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18th century English tunes - new site

11 Feb 11 - 05:49 AM (#3093012)
Subject: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Hi all

I've been doing a bit of research into 18th century country dance tunes and have decided to start publishing my findings on a new website. The aim is to start getting these tunes played again as most of them don't appear to have been touched in around 200 years or so. If you're interested please have a look at Mr Green's Fantasickal Compendium of English Country Dance Tunes

Cheers

Chris

PS - Any feedback would be most welcome!

11 Feb 11 - 06:07 AM (#3093023)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Bonnie Shaljean

Have just bookmarked it. No time right now to do more than glance & sniff, but I sure like what I see and will go back. Cheers, sir.

I remain

Your most humble and obedient servant

Bonnie

11 Feb 11 - 06:43 AM (#3093043)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,chris

good potential I will come back to it
chris

11 Feb 11 - 06:59 AM (#3093054)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Jack Campin

Nice to see someone going live with a small and selective site for a change.

What software generated those scores?

I see scores that look like that quite often on the web (the same odd font for titles).

BTW I would prefer to see "The Oddity" notated in 3/2. You can leave the original time signature in an editorial note, you don't want it in your face in something you've printed off to use.

11 Feb 11 - 08:50 AM (#3093122)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Ann N

Thankyou, I've bookmarked it .... and had a quick run through of the Sarabande :)

11 Feb 11 - 12:56 PM (#3093320)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Thanks for your kind comments!

Jack - I generated the scores in Sibelius 5 and saved them as PDFs working on the basis that most people have Adobe Acrobat. I'll have a go at putting The Oddity up as a 3/2 later tonight, but I'll leave the original up there as well (I think it's important to preserve the integrity of the source material.)

11 Feb 11 - 02:48 PM (#3093397)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Hokay - have added The Oddity in both time signatures. I've also added an alphabetical menu as well as the menu via time signature. Thanks all!

11 Feb 11 - 04:40 PM (#3093459)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Tootler

Looks a useful site. I will have a proper look at more suitable time. A bit too late at night just now.

The notation is clear and having the tunes as pdf means you should get a decent printout.

11 Feb 11 - 04:44 PM (#3093463)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

I haven't tried printing them yet. If anyone does could you let me know how they look?

14 Feb 11 - 04:19 AM (#3094863)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Pibydd

Well done, Mr Green!

14 Feb 11 - 04:28 AM (#3094871)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Will Fly

Excellent work, Chris. I love sites like these and yours is a welcome addition - long may it grow.

Just one suggestion - ignore if of no relevance: Would there be a place on the site to offer the tunes in .abc format (text file) as well as PDF? The beauty of .abc is that it can be imported by many other music problems and can then generate both music and midi. My own program (Harmony Asistant) imports and exports music files in a huge variety of formats - including .abc.

14 Feb 11 - 08:19 AM (#3094970)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

The thought had crossed my mind. However Sibelius doesn't export abc format, and to be honest buying and learning another music software program feels like a bit of a waste of time (for me personally I mean!) However, Sibelius does export as MIDI so it would be very easy for to put a MIDI of each file up if you think that might be useful?

14 Feb 11 - 08:43 AM (#3094980)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

I was mistaken. I've designed the site in wordpress and I forgot that I need to buy an upgrade in order to upload audio (which MIDI kind of is). What I can do however is upload Scorch files which display the notation and play it. Scorch is a free download. Would that be of use to anyone?

14 Feb 11 - 09:00 AM (#3094990)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Jack Campin

I transcribed The Oddity into ABC since I wanted to print it in 3/2 (without the 2/4 version cluttering things up). I realized it had quite a narrow range, so I got BarFly to transpose it and added it to my file of nine-notes-up-from-C tunes:

http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/Chalumeau.abc

I think it would be more use to most of us if the site were just done in ABC from the ground up, since that would allow operations like transposition and editing the tunes into our own medleys. But it's your baby, and better you do it your way than not at all.

For a comparison - I think it took me about four hours to put that chalumeau tunes file together. I only transcribed one or two new tunes for it, but there was a fair bit of minor editing involved, and most of the tunes had to be transposed. How long would it take you to put together 50-something tunes into a tunebook using Sibelius, if you already had them in different files and in different keys?

14 Feb 11 - 09:54 AM (#3095016)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Will Fly

Scorch is a good alternative if you (a) can't cope with abc and (b) the blog site doesn't support audio files. Anyone who buys sheet music from the web sites, as I do, will almost certainly have Scorch - and it's free software.

