A tune session lives happily inside the noise of a pub. A singing session needs the opposite: a room that will go quiet for four minutes at a time, for someone with no microphone and no accompaniment. It is the most demanding and, when it works, the most extraordinary room in Irish music.
What a singing session actually is
A singing session is an evening built around songs rather than dance tunes. Ten or twenty people sit around a table or in a rough circle, and songs pass from one to the next. Most are sung solo and unaccompanied. Some have choruses everyone joins. There is no stage, no PA, no set list, and frequently no formal beginning — someone simply starts.
Unlike a tune session, where several players carry the same melody together, only one person sings at a time. That makes the singing session an unusually democratic form: a person with a small, plain voice and one good song is entirely equal to a trained singer with fifty. What is valued is the song and the honesty of the delivery, not the volume or the range.
The hush, and why it is enforced
The defining custom is silence. When a song starts, conversation stops — not gradually, but immediately, and if it does not, someone will shush the room, loudly, and nobody present will consider that rude. It is worth understanding why. An unaccompanied singer has nothing to compete with background noise: no rhythm section to lock into, no amplification, nothing but their own breath and the shape of the words. Twenty seconds of chat at the next table can genuinely stop a singer mid-verse.
For a visitor this is the one thing that must be got right. Do not talk during a song. Do not order at the bar during a song if the bar is within earshot. Do not applaud into the final line — wait until it has landed. And if you arrive mid-song, stand still at the door until it finishes rather than crossing the room. None of these are house rules; they are the etiquette everywhere.
How the round works
Most singing sessions are led loosely by one or two people who know everybody in the room. Songs move around it in something like a circle, with the leader nodding to whoever is next.
- You can always pass.“I'll listen tonight” is a completely normal answer and nobody will press you.
- One song each, and then it moves on. Following your own song with another because it was going well is poor form.
- Repertoire is watched. If someone has already sung a song tonight, it is theirs for the night; sing something else.
- Choruses are an invitation. Join in once the singer has clearly opened one up — usually by singing it through once themselves — and not before.
The pace is slower than a tune session, with talk between songs about where a song came from, who used to sing it, and which version is the good one. That conversation is half the point.
What gets sung
Traditional song in English
The core of most singing sessions: ballads and narrative songs, love songs, emigration songs, work songs, local songs about a specific townland or event. Many exist in dozens of versions, and singers are often quietly protective of the one they learned.
Sean-nós
Solo unaccompanied singing in Irish, heavily ornamented and free in rhythm, is a tradition in its own right, with distinct regional styles. It turns up in singing sessions and dominates some of them. Understanding a word of Irish is not a prerequisite for being moved by it — though knowing what the song is about, which someone will usually tell you, helps a great deal. Our guide to telling Irish music genres apart sets out where sean-nós sits relative to the ballad tradition.
Chorus songs and come-all-ye
Songs written to be joined: the big communal choruses that give a room something to do together. A session made only of these becomes a singalong rather than a singing session, but a night with none of them can feel airless. Good rooms alternate.
Everything else
Singing sessions are less purist than outsiders expect. Music hall songs, American folk and country songs, Scottish and English ballads, macaronic songs that switch between Irish and English, recitations, and the occasional recent composition all get sung. The test is whether it works unaccompanied in a quiet room, not where it came from.
If you want to sing
Bring one song you know completely. That is the whole of the preparation, and it matters more than the quality of your voice.
- Pick something you can finish. Forgetting a middle verse in a silent room is the one real hazard, and it happens to experienced singers. If it does, ask — someone will feed you the line.
- Find your own starting note. Hum it under your breath first. Starting too high is the commonest technical mistake and there is no key change available to rescue you.
- Don't apologise before you start.“I'm not really a singer” makes the room anxious on your behalf. Just begin.
- Sing the words, not the tune. These are narrative songs; the story is the thing. Slow down for a line that matters and the room will come with you.
- Say where you got it. A sentence about who you learned the song from is part of the form and, in a tradition passed hand to hand, it is genuine information.
Where to hear unaccompanied song
Singing sessions are less numerous than tune sessions and less likely to be advertised prominently, so they take a little more finding. Three reliable routes:
- Festivals with a singing strand. Traditional festivals and summer schools frequently run singing sessions and singing workshops alongside the tunes, and a festival weekend is the easiest place to walk into a great one. Our guide to the festival calendar covers when they fall.
- Local traditional music organisations. Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann branches and similar local groups run song nights as well as tune sessions, and they are the people who know where the singers are.
- Late in a tune session. Many song traditions survive in the last hour of an ordinary session, once the room has thinned. If you hear one song go up and the pub go quiet, stay.
On LocalJams, recurring song and session nights are listed under whatever name the venue advertises them by, so look for entries like “Singing Session”, “Traditional Session” or “Open Mic” in Explore, and check the venues directory for what a particular room has coming up. Sessions move night and venue more often than you would think, which is exactly why we point you at the current listing rather than a fixed weekly claim.
If you are new to all of this, the session guide and the etiquette guide are the natural companions to this one — and the second of them contains the only rule that really counts here: quiet for songs, always.