Frequently Asked Questions: Practicing and Learning Tunes

What is the Practice Machine?

The Practice Machine expertly selects which of your tunes you should practice right now, after weighing: 1) How long ago you last practiced each tune, 2) How long ago you learned each tune, and 3) Your Preferences.

The Practice Machine is a useful tool for a player to maintain their repertoire over the long term. It does not teach tunes. It assumes you are a traditional musician who knows the tunes in your head. What I find it very helpful for is that it selects which tunes I need to practice, at just the right time. It uses a formula based on research on how humans learn most efficiently, on how humans can best remember lots of information, and on the general goals of most Irish session players.

The formula is designed (and polished and verified by many years of daily use) to help you efficiently achieve the following goals:

You want to have a lot of tunes ready to start on your own, purely from memory.
You want to be able to start a tune right on time if someone calls out a tune title at the last second.
You want to be able to join in with someone else starting a tune based only on hearing the first bar or two of a tune.
You want the professional trad-band musicianship skills of talking about and performing new sets and combinations of your tunes "on the fly."
You don't want to spend more time practicing than necessary.
You want to improve the quality of your playing, not just the quantity of tunes you know.

Although it does not teach you new tunes, it is very helpful during the period when you have just learned a new tune, because it carefully schedules tunes that are new to you much more often than it schedules tunes you've known for a long time. So it's important to tell irishtune.info how long ago you learned each of your tunes, by setting the "Learned on" date for each of your tunes.

What's the easiest way to add tunes to my playlist?

Often the easiest way to add a big chunk of your repertoire does not depend on you knowing any names for your tunes at all! Consider instead how you originally learned your tunes:

If you learned them from particular bands and albums, simply use the Album Search and Finder to find the Album Page for that album, then use the Tune Info links for the contents of that album to quickly find the tunes you learned.
If you learned them as standard session tunes, you'll get a quick head start by going through the Top Session Tunes listings, and then maybe also the other "Top Tunes" reports listed at the front page of irishtune.info.
If you learned them from friends who also use my.irishtune.info, use the Compare with Friends' Playlists tool to immediately see a list of the tunes they play, conveniently excluding any you already added to your list.

Why is it important to set the "Learned on" date for my tunes?

The Practice Machine implements the well-established, evidence-based learning technique called "spaced repetition theory" which essentially means that new material must be practiced much more frequently than old material. Assuming you like the goal of only spending time practicing something when it' s useful, not to waste your time and get bored by excessive repetition, then you can rely on the carefully-tuned Practice Machine. And the Practice Machine can only do that if it knows a) when you learned each of your current tunes and b) your personal capacity for learning and retaining tunes, as measured by your "Practice Goal" setting.

How should I set the "Learned on" date when I bring back tunes I had neglected for a long time?

The way I handle that in my own repertoire is:

So that I don't lose my personal history with this tune, I put a note about the the original date when I initially learned the tune into my Private Notes (aka "Note to myself only" on the Tune Info pages). (Similarly, I also make private notes when I decide to abandon a tune in my repertoire - meaning when I uncheck the "I currently play this tune" checkbox), and I include in my note the date I gave up on the tune.
Set the "Learned on" date to a more recent date. That could be:
- "Now," the moment I re-activate the tune in my personal repertoire, if it was dormant for many years and I really have forgotten it.
- Some arbitrary recent time, perhaps "-3 months" or even "-1 month", based on my feeling for how rusty the tune got in my memory. Naturally the longer ago I set the new "Learned on" date, the less frequently the Practice Machine will make me practice it.

What should my Practice Goal setting be?

Give yourself at least a few weeks of daily use of the Practice Machine to gradually improve which "Practice Goal" setting works best for you (see your account Preferences). The default setting of 90 days is a good value for a typical session player who has a few hundred tunes in their active repertoire. If you have a smaller repertoire, you probably want to set that to a much smaller number, maybe 60 or even 30 days or less.

To achieve the goals listed above, you should arrive at your best Practice Goal setting by:

Set the number of tunes in your daily Practice Machine assignments (this is a setting in your Preferences) to exceed the number of tunes listed on your Practice Stats page for "Your daily average goal."
Make sure you meet that goal (on average) for at least a few weeks or months straight (basically: a couple of times through your entire repertoire). For example, if your Practice Goal is 90 days, then you'll need almost 180 days of daily Practice Machine use before you can be confident that your Practice Goal is about right for you. Of course, if your Practice Goal is way off, you can tell that pretty quickly and adjust right away.
If you have no problems remembering all of your repertoire in every assignment then you have two nice choices:
1. Accelerate your progress with musical skills by decreasing your Practice Goal. This automatically increases your daily average quantity of tunes to practice, therefore also how much time you need to spend practicing every day.
2. Keep your Practice Goal unchanged and allow yourself to expand your repertoire with some new tunes.
If you cannot meet that daily-average goal for whatever reason then your three hard choices are:
1. Increase your Practice Goal, which you can only choose if you are having no trouble remembering all the tunes in every assignment. This will decrease how many different tunes you need to review every day, but it will also decrease the rate at which you improve your general musical skill.
2. Decrease your repertoire size by unchecking the "I currently play this tune:" checkbox on some of your tunes as you encounter your least favorite or too-challenging tunes in the Practice Machine.
3. Reconsider how you practice. Perhaps you are spending too much time on each tune. A common illusion musicians suffer from is that the longer you focus on one thing, the more you'll progress with it. This has been proven false in many clinical studies. Move on to a different tune, and you'll actually progress faster with the general skills that are holding you up on this tune.
If it seems like the Practice Machine never gets around to some of your so-far unpracticed tunes, then either:
- You are not meeting your Practice Goal (as illustrated on your Practice Stats), in which case see above, or
- You have set your Practice Goal too high, or
- You have failed to finish entering approximate "Learned on" dates throughout your entire playlist, or
- You are learning new tunes more quickly than you can actually handle (without losing your old repertoire). You must then consciously decide to either abandon some of your current repertoire, or stop learning new tunes, or practice more.

How should I learn new tunes?

My personal opinion on that question is published separately as "Tips for Learning Irish Traditional Music." The primary mission of irishtune.info is to help everyone learn tunes by making that approach easier for you.

How can I add a tune that isn't in the Tune Index?

There are actually a few possible answers to that:

It may actually be in the index, but you are looking it for using a different name than the ones it has been published under. In that case, start with the tips above about ways to add tunes to your list without knowing the name.
It may not actually be an Irish traditional tune at all. See the FAQ "What do you consider to be "Irish traditional" music?"
It may be a recent composition or a very rare tune in the Irish tradition. If it has been recorded somewhere by a self-identified Irish traditional musician on a commercial recording of Irish traditional music, then verify that that recording is not yet covered in irishtune.info by using the Album Search and Finder. If you determined that the album is simply not yet covered in irishtune.info, then you are invited to donate a new or used copy of the physical CD and packaging so that all the tunes on that entire album can be added to the index. Or donate enough money for irishtune.info to purchase it directly, letting me know that you want to fund a particular purchase.

How can I keep track of my tune sets?

Simply write a comment about the set in the Notes field for your tunes. Here's an example Note you might add to a tune of yours:

The Tuesday session plays this after Sailor's Bonnet. My band Diddle-ee-eye plays this between Kesh Jig and Lafferty's. I originally learned it as the one after Fred Finn's from Paddy Murphy.

Then:

Your Notes will show up in your Practice Machine assignments if you want to drill your personal tune combinations.
Use the search box in your Playlist to instantly show all the tunes that match a certain word in your Notes.
Use the Tune Search and Finder feature (when you are logged in) and select the search option "Words in my tune notes" to find all the tunes that have a certain word in your Notes.

Another option is to assign a unique tag to all the tunes in that set and then use that tag to quickly see all the tunes in that set in your Playlist or Practice Machine.

Some people have asked for your Playlist and Practice Machine to somehow remember your personal tune sets and somehow display them appropriately. Besides the problem of how to design a visual, user-friendly interface that makes that obvious and easy, musicians also have different, conflicting desires about how and why they want to do this, so that no one design could make everyone happy.

Furthermore, if the Practice Machine was required to stick to your personal sets, it would defeat a couple of the goals of improving your fundamental musicianship skills, as listed in the primary goals above. In the end, you want to master the individual tunes in any context, which gives you the skill of playing and even inventing new tune sets on the fly. The Practice Machine will lead you there.

What's the advantage of an independent Playlist for each of my instruments?

If you play multiple instruments, each one can have its own Playlist so that:

You get an independent Playlist, Practice Machine, and Practice Stats for each instrument.
For each tune you play, you can record your instrument-specific Learned On and Last Practiced dates.
You can set different Practice Goals and Practice Machine settings for each instrument.

How do I export, print, or make a backup copy of my Playlist?

At the top of your My Playlists page, among the various buttons, is one labeled "Printer-friendly version." Click that button.
Use the various filtering / sorting options at the top of this "My Playlists - Printer-friendly" page to get the tunes selected and arranged as you prefer.
To print: Use your browser's Print feature. Ctrl-P or on a Mac, Cmd-P.
To export your playlist into a spreadsheet:
1. Have a blank spreadsheet ready. (Google Sheet or Excel or whatever).
2. Copy the entire printer-friendly Playlist page using Ctrl-A then Ctrl-C. Or on a Mac, Cmd+A then Cmd+C.
3. Paste the entire list into your blank spreadsheet. You can then clean up the extra stuff from the top and bottom of the sheet, and reformat things to your liking.