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(7 votes) 
Regulars
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I'm attempting to narrow down the most common tunes played at sessions.
I'll begin with the ones I've heard a lot
Road To Lisdoonvarna
The Swallowtail Jig
The Irish Washerwoman
Cliffs Of Moher
The Butterfly
The Kid On The Mountain
The Otter's Holt
The Jig Of Slurs
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Are you looking to learn tunes you'd play at a session? If so, download this: Dow's 50. It's the one I'm working through to start.
The session I've recently started attending has played all on your list plus:
The Banshee
Concertina Reel
Cup of Tea
Father Kelly's
Maid Behind the Bar
Sally Gardens
Banish Misfortune
Kesh
Out on the Ocean
Tripping up the Stairs
Harvest Home
Rights of Man
Silver Spear
And those are just the ones I remember offhand.
Bad times make for good stories.
Regulars
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Silver spear reel
out on ocean jig
kesh jig,
lilting banshee jig
banshee reel
cliffs of moher jig
tuttles reel
The copper plates set
Dennis murphys, john ryans, egans polkas
...Usually get played
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Great idea.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Regulars
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Thank you ....I'm sorry I took awhile to get back here.
A few of these I don't recognize. I'll be sure to give these a look over to learn.
Here's a link to my Sessions Google folder. These are tunes I'm either learning or have learned. There's probably 25% of it I don't know or couldn't play without looking at it.
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Kind of you to share your folder with everyone. 
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Regulars
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Excellent! I love jigs and reels, this gives me more to work on. @starise Thanks for the link, much appreciated.
Regulars
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You are very welcome. I have others I haven't put in the list yet. When I do, I'll let you know.
There's one in particular "The Yucca Tree" that I couldn't find. I was at a group playing recently and I played the tune. The leader looked flabbergasted. Here he had written the tune. It's one of my favorites. I hope he uploads it to session.org. He deserves credit for it.Ken is a local musician celebrity here.
FYI- 99% of these tunes are standards played in various places in my area. It was rare to find one written locally.
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Nice collection of tunes there, thank you @starise
Edit: And @pat - nice on the "Dow's 50" - thanks !
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh - 
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
Regulars
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Locally, if your teacher is in the know, or you go to enough jams, there are books that were put together years ago of all the tunes that are popular locally, written out the way the locals most commonly play them. Fortunately, my old teacher was part of those jam groups and gave me copies of the tune books
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Regulars
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BillyG 
damfino. I have seen a few carry music to sessions. It's like 99% memory playing . They might have books at home, but don't bring them. Good idea though. I could ask around.
Maybe this was mentioned, thesession.org is a free site that lets a player download .pdf music for free . It contains hundreds and hundreds of tunes. The catch is there are so many it can be difficult to weed out the almost never played, the lesser played and the commonly played all depending on the area. I suppose an experienced player/leader could introduce whatever he wants to. After awhile that will begin to catch on in that group.
I sort of stepped into an existing thing and have picked up many of the most common. The thing is the most common tend to all be played in the first hour of a 3 hour session. After that one needs to dig a little deeper.
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I was just at a session on Sunday and they asked if I knew "Ten Penny Bit". I didn't. Apparently it's commonly played around here.
Also would be good to know the combinations you like to play since most sessions musicians play two or three strung together. I usually begin with The Cliffs Of Moher followed by the Dusty Windowsills, maybe follow up with the Hag At The Churn.
If there are a lot of new folks I might I might start with the most common stringing The Kesh, The Swallowtail and Morrison's. I try to start with the most common ones.
Here's a link to Ten Penny Bit.
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Thank you starise!
Just found this & "Ten Penny Bit" goes great with "Lilting Banshee" (one of my favorites)!
When I 1st started playing (actually before) I was enamored with all the tutorials Duncan Cameron (Canada) so generously displayed on YouTube.
Some of the first celtic ones I learned from Duncan's videos (and others' videos or by ear) was :
Lilting Banshee - King of the Fairies - Up Among the Heather - Trip to Sligo - Rights of Man - O'Carolan's Welcome - Rocky Road to Dublin - Star of the County Down - Drowsy Maggie - Morrison's - Tamlin - Razzle Dazzle Gypsy - Musical Priest - Parson's Farewell - Garry Owen - Sailer's Hornpipe - Joe Cooley's - Óró sé do bheatha abhaile and Cad é sin don té sin - almost forgot Planxty Burke/Planxty Drew!
Some were easy & some pretty hard for my first year. I'm glad to see some of these being played at local sessions!
- Emily
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