14 Feb 11 - 10:46 AM (#3095050)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: G-Force

Well it looked great at first, then it stopped working. I couldn't even open up tunes again which I'd already looked at. Is there a limit in the software as to how many times you can use it?

14 Feb 11 - 10:51 AM (#3095052)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Jack - think it comes down to familiarity with the program. It'd probably take me roughly the same amount of time to input the same tunes into Sibelius, which has an auto-transpose facility. I had a look at your link and it made about as much sense to me as my site probably does to someone who doesn't read notation! I mainly access music by ear and use notation as a second string. At the moment, I don't have time to get to grips with abc, I'm afraid, but I'll definitely bear it in mind as a future project when I'm less frantically busy. :-)

Will - I think I'm going to try and go with the Scorch idea. That way it doesn't cost anyone (including me!) anything to access the tunes and people who are unfamiliar with notation can hear as well as see them. If there's loads of interest in the site a few weeks down the line, I'd be tempted to pay for the upgrade and add the files as MIDI as well, which can presumably then be imported into a variety of music software (I know my friend's copy of Mozart imports MIDI and displays it as notation and tab.)

Thanks for the feedback fellas!

Chris

14 Feb 11 - 10:55 AM (#3095054)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

G-Force - sorry, I crossposted with you. I've just had a look and it seems to be working okay. I don't think there's a limit to how many times you can access it. Can you let me know if it's still not working?

14 Feb 11 - 11:23 AM (#3095068)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST

Great, I don't know any English tunes, would love to explore them

I second the vote for ABC format. Can play as MIDI, export as tablature for guitar, harmonica etc. And I know at least one musician who can just read it from a page.

14 Feb 11 - 11:25 AM (#3095071)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: G-Force

Still not working for me.

First time, I looked at about six tunes then the next one I got an error message. After that, when I clicked on a tune in one of the lists the screen went first blank black then blank white.

Just went back in again, and the same black/white thing happens.

I'm using Windows XP and Firefox. Does Adobe need to be the very latest?

14 Feb 11 - 04:11 PM (#3095263)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Tootler

I use Noteworthy and Noteworthy imports MIDI so MIDI would be best for me.

ABC would be a good second best as there is now a converter online to convert ABC to Noteworthy or I can convert ABC to midi and import to Noteworthy.

Scorch is no use to me at all as it is only available for Windows and Mac and I am running Ubuntu Linux. A Check on the Wine database suggests that you can get it to run in Linux using Wine but you have to install Firefox for Windows and even then it does not run properly - problems with sound. Also I see no point in messing about installing Firefox for Windows just for one software company's plugin. Overall, Scorch is a none starter in Linux as far as I'm concerned.

Whatever you finally decide. please, please make sure it is platform independent. Midi and abc both meet that criterion. Scorch does not.

14 Feb 11 - 04:44 PM (#3095285)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: ConcertinaChap

> Great, I don't know any English tunes, would love to explore them

If you're new to English music then The Lewes Favourites is a great site to teach you the basic repertoire. Lots of lovely stuff there.

Back to the thread. This looks like a nice site coming along here and I've bookmarked it for fuller eploration. I agree that the ideal alternative formats are MIDI and ABC and longer term that's what you should aim at, but in the short term do whatever is easiest for you. If Scorch is easy then I'd go for it.

Incidentally, Sibelius will as you say output MIDI and if you just upload the resultant files to your web site and link to them using normal anchors people will be able to download them. Or does Cafe Press inhibit even this?

Cheers,

Chris

14 Feb 11 - 05:33 PM (#3095321)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,leeneia

Thanks for the site, Chris. We're going to play 'The Hills of Ireland' and 'Trip to Ranelegh' at our St Patrick's Day session.

Then I believe we'll try more tunes in 9/8.

15 Feb 11 - 04:48 AM (#3095516)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,ChrisP

If what you are interested in is ABC's of Thompson Vol21765, then you will find them here at the Village music Project website, along with Fynn Titford-Mock's PDF's of Thompson Vols 1,2,3+4

http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/pcroom.htm

15 Feb 11 - 06:39 AM (#3095560)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,Paul D

Hi Chris

I am in the middle of a final year University project transcribing a 18th century country dance book I found in the shaw-Hellier collection at Birmingham University entitled, 'Walsh's complete dancing master volume 6'. It contains 204 country dances if you're interested when the project is complete I could send Sibelius files of some of the tunes at are particular to this volume ( I see you mention joaks on your website one of the lesser known tunes in Walsh's 6th is entitled 'Irish Joak'). The volume appears to be a mixture of new tunes and tunes 'borrowed' from Henry Playford's collections. I would be interested to know if you have noted this 'borrowing' across collections in your research.

