How to practise for an Irish session with play-along tracks
Playing a tune alone at home and playing it in a room full of people are different skills. This week of practice is how I'd get from the first to the second.
By Wiktor · Updated
Pick two tunes your session plays
Two tunes, ideally a pair you've heard played together at your session. Find a recording of their version if you can. If you need ideas, start from my starter-tunes guide and ask the organiser which ones that group plays.
Practise at a speed where the melody keeps moving without strain. This week is about hearing the pulse, remembering the tune and finding your place when you lose it. Speed comes later, and you can still go to listen before you're ready to play.
Days one and two: the melody alone
Day one: listen, sing and work out short phrases. Write the hard phrases on a list instead of replaying the comfortable opening. Day two: join the parts and play the tune from memory before checking the source.
Leave the backing track until you know which melody you're playing. If you need another instrument feeding you every next note, you don't know the tune yet. My learning-by-ear guide has the phrase-by-phrase method.
Days three and four: play against a pulse
Use a play-along or a metronome at a comfortable speed. In Tune Companion, open a tune's score and pick a play-along recording from the sound menu where there is one, or use the score's own playback, and set the speed. Listen once, then play, and keep enough attention spare to hear the accompaniment.
If your rhythm drifts, loop a short section and find where it goes. Record yourself and listen back. Don't grind through a speed that makes you tense up or drop whole phrases.
Days five and six: the joins
Play the end of the first tune back into its opening, then the end of the A part into the B part. Once those are solid, go from the first tune into the second without a pause, and check whether the second tune has pickup notes before its first beat.
Practise coming in after a few bars of listening instead of always starting from the top. When you lose your place, stop and find a phrase you recognise. Nobody at a session restarts the set because you missed a note, so this is the skill to have.
Day seven: test it
Play each tune without the track. Then play along with the source recording if its speed is comfortable. Check that you still know the structure, can hold the pulse and can hear where the other player is. I'd trust those checks over the fastest tempo you managed once.
At the session, join the tunes you can follow and sit out the rest. Afterwards, write down one thing to practise next: a phrase, a change between tunes, or a tune you heard three times. Play-alongs get you ready, but the group teaches you the next thing.
Keep learning
Pick your next tunes from my 20 tunes for your first session, then look at the sets players save together. Every session plays its own versions, so check with the people you play with.