow jigs then one's I consider snappier. But I have been reconsidering. Perhaps several jigs then several reels. Oh, and slides. They're fun to play. What do you and other readers suggest?

[@whistletutor]

It's pretty rare in sessions to go from one type of tune to another in the same set - not impossible, but not common.

[@soslothful]

@@whistletutor So there would be break between some jigs and some reels? How would the transition be done?

[@whistletutor]

@@soslothful With a bit of chat and a refill of the drinks :)

[@soslothful]

@@whistletutor Well! I'm thrown into a turmoil. Should I go bold and radical with my Mix n Match or Trad as you suggest? Or desist altogether? Anyway why not hornpipes?

[@soslothful]

@@whistletutor Hummm. Do the musicians generally prefer green tea or a Darjeeling?

[@Kitiwake]

Fer...moooy. lasses! Good vid.

[@soslothful]

So I had never considered mixing keys in one tune, say A part in D and B part in G. Are there combinations which do not work musically? And if one is going to do such a switch, how do other players know to make the change?

[@whistletutor]

Typically when you run across tunes like that they're relative minors (Em/G, D/Bm) but there are a bunch of tunes where the A part is in D major and the B part is in A major. It's just a matter of learning the tunes - the best rhythm players know the melodies too so they're prepared for the odd key changes mid-tune.

[@soslothful]

@@whistletutor Ah. Related to the topic of this video would you consider a video on making variations? For example, if I'm playing a jig, a measure with two groups of three 8th notes I might on the repeat play two dotted quarter notes, or go up or down an octave. What variations fit a tune musically?

[@whistletutor]

@@soslothful I did a video about variations years ago but it's so dependent on personal style that it's a hard thing to demonstrate. I'll see if I can come up with a new version of that video and make it useful. Good idea!

[@soslothful]

@@whistletutor In reference to sessions - most jigs for example are quite short. How many time would a jig, etc. be repeated before going on to another tune? And I cannot recall if I made this request previously. Would you do a video on using a foot tap and metronome to keep time? i.e. how does the tap or click relate to the printed and played music? Timing is my downfall!

[@whistletutor]

@@soslothful It really depends on the session and the players - 3 times through each tune is the industry average, but certainly not a rule. I do remember you mentioning the foot tap/metronome before and that's one that I'm not really sure how I could turn into a video. I don't use a metronome though I know plenty of folks who do and really enjoy practicing that way - it just never did much for me as a foot works well enough. That being said, a tap/click is going to land on beats 1 and 3 in a reel and 1 and 4 in a jig, for example.

[@ToolNumber19]

Swear I'm not trying to be cheeky, but why the jab at the bodhran at the beginning? Does it not play well with others at a session?

[@whistletutor]

Haha - bodhrans (and bodhran players) are low hanging fruit and they tend to have accompanyingly thick skin :) - No, in truth a great bodhran player can add a tremendous amount to a session. And a poor one can quickly ruin it.

[@ToolNumber19]

@@whistletutor Fair play all around 😄 I'll be sure to practice until I'm both steady and sturdy before I bring my bodhran out to play. Still seems like an easier in than learning 10,000 tunes on my mandolin.

[@whistletutor]

@@ToolNumber19 Fair warning, that's why there's a bit of a stigma towards bodhran players - many see it as an easy way in.

[@ToolNumber19]

@@whistletutor Oh, but surely 5 hours of bodhran practice is equal to a decade on the fiddle, it'll be fine! Honestly, I see the point. I'm going to be a hundred hours of practice in before I look to a session anyway, and certainly not till I can do basic rhythms for jigs, reels, etc in my sleep.

[@Ubu987]

When the famous piper, Seamus Ennis, was asked what the best way to play a bodhran was, he replied "with a penknife." In the hands of someone who does not listen, a bodhran can overwhelm a session and obscure the internal rhythms and stresses of the melodies, ruining the feeling of flow, so it feels like wading through wet cement to the accompaniment of a jackhammer.

[@dennisferrell3662]

Great ideas and tips. My one complaint is that you speak so fast that I couldn’t make out some of the tune names you mentioned. I'm just a beginner so probably everyone else knows them already. Still great advice though.

[@thisone9]

By changing 'keys,' you mean modes (on flute and whistle), right?

[@whistletutor]

There are some tunes that go in and out of one or two modes, but there are also tunes where the entire A/B parts are in different keys.

[@CarolineViolinMusic]

Cearuílin is ainm dom gan náire is breá liom Bodhrán. agus ag seimn Fidíl freisin agus ag labhairt i nGaeilge

[@marciaclaesson7844]

You lost me at the change keys advice.

