Ordinary Day

I have yet to brave any sessions, but when I lived in Phoenix, I took whistle and Irish flute lessons at the Irish Cultural Center. My teacher (a lovely Welshman) used to constantly chastise me for being too "paper trained." As a "paper trained" musician, I had to really stop looking at the notes and start trying to learn by ear.

I started to get the hang of it eventually. Much of the issue was just really getting to know the whistle/flute.

Now in my band, I'm doing quite a bit more playing by ear, though it's for accompanying the melody rather than playing it. Generally, I'll ask the fiddle player what key or mode we're in, then I start messing about with chords in that key. Most of the time you get away with combinations of I, IV, V, with bits of vii and possibly ii thrown in.

TunePal is a great app. Have you spent much time on thesession.org? Such a great resource for tunes of all kinds.