Well said Calum and others. Dow’s knowledge was encyclopaedic and his tune memory astonishing. His list probably was a good snapshot for the places he knew and the time - the Irish music scene in New South Wales 15 years ago, for instance. No doubt at all that you’ll find a handful of those tunes played at almost any Irish-based session. But at the next session it will be a different handful. For another video of a playlist of songs, but more traditional, I like “Irish and Celtic Music Collection 1” on YouTube. A video of it I used to listen to seems to have been removed, but it’s still found but under a kids’ video. Released by an Italian label, Folkest Dischi - the whole album’s on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3aUQQ68WHY&list=OLAK5uy_nLrL31XcCGV_M7U4M2CDG62gGDS2w6QsA&index=1.

Tunes to be played at 100% speed, with the deadline for video submission set for Sunday, 17th September 2023.transcription based on what I remember of Matt Molloy’s version on his first solo album. I copied the chords from X:16. Thx, Aaron!

The idea of 50, 100, 500 essential, approved or standard tunes seems like a great one, but experience shows (see above messages) that it doesn’t really work. It just approaches the problem - and it is a real problem - from the wrong angle. Your taste, your experience, your fellow players (as and when) are what matters, not some imagined canon of tunes you “must” know. So what I did was noting down the tunes that were being played frequently and start practising these at home. So step by step I learned more and more popular Irish session tunes. This is my list with the most popular tunes, including the links to corresponding sheet music. The most popular Irish session tunesIn my experience, if the instrument is set up well, string breaks will mainly be due to “fatigue” - old, tired strings. Breaks can occur earlier with nut or saddle faults. This tune is being played a bit at sessions in Fermanagh ATM. Laurence Nugent, the exceptionally talented flute player, brought it over from Chicago. Local box player Gary Curley has added it to the session repertoire.