Before I delve deeper I thought I’d jot down a few headlines about folk sessions to set the context. As with most topics opinions vary on lots of details – the following is written from my viewpoint as a fairly experienced musician who came new to folk sessions about two years ago, I hope it sets the scene for what I write about in the future, and maybe it will also serve as an intro for those new to this world.

This post is based on my experience and things I have learnt along the way – others who have different experiences will likely have things to add, expand on or disagree (politely!) with. Comments happily received below.

My experience, and the posts that follow will be mainly about Traditional English Tune Sessions (I suppose we can call them TETS for these purposes). Every one of those words is loaded and controversial:

• Traditional – this word conjures the image of music that has been played for time untold, handed down from person to person by ear, to such an extent that no one knows who composed it or where it comes from. That is often not the case for music played in TETS – we play:
  • Tunes which have been kept alive precisely through being notated in the ‘tunebooks’ belonging to players from the past, or by the tune ‘collectors’ who were active particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (A much bigger topic for future posts I think).
  • Tunes whose origins/composers may indeed have been lost but which were published as a commercial endeavour, in collections for dancers and dance tutors – most notably John Playford in the mid 17th Century.
  • Tunes written by musicians who are still very much alive and kicking – we may have learnt these from their own recordings or (shock horror) from sheet music which has either been commercially published or more informally shared online or in person.
  • Tunes written by the very people in the room and sitting alongside us.
  • Tunes which fit any one, or more, of the categories above, which have indeed been passed from one musician to another, and, chinese whispers style, been changed in the process – sometimes dramatically, sometimes deliberately, and often just by mistake. Nobody’s perfect.

• “Traditional” does have certain other inferences which are, generally true, most of the time:
  • Instrumentation – musicians in TETS will always play acoustic instruments (I just know someone is going to find an exception to prove this rule), and most musicians in the room will play instruments with strong associations with this genre – melodeons, fiddles, whistles, mandolins and guitars. There is however no rule precluding any particularly instrument – again the subject of a future post I think…..
  • Style – there are a number of conventions about the way tunes are played which can broadly be described as ‘the traditional English folk style’. But having said that, I will straight away say that there is no such thing as one English style, and, once you scratch the surface, the conventions in one part of the country may be very different from those in another. For now let’s just say that, by and large, most of the music exists to be danced to, and that governs a lot of things about the feel of the music and the way it is played.

• English
  • I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the tunes played in TETS originate from somewhere in England. I’ve stopped short of saying ‘the majority’. In many cases, even where we claim a tune as English, we actually don’t know where and when it was first played. What we can say with confidence is that many of the tunes played are not English – Irish, Scottish, Swedish, American and Scandinavian tunes, amongst others frequently feature. Often these tunes will be played using conventions from the (nonexistent – as above) “traditional English Folk style”, which would never be used by musicians from their country of origin.
  • It perhaps is worth saying that the word ‘English’ in a session description is fairly essential, in England certainly, to distinguish a session from an ‘Irish’ session. Irish traditional music is a whole different ball game and not the subject of this blog. If invited to a ‘folk session’ (particularly if you intend to play in it) it is usually worth asking for a bit more detail….

• Tune
  • session players will describe most of the pieces of music played as tunes, and, in most instances, the tune (or, melody), is the element that makes the piece of music what it is. However……very often one player’s version of a tune will contain different notes or rhythms from another. When does one tune have so many changes it becomes another tune? that’s been argued around pub tables for centuries, and more recently in courts of law many times….
  • When ‘tunes’ are played, of course, it is not ‘just’ the tune that is played……in the best sessions at least players will add, at the very least, chords and accompanying lines, and often intricate variations, counter melodies etc. and, despite the fact that they play the tune several times, no two times are likely to sound the same. This is the point where this music becomes, for me, really interesting….the ultimate goal, I think, is to turn a ‘tune’ into music….Frankly, that doesn’t happen all the time in sessions – but it’s an aspiration, and learning to do this effectively is what keeps me coming back……

• Session
  • A word most useful to remind us what it is not, I think.
    • It is not a rehearsal – whilst occasionally tunes new to some players may be informally taught by ear in a session, no one’s going to plug away working on nuances and intricate details in the way you might in a choir or band rehearsal- tunes are played, enjoyed and then left behind.
    • It is not a performance – whilst others in the pub may be listening, and hopefully, enjoying the session the players are not really there for an audience.
    • It is not a band or group – in most cases (certainly if the session is in a public place), anyone can technically join in and the musicians will vary from one occasion to the next. The is for me is actually one of the most interesting elements of the folk scene, and definitely one I will return to. The existence of this informal but structured, open – but sometimes, opaque, environment in which humans can come together and create music with whoever else turns up is a unique and special phenomenon, and an increasingly rare one.

So, that’s my attempt to start to define a Traditional English Tune Session. Nothing I say above is true all the time, but I hope that at least some of it is true in most cases, and I am really looking forward to digging deeper into many of these points in future posts.