With the course almost over, we now have 166 tunes we have been given at the ESI; 88 of these are primary tunes that we are expected to learn. I excluded songs from this list, although some of these instrumental tunes also have songs.

Two years ago I started making a list of tunes I had learned. I got the idea from Sheila Morris. We sat down to jam together after a Seattle Springdans workshop and Sheila handed me list of tunes she knew. It made it much easier for us to find tunes in common to play. After that I started my own list. I soon migrated to an Excel spreadsheet; as a scientist in my working life I was very comfortable with Excel. I included columns to mark which tunes I could play alone without too much embarrassment, which tunes I could play with others, which tunes I was only just learning. I noted which ones had sheet music (in my possession) and which had recordings, and the filenames to find the recordings or sheet music. Before I came to the ESI this list had grown to 175 tunes. I use various features of Excel, such as filters to list just tunes I know well, or make a setlist for playing for dance. I can also filter by type of tune, such as Schottis or Bodapolska.

When the tunes started to pile up here at the ESI, I began a worksheet to capture those tunes as well. I am really happy I did that, because it helped me keep track and to make lists of tunes I needed to practice. This week it helped me put together a list of the tunes we are choosing for our upcoming final concert.

Here is an example of a section of this worksheet. It includes our four main teachers and visiting teachers David Eriksson and Markus Svensson: