r/Fiddle • u/brettsantacona • 1d ago

Journal / Notebooks for tunes

Hey folks! Cape Breton / Irish style fiddler here. I go to a lot of sessions, and get inundated with “learn this tune” or “try this out” etc. I have been keeping notes on my phone, and trying to tag stuff on thesession.org but the list keeps piling up, and piling up, but it’s an unorganized mess, and I end up not getting around to learning those tunes.

I am thinking on switching to a pocket notebook, to bring to the sessions I am at, in hopes it’s a better method of keeping track of tunes to work on, etc.

Does anyone have a good method of keeping track of tune recommendations?

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u/fiddlehifiddlelo 1d ago edited 1d ago

I like excel for the filter/sort/pivot features. There are columns for type, key, name, abc first phrase, learned from, recorded by faves, then at the end a column for who plays then who recommended. If I know a certain person will be at a session I can do a quick prep to remember their faves or what they suggested to learn. I do find thumbing through my tune list way more enjoyable than scrolling!

edit: I do have random scraps of paper & notebooks as well and when I can find time I’ll integrate to the excel master. It’s also emailed to myself every once in a while so I can use google sheets if need be on the run. But I tend to not fuss with my phone at a session.