What I meant about listening was not to do with picking up the tunes - the notation is fine for that - but about how to play them. You can get the basis of the tune from the notation, and its a perfectly good way to learn tunes. But that's all - it won't give you the subtleties which make a tune come alive, you can only learn those from listening to other musicians and how they interpret the bare tune.

It's absolutely fine to offer a beginners session a tunebook to get them started - in fact, it's probably essential. But whether you write the hornpipes dotted or not, neither will quite get across how they should be played. To move beyond the novice stage the musicians will need to do more than just learn the notes.

Best of luck with it.