I used to be a regular member of the Seattle Song Circle (hardly missed a session), but now have more-or-less given up on it. I have my own thing about using RUS - a fine collection of songs to sing in groups, but not to be used in group singing. You can see my thoughts about that HERE. People would come to Song Circle without the faintest idea of what they wanted to sing (and certainly not prepared) and open the book to plow through a song they didn't even know. Or they would sing the same song for the umpteenth time always from the book (you would think they might know it after singing it that many times).

Instead I became interested in playing Irish fiddle music and joined a session that meets at roughly the same time. Now there's something about playing in an Irish session that might relate to a song circle. When I first started to play in sessions I didn't know many tunes. I played on the ones I knew and listened on the others. On rare occassion a newcomer would bring a music stand with sheet music, but that was a pain to set up and didn't usually last long (besides it's not a cool thing to do at a session). I slowly learned more tunes at home, but also by just listening during the session. Often I am amazed to all of a sudden be playing a tune that I never really sat down to learn - it just was absorbed unconsciously and then I knew it. And you can't really play Irish music from the notes anyway since it's an oral tradition and the notes are only an approximation of the way it should sound.

There's no disgrace sitting out a tune you don't know - much better than ruining it for the others by trying to play something you don't know - even the best players don't know all the tunes. But if you use that time to listen intently, pretty soon you learn the tune. So I think a lot of what we do at Irish sessions (or any tune sessions) could apply to singing sessions.

Cheers, S. in Seattle