Been a bit busy with my involvement with Lewes Folk Festival including helping to run a couple of instrumental workshops and going to a couple of others.

Steve Shaw

Snail, perhaps you've learned your tunes from books, in which case you would have difficulty in telling.

I described how I learn tunes in my first post to this thread. Here it is again in case you missed it -

I have learnt some tunes purely "by ear" without ever having seen them and some from "the dots" without ever having heard them. Mostly, I have used a combination of the two; it helps reading a tune to know what it sounds like and the notation can help with those twiddly bits it's difficult to pick up as they race past in a session. Even learning tunes that I've never heard, I know what similar tunes sound like.

I have been actively involved in workshops for around twenty tears and heavily involved in the music for about as long before that as a listener and dancer.

I have also been much helped by attending some of the workshops we run at the Lewes Saturday Folk Club with tutors such as John Kirkpatrick, Alistair Anderson, Pete Coe, Tom McConville, Tommy Peoples, Tim Laycock, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Andy Turner, Sandra Kerr, Pete Cooper, Dave Townsend and many more. With one or two exceptions, they sent us written music in advance. It saves time learning the notes at the workshop so that we can concentrate on playing the music.

On the other side of the coin, ten years or more ago a friend set up a practice session to learn the tunes played in the local sessions out of the public eye. This grew out of a concertina players evening that I was already running (he turned up with a banjo.) With support from me and Valmai Goodyear of this parish he started an all instruments practice session. We put together a set of tunes that we could guarantee would be heard in the local sessions and handed out photocopies. The format is to go round the room choosing a tune which would then be played as slowly as people wished and as many times as it took. This is just as edifying a process for the more experience of us as it is for the beginners.

We added more tunes and eventually they were published as The Lewes Favourites http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/TheBook.html.In the introduction to the book it says "Please remember the music here is only a guide!".

We have taken this idea round several folk festivals. The first time we did it, I dropped the others off and went to park the car. By the time I got back, the House Full signs were up.

Several people on this thread have pointed out that learning the notes is only the first step to learning the music. I can't see that it matters whether you learn the notes from the dots or by ear. The best way to learn the music is by playing with others and that involves listening.

I'll ask again, Steve, how can you tell straight away if someone has learned from dots? I'll do my best to understand.