Could I also ask if there is a reason that you have not included in the dances attached to each of the tunes in these books.

Does anyone here have any experience of transcribing of these dances, I have looked at Cecil Sharp's the country dance books, and various 18th-century dance manuals and they don't seem to agree with each other.

15 Feb 11 - 07:30 AM (#3095575)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: johnadams

John Walsh Senior and John Walsh Junior were the most prolific music publishers of their age and followed on from the Playford dynasty, holding an eminent position in London's music publishing industry for 70 years. Their output was so prodigious it has never been fully identified and catalogued. It's quite likely that they engaged in a lot of tune recycling and many publishers did. It was quite a cut throat business at times and content was nicked, renamed, and sometimes whole collections rebranded. It's said that there are some books that were English Country Dance tunes one year and rebranded as Irish Country Dance tunes a few years after using the same printing plates with a new frontispiece, although I've not managed to track down any examples as yet.

Tunes changed name, key, time signature, and also dance notation. Most often the name of the tune was actually the name of the dance so if a tune was adopted for a different and new dance, it would take that dances name.

When you say that Sharp and the dance manuals don't agree, is that what you mean?

15 Feb 11 - 08:42 AM (#3095609)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST

yes it is interesting that there doesn't seem to be any attempt to hide the reusing of tunes in these books. In Walsh's 6th there are groups of tunes from various Playford editions still grouped together as in the earlier editions.

One of the disparities in sharp is in regard to the term 'right and left' which which seems to end a significant number other dances I am looking at. If I am reading him right sharp interprets as a circular Hey. whereas, country dancing made plain and simple published in 1764 gives a somewhat different explanation to left and right. "it requires to couple, being placed properly, each opposite their partner; and then let all be sure to pass on the right side of their partner, and give the right hand in passing, all moving forward round [so far so good], the first man and the second woman circle to the right, and the first woman circle to the left [ whoops now circling with opposite partners] will next meet woman to woman and man to man who to pass on the left sides, and given the left-hand in passing [back to a hey].

15 Feb 11 - 09:35 AM (#3095644)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,crazy little woman

Chris, I like your site. Are you planning to add more dances to it over time? Or is this it?

Where did you get the dances? Did you visit libraries? Go to dances all over? I'd be interested to know.

15 Feb 11 - 09:36 AM (#3095648)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,ChrisP

"I would be interested to know if you have noted this 'borrowing' across collections in your research."
-The publisher would present a set of tunes and dances that he thought he could sell to his market as he saw it, exactly as they still do now, (how many times have you seen Harvest Home?) but with the added attraction that there were no effective copyright laws in those times.

"Could I also ask if there is a reason that you have not included in the dances attached to each of the tunes in these books."
-The dances in the 17thC collections (Playford) are already available, and the 18thC dances are a pretty random assortment of the same limited number of moves for longways, shaken about a bit for each tune according to fancy. To repeat all of them would be tedious and not very useful from a musician point of view. However, there are published collections available for those who wish to follow that side of things, and the American Library of Congress has several online.

The dance descriptions in these books are famously opaque and full of difficulty, thrown together hastily and no doubt edited to fit the available space, only slightly helped by contemporary manuals, and hindered by ambiguities and mistakes, and the fact that different masters used the same terms to mean different things. Small wonder then that Sharp is still being 'improved upon' even after 100 years.

15 Feb 11 - 09:39 AM (#3095652)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,ChrisP

PaulD: PM Johnny if he hasn't already PM'd you, regarding Walsh 6

15 Feb 11 - 10:09 AM (#3095685)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Paul D

Will have a lok at the American Library of Congress site

15 Feb 11 - 10:42 AM (#3095705)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: G-Force

Well, I don't know why, but at the moment it seems to be behaving itself again.

15 Feb 11 - 02:40 PM (#3095858)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Jack Campin

I have some dances with the tunes on my site, David Young's Edinburgh collection from 1740. A mixture of English and Scottish:

http://www.campin.me.uk/Music/YoungBodleian.abc

I took great care to get that accurate. However, I don't have a clue what those instructions mean. I don't dance myself, and even modern-style dance instructions are up there with knitting patterns and the offside rule as formalisms I have no intention of ever trying to understand.

