Showing posts with label tunes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tunes. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I Can't Name That Tune

While it hasn't reached ear worm proportions, I have a tune running around in my head this morning. I don't really know or play this tune, but I must have given it a good effort when it was called at the jam last night. I'm not very good with names. In fact, I'm very bad with names. Some of my students used to take this to mean that I didn't know them very well when, in fact, I did. It's just that their names might take a while to surface.

With fiddle tunes, it doesn't exactly help that I can't call on words to assist my recollection because there are no words for the overwhelming majority of tunes, or, if there are, I am not aware of them. Sometimes I'd like to know the name of a tune, like the one that is presently percolating right now, because I'd like to learn it. But when I'm in the presence of those who might know, I can't even hum it because it has gone to be replaced by another. Sigh.

The other day, I was humming a tune and decided that I did know it and that it was Bonaparte's March, but then I thought, "No, no: it's really Marie Jessie Gillis." However, I soon dismissed that notion and went back to Bonaparte before thinking, "Ah, now I know; it's really Foggy Dew." After another few moments, I decided that it really was Meeting of the Waters. The odd thing is that although I more or less play Meeting, it's not one of my tunes: not one that I play or call.

Now that it's gone from my head, I am wondering if it wasn't really Da Slockit Light. I really don't think so and think it was Meeting of the Waters, but there's no way to check now because it's long gone from my head. In fact, I can no longer hum the tune that was playing incessantly when I began this post. It's vanished: maybe to return and maybe not.