[@johnpatrick6998]

I've played in Sessions for years but morons on the bodhran ruined it for me. I play the bodhran very well. I'm on par with Ringo McDonagh. But you have these eejits coming around that just bang on the bodhran. They have absolutely no skill. They're insufferable. It takes skill and a knowledge of the tunes to be a great player. God help us.

[@andrewwigglesworth3030]

Seisiún - a loan word from English into Irish, derived from "session", not the other way around. The Irish music session, usually found in pubs, developed in London in the mid 20th century. I know it seems odd that something so seemingly obvious and now ubiquitous is such a recent evolution. I also know that some people will vehemently deny all this. That's a quite normal experience, but this history is uncontroversial for researchers, and amongst the older generation of musicians who started it all off in terms of Irish traditional music. Using "seisiún" whilst writing in English (the pronunciation of coarse is basically the same as the word "session" in English) implies a false history. It misrepresents their origins and claims sessions as a uniquely Irish and Irish derived phenomenon, which they are not.

[@whistletutor]

You might be right about the etymology of the word “session”, that's out of my wheelhouse. But people didn't begin playing what we know of as traditional Irish music in the mid 20th century. They may not have called it a session prior to that (I have no idea when that started) but they called it a ceili or a dance at a crossroads, or a house party - all of which involved tunes. I didn’t mean to imply a false history - no reference to history at all, in fact - as the video is about Irish sessions, not bluegrass jam sessions, old time sessions, recording sessions, etc. I used the Irish to denote that. No offense was intended.

[@andrewwigglesworth3030]

Hi, my comments come over much more harshly than they are meant, there's no offence felt. The first line of L.P.Harley's book "The go-between" is, "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." The session is a modern innovation, and you don't have to take my word for it. Reg Hall in his excellent book "Irish music in London" (really it is superbly fascinating) documents the history and changing social conditions that brought about this innovation. The ceili and crossroads dances were late 19th century and early 20th century innovations themselves, and were certainly not the same as a session. The house party ceilis of course were killed off by the infamous Public Dance Halls Act of the mid 1930s. The old tradition of Irish music was one of the individual musician. It was an unaccompanied tradition of the solo player. Reference Breandan Breathnach and other writers on this. The rise of the ceili and the ceili band (because of needing more volume) was a change, but the core of the tradition was still one of individual players and individual innovation. The older styles of dancing, the old "high dance" etc, were also performed individually. You went to a country fair, put your penny on the table beside the piper's booth and the piper (it usually was) would play for you to dance to. You see, I love sessions. The hustle and bustle of them, the free and easy sharing of tunes, the meeting of new people and old friends to play music with. I often get called a "traditionalist" for this, but in reality, in the history of music in Britain and Ireland, we have been innovators. That innovation has been even greater in the United States, but we too often do not recognise this and fall into the trap of believing that what we do so naturally today, in the social conditions of today, is what they did in the past ... it ain't so. As Barney McKenna of the Dubliners would point out, if you started to play a musical instrument in a Dublin Pub in the 1950's the landlord would have called the Gardai. In England there is an interesting project called the "Village Music Project" that transcribes the notebooks of English traditional musicians from the 18th and 19th centuries. You'd be interested to see how much of their music you would recognise, but also how much of it, even to me as a player of English dance music, is very different. They did an awful lot of quadrilles and quicksteps in the 1830s. There are house dances and the like described, but nowhere anything approaching a music session, something which is now so obvious and ubiquitous in English traditional music. "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." The thing about sessions not just being Irish was not about recording sessions or rock jam sessions but refers to the fact that the Irish session grew and developed alongside English/Scottish/Welsh music sessions and folk clubs (the British folk revival) and was highly influenced by them, from a time when Irish traditional music was low ebb in terms of public acceptability (and that, sadly, is the right word).

[@andrewwigglesworth3030]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/sH2Un2CdadSfpa8

[@andrewwigglesworth3030]

Oh, and I should say, all your videos are fantastic, a real exemplar of trad musicians sharing and teaching this music. I wouldn't want to give any other impression, you've done great work here for the love of the music.

[@PeggyBrennan]

Wow, Wigglesworrh, thanks for treating me to a trip into that foreign land of history. And @whistletutor, love your stuff. (Including that swoon-worthy flute!) gonna go explore more, cuz tomorrow there’s a Zoom seisuin with a star who I’m intimidated by. So this sure beats practice... and hey I wanna share that Wash DC is SWIMMING w/this music, come one up !