15 Feb 11 - 05:24 PM (#3095975)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Tootler

but with the added attraction that there were no effective copyright laws in those times.

Actually there were but the situation was in a state of flux. The first British copyright act in the modern sense was enacted in 1709 as a replacement for the monopoly on publishing held by the Stationers Company in London which the government had allowed to expire in 1698. This did not suit the London publishers as they lost their monopoly and they fought to defend it. The situation was eventually resolved in a House of Lords ruling in 1774.

Walsh, being a London publisher would very likely have been among those seeking to defend the monopoly "rights" of the London publishers

15 Feb 11 - 06:32 PM (#3096032)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Thanks for all your comments. It seems that abc has carried the day! Does anyone know of a program that can convert MIDI to abc? (as manually inputting all the tunes again in abc would be rather time-consuming!) A free program would be even better!

Paul D - I haven't transcribed the dances as to be honest they're not really what I'm interested in. However if you could send me the Walsh tunes as sib files then that would be great and thank you very much! My email is on the website.

crazy little woman - I'll add tunes as when I find them. I've got another trip to London pencilled in for the end of March so watch this space. I got the majority from the British Library and they have a really good online catalogue whereby you can order books in advance.

I've noticed a fair amount of tune-replication in these manuscripts which is one of the things that makes it all the more exhilarating when you find a tune that is a) a real corker and b) doesn't appear anywhere else.

Cheers

chris

15 Feb 11 - 06:45 PM (#3096043)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Jack Campin

There are programs that convert MIDI to ABC but they can't ever do a very good job - you will always need to edit. With luck the barlines might be in the right places, but:

- the beaming and phrasemarks will be random

- the default note length might not be the most readable one

- the key signatures will get the mode wrong for all but major keys

- you will have to spot repeats and put in repeat constructs yourself

- you will have to write in all the metadata, like who the transcriber is and where the tune comes from.

15 Feb 11 - 06:46 PM (#3096044)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Paul D

Chris

I'll send a selection of tunes that do not appear anywere else

16 Feb 11 - 02:31 AM (#3096193)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Valmai Goodyear

Splendid, many thanks.

Valmai (Lewes)

16 Feb 11 - 04:18 AM (#3096244)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,ChrisP

I think the key word I used was "effective", which is different from "in effect".

16 Feb 11 - 04:31 AM (#3096251)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,LDT

Re: ABC why not invite those viewing the site to submit ABC versions of the music. (Its easy enough to do in a text editor) that way the workload is shared?
I've just been learning to write ABC and doing the one or two tunes as an 'exercise' to help sharpen up my skills seems like a good idea.

16 Feb 11 - 07:25 AM (#3096355)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Geoff the Duck

A format supported by an increasing number of music programmes is Music XML (See List).
I believe Sibelius imports it, but needs an expensive plug-in before it will export the format directly.
There is, however a work-around. PDFtoMusic does a good attempt at converting the PDF scores output by Sibelius into Music XML. It is a commercial programme, as is it's big brother PDFtoMusic Pro. The free demo versions are limited to converting the first page of a score, but a single folk tune doesn't even need a full page, so no problem there.
The conversion I tried as a test had a couple of obvious errors, but wouldn't need much tweaking or correcting.
Quack!
Geoff the Duck.
p.s. are those maggots nice big fat juicy ones? ;¬)

16 Feb 11 - 07:43 AM (#3096362)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Jack Campin

Two conversion steps sounds like a recipe for garble.

These tunes are all quite small and there aren't many of them yet. Handcoding will be much easier.

16 Feb 11 - 08:13 AM (#3096380)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Geoff the Duck

Jack - personal experience of converting Anything via computer programmes is that they are capable of producing garbage in just ONE step.
You are correct in stating that an experienced ABC transcriber hand coding dots into ABC format will produce accurate ABC much quicker than messing around with computers.
What it would then give is a bunch of ABC files. That doesn't help with the score writing/editing software I use. MuseScore doesn't import ABC, and neither do many other programmes. Music XML is currently a lot more portable between programmes.
I have noted out tunes using ABC, but don't do so often enough to remember what the rules are. I find that four decades of reading the dots makes "lines and dots" music writing a better option for me.
Quack!
Geoff.

16 Feb 11 - 08:30 AM (#3096393)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Will Fly

Chris - I can convert music files from any format to any format with little or no bother. Send me any MIDI file and I can produce abc from it and email back an equivalent .abc text file.

