At this point is sounds more like St. Anne's Dirge than St. Anne's Reel, but it feels just plain good to be learning a new tune again. And, it's going relatively well.
Banjo Bob and Fiddlin' Susan have been wanting to add this one to our Thursday lunch menu. But, distracted as I've been by household and health, I've been holding out.
Funny how, when confronted by a bunch of notes running wantonly around on a page, learning even the simplest and most beloved tune can feel like a chore. But, finally, I'm starting to approach learning new tunes as one would properly approach a coding a project.
No decent software developer is going to sit down at the computer the moment she gets the project overview and start banging out code. (Lots of indecent ones do, but that's another story.)
Both with code and with old-time fiddle tunes, it helps to think in an object-oriented way. Fiddle tunes are very object oriented. When you understand what the tune's objects are, learning it gets a lot easier.
For example, the 2nd and 3rd phrases of the B part is usually the same object as the 1st phrase. The 2nd phrase takes n-1 as its input parameter, where n = the starting note of the 1st phrase. Easy!
Years ago, my dulcimer instructor told me to look for "repetition." But, of course, she didn't use words like "object" or "module" or "input parameter." So, somehow, I've made tune-learning a lot harder than it needed to be.
Just like those silly developers who start banging out code without planning their projects.
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