Hi Chuck,

Welcome to Mudcat. You have come to the right place to find people interested in Celtic and other folk & blues music. They're a nice bunch of people, here, too.

There are midi files available on the Internet. They are relatively small files which you can play online or download/save to your computer. A good starting point would be the Irish section of Barry Taylor's midis at The Contemplator's website. You can find tunes of other countries there too.

Barry may not play them all in an absolutely pure traditional way, but the Celtic "lilt" - which is usually played but not put into written music scores - is definitely there.

If you do a search for Celtic midi files on the Internet you will find a huge number of websites, some useful and some not so useful.

Also we have a page of links here at Mudcat. Just click on the word "Links" at the top of the page, in the Mudcat title bar. There are a lot of links to music sites with midi files.

There is also a very good online BBC site with session music called BBC Virtual Session   

You look at the score and listen to the midi while playing the music on your instrument. I think you can slow the speed down while you are learning.

Have fun, and let us know how you are going with it.

Helen