PM me if you're interested.

16 Feb 11 - 08:33 AM (#3096394)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Guest, LDT - that sounds like an attractive idea. My problem with abc is that I don't have time to sit down and learn how it all works and to be honest it's not something that I'm interested in learning about for its own sake. One of the reasons I created the website was that the net seems to be fairly well-stocked with abc tunes sites but sites that feature standard notation seem to be thinner on the ground.

I should also make it clear that I'm not running abc down - we all have different ways of accessing tunes and no one way is necessarily 'better' or more effective than the other!

So here's a suggestion. I'll go for an upgrade so I can add MIDI to the site, thus enabling people who don't read dots to at least hear the tunes. Then if there are some kindly people out there who are prepared to transcribe the tunes into abc and email them to me then I'd gladly put them up as well.

All this is going to mean a bit of a redesign, so you may not see any changes for the next week or so (I'm away from home quite a bit with gigs) but hang in there - it'll all be up and running asap.

Once again, thanks to everyone who's made suggestions and offered opinions. I stopped using Mudcat about a year ago due to one of its periodic loon infestations and it's been really nice to have a civilised conversation with interested people about folk music! :-)

16 Feb 11 - 08:35 AM (#3096395)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Will - I crossposted with you. You're a diamond, sir - and I'll be in touch very shortly. Thank you!

16 Feb 11 - 08:41 AM (#3096405)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Will Fly

Chris - if you don't want the hassle of emailing MIDI files to me, just post them on the site in due course and I'll grab them and "abc" them. Otherwise I'm happy to receive MIDI files through email.

16 Feb 11 - 07:35 PM (#3096800)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

I got the upgrade. Turns out I still can't upload MIDI files. Bugger.

So the tunes will be stay up as PDFs and I can't really add anything else. Turns out wordpress doesn't support Scorch files either.

However, I've uploaded the MIDIs of all the tunes to a dropbox folder. If any of you would like to pm me your email addresses, I'll gladly share them with you that way, and continue to do so when I add new ones.

This has been a really useful learning curve for me. Thanks again for all your support and guidance and I'm genuinely sorry that I've not been able to implement all of your suggestions. I will however be adding new PDFs to the site and if it's okay with you all I'll post here when I've done so.

Cheers

chris

18 Feb 11 - 09:48 AM (#3097922)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Two new tunes added - 'Trip to Parnassus' and 'Mrs Garrick's Delight' both from Walsh vol 6. Thanks very much to Paul Dennard for sending them to me and agreeing to let me put them up! :-)

27 Feb 11 - 08:46 PM (#3103950)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Two more added courtesy of the lovely Becky Price of Boldwood. 'The Accomplished Maid' and 'The Rover Reformed' are two cracking 48 bar jigs. :-)

28 Mar 11 - 07:09 PM (#3123723)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Seven more added today.

9/8s - I Hope to Marry Charlie, Lodoiska

6/8s - The Shipwreck'd Boy, Success to Lord Howe and Irish Frolick

2/4s - Keep It Up

4/4s - The Hardy Sailor

Enjoy!

Chris :-)

29 Mar 11 - 06:46 AM (#3123943)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

And three more - The New Theatre, Man the Mizar and Britain's Glory.

29 Mar 11 - 08:33 AM (#3124026)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Stanron

Just looked at your site. Very nice.

Manchester library has a copy of Walsh's

T H E T H I R D B O O K
Of
The most Celebrated Jiggs, Lancashire
Hornpipes, Scotch and Highland Lilts,
Northern Frifks, Morris's and Cheshire Rounds,
With Hornpipes the Bagpipe manner.
To which is added the Black Joak, the White Joak, the Brown,
The Red and the Yellow Joaks.
With variety of Whims and Fancies of diff'rent humours
Fitted to the genious and use of Public Performers. Price 1s 6d.

Loads of 3/2 hornpipes and strange key signatures. I've got photocopies somewhere if you're interested.

29 Mar 11 - 10:46 AM (#3124111)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Yes please! Have pm'd you.

And speaking of which I've also just uploaded 'A Health to All Honest Men' from the 1st edition of Walsh.

03 Apr 11 - 05:23 PM (#3127853)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Two more added - 'Man the Mizar' and a gorgeous 6/4 called 'Britain's Glory'.

