🎻 How to determine a tune's difficulty level (other opinions welcomed!)

Hi, Reader!

Today I'm inviting you to take a peek behind the scenes -- imagine you're fending a cat off of half your keyboard (which is currently happening as I write this to you).

You may have heard me talk about the Tune Library a fair amount in this season, and that is because I've been shifting gears to only offer the Library as well as private lessons in the teaching side of my business. Between chatting with current members, adding a new bonus training section, and checking on the current set-up, this season has been full on audit mode!

This past week, I primarily focused on adding a difficulty level to each tune. The Library has a search feature that you can use to filter through tunes (handy since there are almost 200 tutorials in there and counting 😳), and now instead of searching just for a tune's key and popularity, you can search for tunes that meet you at whichever level you want to play that day (beginner, intermediate, advanced).

The jigs are fully sorted, and I'll be chipping away at more tutorials a little each day throughout this month!

Of course, a tune's difficulty is subjective so I thought that today I'd share with you a behind the scenes thought process for how I went about categorizing these -- and I'd be curious to hear if you agree or not!

Here is how I determine if a tune is Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, or somewhere in between:

• Beginner tunes are typically very simple, recognizable melodies that have a lot of repeated phrases throughout. So instead of memorizing 4 individual phrases per part of a tune, you may only need to memorize 2-3 and recall which order they appear in the tune.
• Intermediate tunes are still fairly straightforward, but might have a trickier element to them (3rd finger rolls, high leaps, 3 parts instead of 2) that I would guess would be overwhelming to someone just getting started with memorizing Irish tunes.
• Advanced tunes can be anything from an unusual key or mode, 6 parters, or require technique development such as shifting or the ability to play a lot of triplets in a row.

For a tune that would be somewhere between beginner and intermediate, I picked tunes that are straightforward but not as well-known, or that are well known but have three parts (like Banish Misfortune).

Then for intermediate to advanced tunes, these could be 4-5 part tunes (more to memorize) but with an easy melody, or a two part tune that has some convoluted note-y bits like the B part of The Gallowglass.

As a side note, I'm super excited that the Tune Library has reached 50 members -- THANK you for your support! And if you're not in there already, I hope you'll consider joining up! It's a fun way to learn new tunes or learn a new variation or two for ones you already play.

Lastly, I'll say that a tune's difficulty level does not necessarily have to match your playing level. Sure if you're new to fiddle, you might not want to dive into a 6 part tune in G minor right off the bat. But if you are comfortable with learning advanced tunes, there's no harm in learning "beginner" tunes either -- it can be nice to add a few straightforward tunes to your repertoire to bring to your local session!

Happy playing!

~Hannah