At Whitby then later at Shrewsbury Festival I went to "Beginners and Improvers" tune workshops. Dots on the website 9 months before the festivals. For the last 4 or 5 years the "Beginners and Improvers" tune workshops at Shrewsbury attract around 100 people playing a massive variety of instruments. Most have the dots in front of them - many play from memory.

Around 4 years ago we started a "Beginners and Improvers" tune workshop in our local with a tune book of 20 tunes. We know have 100.

Last night we had 2 guitars, 1 bass, 2 fiddles, 2 recorers, 2 whistles, 2 flutes, 2 accordians, 2 melodeons, 2 concertinas, 2 banjos, 1 mandolin, 1 set Northumbrian Smallpipes and 1 uke.

Probably a better mix than usual - no 'cellos or harps on this night. And slightly more women than men. Unusual for a session? Maybe not.

We play as an acoustic ceilidh band of between 20 and 30 musos and have much fun.

We are simply doing what tune players, ie musicians, have been doing for hundreds of years, some learn by listening to recordings or from others, some learn from dots, some play from dots and most play from memory.

But I have to say that, just as at Shrewsbury, the dots enable a lot of people to participate, many of which would not sit in a pub session and try to join in.

If you can learn a tune after one or even 20 hearings - good for you. If you can sit down in our sessions and play a tune you have never seen before from the dots, also good. The majority of us are somewhere in between.

Some people on this thread have explained and great length about how sophisticated the whole process is and in some cases how these great little tunes can only be understood and played by playing by ear.

Maybe they are right but I am not convinced. Generally it's a dozen or so people playing the same tune at the same time in a pub. Perhaps they could get some of those people to say what the tunes are called. Is that too much to ask?

Best wishes

L in C
The Beech Band M21 0XJ