Session Etiquette: The Unwritten Rules, Explained

Session etiquette is real, widely agreed on, and almost entirely unwritten. Nobody will hand you a list at the door, and nobody will correct you either — they will simply stop making room for you. This is that list, as far as one can be written down.

Why none of it is written down

A session is a voluntary, unpaid-in-spirit arrangement between people who mostly know each other, happening in a commercial room that has its own interests. There is no committee, so the customs are enforced socially: by who gets nodded at, who gets space in the circle, and who finds that the chair beside the fiddle player is somehow always taken next week. That sounds harsh, but it is the same mechanism that keeps the music good, and it is remarkably forgiving of beginners who are obviously trying.

Almost all of the etiquette derives from a single principle: the tunes come first. Anything that makes it easier for the group to play well together is good manners. Anything that makes the music worse in order to include you is not, no matter how well intentioned. If you remember only that, you will get nine out of ten of the specific rules right by instinct. If you have not been to a session before, start with what actually happens at a session and come back to this.

Before you play: ask

The single most useful thing you can do is find whoever is leading and ask, before the music starts, whether it is alright to join in. Sessions differ enormously — some are genuinely open to anyone who can hold a melody, some are a booked group of players doing a paid job with an audience around them, and there is no way to tell from a listing which is which. Asking takes ten seconds and it converts an awkward situation into a welcome one.

If the answer is yes, take the seat you are offered rather than the one you want. If the answer is a hesitation, that is a no delivered politely, and the correct response is to stay for the night as a listener and come back. Sessions have long memories for people who handled that gracefully.

Tunes: joining, leading and leaving

Play only what you actually know

Playing along approximately is the most common beginner mistake and the most damaging one, because a nearly-right melody line is far more disruptive than silence. Sitting out three tunes in four is completely normal and nobody is counting. What people do notice is a wrong note landing under someone's ornament.

Do not start a set until you are invited to

In most sessions the right to start a set of tunes rotates informally, and the lead players hand it around. Wait until someone looks at you and says “have you one?” When they do, start something at a tempo you can hold, and pick a tune other people are likely to know. Launching your own obscure composition on your first night is a choice; launching an unfamiliar setting of a familiar tune is worse, because half the room will start it with you and then fall over.

Follow the tempo and the setting you are given

The player who started the tune owns it for its duration. Do not speed it up, do not add a third part that your recording had, and do not switch to a different key because it suits your instrument. If the tune is going somewhere you cannot follow, drop out and come back at the top of the next repeat.

Do not noodle

The gaps between sets are for talking, tuning quietly and deciding what is next. Practising a phrase at full volume during them is the fastest way to become unpopular in the room. The same goes for testing your tuning in the middle of somebody else's slow air.

Accompaniment is a privilege, not a right

Melody players can double up almost indefinitely — three fiddles and two flutes on the same tune is a session in good health. Accompaniment does not work that way. Two guitars playing different chord choices under the same tune is a mess, and no amount of enthusiasm fixes it.

• If a chordal instrument is already playing, ask before adding a second. Often the answer is that you will swap sets.
• Much of the repertoire is modal rather than straightforwardly major or minor. Chords borrowed from other genres will sound wrong to everyone in the room even if they cannot name why.
• Volume is the whole argument. Accompaniment should sit under the melody. If people are leaning in to hear the flute, you are too loud.
• Listen for a bar or two before you commit to a chord. Guessing the harmony of a tune you do not know, in public, at volume, is the definition of getting in the way.

The bodhrán question

The frame drum has a reputation, and it is worth being honest about why. A bodhrán is easy to make a sound on and very hard to play well, it is loud enough to dominate a small room single-handedly, and it fixes the rhythm in a way that leaves melody players no room to breathe if the player is not listening closely. So a bodhrán arriving unannounced at a small session is often met with visible caution.

None of which means do not play it. It means: never assume there is a slot, never be the second one, ask first, sit where the melody players can hear each other over you, and pull back instinctively during slow airs and songs — most of which are better without percussion at all. Bodhrán players who do those things are welcome everywhere, and good ones are genuinely prized.

Songs, and the silence they need

Tunes coexist with conversation. Songs do not. When someone starts to sing — especially unaccompanied — the convention is that the room falls quiet until the last line, and a “shush” travelling across a pub is not rudeness, it is the etiquette working. Do not talk through it, do not join in on a chorus until the singer has clearly opened one up, and do not applaud into the final note. If you are the one singing, ask the lead player for the nod first, and pick something you can finish.

The singing session guide goes into how the song-led version of the night works, which has its own separate customs.

Money, drinks and the small courtesies

Players are usually paid something by the venue, and it is rarely much. The unglamorous etiquette around that matters more than people admit.

• Buy from the bar. A session survives because the pub sees a reason to keep paying for it, and a room full of people nursing tap water for three hours is how a music night ends.
• If there is a hat, a bucket or a jar going round at a free gig, put something in it. Our guide to how gigs are priced in Ireland explains where that money actually goes.
• Buying a player a drink is a nice gesture; buying six players six drinks each is how a session falls apart by half eleven. Ask first — plenty of people playing are driving home.
• Leave the players their space, their sightlines and their chairs. Instrument cases on the floor are not free seating.

Five rules that cover everything else

1. Ask before you play. Ask again before you bring anything loud.
2. Play what you know, at the tempo you were given, and sit out the rest without comment.
3. Never make the music worse in order to be included in it.
4. Quiet for songs and slow airs, always.
5. Support the room — the bar, the bucket, the players. It is why the night exists next week.

And if you are going purely to listen, none of the above applies to you beyond ordinary courtesy. Our first-timer's guide to a small-pub gigcovers the listener's side of the room, and Explore will tell you which sessions and gigs are on tonight anywhere in the country.