🎻 A scientific way to remember more tunes

Hi, Reader!

One of the most frustrating things when it comes to learning Irish traditional tunes is showing up at a session and not being able to recall how any of the tunes you practiced that week are supposed to go.

You had it at one point, but then you throw the pressure of playing in front of other people in the mix, and it all goes to pot.

I know that I have truly learned a tune when I can lead it and play it through start to finish at my local session without any glaring mistakes. It's a fun way to test knowledge and see which tunes need to stay in regular rotation in the practice routine!

(And even then, it still may not be fully committed to long term memory if I don't keep returning to it for review from time to time. That's why having a resource like the Tune Library really comes in handy in the long run!)

Lately I've been reading Sahil Bloom's book The Five Types of Wealth, and there was an exercise he mentions in the Mental Wealth section that made me think of learning tunes by ear called spaced repetition.

In a nutshell, this is the process our brain uses to convert short term memory into long term memory and relies on you repeating new information (a new tune) you've consumed in steadily increasing intervals.

The book gives the example of learning new information at 8am. Then you wait one hour to repeat it at 9am, then three hours for your second repetition at 12pm, six hours later for your third repetition at 6pm and 12 hours later for your fourth repetition at 6am.

Somehow I don't think my apartment neighbors would love for me to start practicing at 6am -- and you might not be taking your instrument out four or five times a day!

So to pivot this slightly and put it into a more direct context for learning a tune, we can use the following example:

• Start your spaced repetition practice the first time you are able to play a tune correctly by ear without looking at the music (I still like to play the tune about 3-4 times through).
• Take a break in that same practice session and go on to your other tunes (either review or exploring new ones). Before you put your instrument away that day, go back and play through the memorized tune to check. Correct any missed notes.
• The following day, see how far you can get in the tune without missing a note.
• Then come back to the tune two days later to check memory.

And so on, so forth for as long as you want to keep playing this tune!

Now it doesn't need to be exact time intervals by any means (life is too inconsistent for that), but do give it a try with at least a few weeks and see how it compares to some other tunes you may have memorized differently!

I mentioned last week that I've been playing through Breandan Breathnach's Ceol Rince na hÉireann collection, and it's really interesting to come back to after a few years of not really looking at the book.

Some tunes I know by memory because I hear them a lot, or we play them a lot in sessions.

Some I may know to hear, but haven't tried playing yet. These tend to come under my fingers a bit more quickly than one I've never heard at all.

As an example, I learned Apples from the Orchard this month which has a lot of recognizable phrases I've heard in other tunes. I've been putting this after Patrick Kelly's jig, which is also in the collection -- it's a G tune that I want to start putting in my general formula of DGA jig sets just to switch things up a bit.

But there's another Gan Ainm (without a name) tune that I really like when I play it through, but I don't know of any recordings for it. If you asked me to hum through Patrick Kelly's or Apples from the Orchard, I could do it for you. But if you ask me about the Gan Ainm tune, I've only got the first phrase in my head right now (might have a different answer for you next week).

Maybe this is good incentive for me to use the spaced repetition method and get you a video of the Gan Ainm tune next Sunday, Reader! Let me know what tune you're going to try this with, and we can get a little bit of accountability going here. 😁

Happy playing!

~Hannah