To Mick, Dan, et. al. I have two words: Peace, Brothers. Thanks again for your responses.

To Barbara: Thanks for the Slow Jam suggestion, I'll look into it. I have a hard time finding anyone in my circle of friends who are even interested in making any music let alone something as exotic as Irish dance tunes. I need to expand my circle, obviously.

Also on playing songs slow, here's another trick. If you have a CD with a particular tune that's just to fast to learn by ear, you can use standard Windows software to slow it down. Put it in your CD-Rom drive, use Sound Recorder to record it to your computer memory, then decrease speed by 1/2 and play it back. It will be an octave lower but that's not much of a problem. This is easier than entering the score. Due to the huge size of the recorded sound, you probably only would want to record 10 - 30 seconds of the tune in one file. I've done this with a CD of tunes that came with a clawhammer banjo book and it really helped. Of course if you have one hooked up to your sound card, a tape recorder would also work.

Ah, if only my life didn't keep interfering with my time.

Jon W.