04 Apr 11 - 06:49 AM (#3128138)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: johnadams

Just browsing the tunes and noticed that 'The Accomplished Maid' is the tune noted down by William Vickers, c1770, (and maybe others) as 'The Cream Pot'.

Can anybody connect the two titles? Maybe there's a play or a song called The Accomplished Maid which contains a cream pot reference.

04 Apr 11 - 07:35 AM (#3128172)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Howard Jones

According to this thread it should now be possible to convert XML files from Sibelius to ABC, however it's still experimental.

05 Apr 11 - 03:57 AM (#3128770)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Two new 3/2s added from the Walsh manuscript that Stan kindly sent me - thanks again, Stan! - Ratclift Cross and Polly Peachum's Hornpipe (which I'm thinking of putting in a set with Mack the Knife!) :-)

05 Apr 11 - 06:24 PM (#3129400)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

At the risk of sounding higgerant - what's XML?

05 Apr 11 - 07:31 PM (#3129438)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: johnadams

Extensible Markup Language.

Wikipedia page.

I think there's a version called MML which is Music Markup Language but it doesn't seem to have consolidated.

None of it seems as solid as abc.

05 Apr 11 - 07:32 PM (#3129442)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: johnadams

Yes.

Music Markup Language.

28 Apr 11 - 12:16 PM (#3144112)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: dick greenhaus

seems to work.

28 Apr 11 - 12:33 PM (#3144117)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,Jack Campin

It might play and display but each section is copied out twice instead of using repeat signs, and the title won't be visible. It needs hand editing to get it right.

Your second and fourth parts are beamed as if in a 6/8+3/4 time signature. Really?

You don't want to detour through MIDI. XML might work better.

28 Apr 11 - 01:03 PM (#3144133)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Brian Peters

Nice work, Chris. I'm going to learn 'The Oddity'.

28 Apr 11 - 01:44 PM (#3144165)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

Thanks for the feedback guys. Jack - how do I edit in repeat marks? Also how do make the title appear?

28 Apr 11 - 02:08 PM (#3144187)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: GUEST,Jack Campin

Okay, firing blind here as I don't have BarFly on this computer to check and haven't seen the original. I think this is what you might mean.


  X:1
  T:Ratclift Cross
  B:Walsh's 3rd Book of Jiggs etc c1730
  M:3/2
  L:1/8
  Q:1/2=100
  K:F
  f2 c4    Bc  A2 F2|d2 Bd GB DG  E2 C2|EG BA GF ED C2 c2|AF EF CF EG F4:|
  cf af ba gf  e2 c2|Bd gd gf ed  c2 B2|Ac fc fe dc B2 c2|AF EF CF EG F4:|
  f2 c2_eg f_e dB AB|g2 d2 fa gf =ec Bc|a2 e2 fa gf ed cB|AF EF CF EG F4:|
  af cf Ac fa  d2 B2|bg dg Bd gb  e2 c2|dB GB DG Bd E2 c2|AF EF CF EG F4:|

28 Apr 11 - 02:19 PM (#3144194)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Partington

No, the beaming is wrong. You have it in 12/8, but it's 3/2. Still the same number of quavers, but the quavers should be in three groups of four quavers (3/4 means 3 minim beats), not four groups of three quavers ...... |:cfaf bagf e2c2|...etc

28 Apr 11 - 02:22 PM (#3144197)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Partington

Sorry Jack, I cross-posted.

Here's Pete Stewarts version to compare it with.

X:34
T:Ratcliffe Cross
M:3/2
L:1/8
C:Ravenscroft
S:Walsh 1731
Z:ps
K:F
f2c4BcA2F2|D2Bd GB DFE2C2|EGBA GFEDC2c2|AFEF CFEGF4||
cfaf bagf e2c2|Bdgd gfedc2B2|Acfc fedcB2c2|AFEF CFEGF4||
f2c2_egfe dBAB|g2d2fagf =ecBc|a2e2fagf edcB|AFEF CFEGF4||
afcf Acfad2B2|bgdg Bdgbe2c2|dBGB DFBdE2c2|AFEF CFEGF4||

28 Apr 11 - 02:26 PM (#3144203)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Partington

Oh god, typo. I mean 3/2 not 3/4 means ...etc
Time for a break.

14 May 11 - 04:03 AM (#3153831)
Subject: RE: 18th century English tunes - new site
From: Chris Green

New tune added today - Grimaldi's Whim. Still working on the abc thing, but I've been away from home for the last three weeks. Will keep you all posted!