Fiddle tunes website

Subject: Fiddle tunes website
From: Paul S
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 10:05 AM

Know of any good websites to get the music for old-time fiddle tunes from? I don't care if it's TAB, standard notation, or even MIDI. I'm trying to play them on the mandolin.

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: Marion
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 10:39 AM

Paul, look at this address; it's a search engine that finds midi files, abc, and sheet music (gif) for tunes. It may be biased towards Celtic tunes; that's what I use it for. If you are also interested in Irish/Atlantic type tunes, let me know and I'll suggest more web pages that have lists to browse through. Sorry, I don't know much about the old-time stuff.

Tune finder

ps sorry I can't do this as a link - I have a French keyboard that won't do the pointy bracket things.

good luck,

Marion

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: harpgirl
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 11:27 AM

Marion...thank you so much for this link...I am insane with joy!!!! The GIF's even have the CHORDS which makes it very easy to learn new fiddle tunes on autoharp....Thank you, thank you, thank you....harpgirl

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: j0_77
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 12:42 PM

the link in blue clicky thing .... blue clicky thing

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: Paul S
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 12:51 PM

Thanks for the site, Marion. I'll have fun checking that out tonight.

Next question: What is ABC? I see references all of the time, but when I try to read an ABC file it looks like this

X: 52 T:Old Joe Clark 2 % Nottingham Music Database S:Otto Woods, via EF M:4/4 L:1/4 H:1999-08-25 16:46:11 UT http://perun.hscs.wmin.ac.uk/~jra/NMD/reelsM-Q.txt K:A P:A e|"A"ee a=g|"A"e/2f/2e/2d/2 c/2A/2c/2d/2|"A"ee a=g|"G"e3/2d/2 cd| "A"ee a=g|"A"e/2f/2e/2d/2 c/2A/2e/2d/2|"A"c/2B/2A/2c/2 "G"B/2A/2=G/2B/2|"A"A3\ :| P:B G/2F/2|"A"E3/2E/2 A3/2A/2|"A"ed cB|"A"AA3/2A/2=G|"G"E3/2D/2 CD| "A"E3/2E/2 A3/2A/2|"A"ed c/2d/2e/2d/2|"A"c/2B/2A/2c/2 "G"B/2A/2=G/2B/2|"A"A3:|

Does this make sense to anyone?

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: MMario
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 01:15 PM

Yes - it makes sense to a lot of people (though not myself)

I believe there is a link from the blue clicky above to the home page of ABC music format.

Basically it is a way of transmitting the musical information in "standard Ascii" which means the stuff you normally see on a keyboard.

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: Marion
Date: 25 Aug 99 - 04:16 PM

Paul, here is a webpage about abc. You can translate sheet notation into abc and vice versa on your own once you learn its conventions; I guess this would tedious, but worth it if it was the only way to get a tune you really wanted. There are also computer programs to do the translation, but I don't know anything about that. I haven't gotten around to learning abc myself yet, as there is so much sheet music available for me to explore.

ABC

Again, my apologies. Thank you Jo77 ... am I pressing my luck to hope you'll do it again? What I have to do is find a post where someone else has written the pointy things as part of the text and cut and paste them, which of course I'm too lazy to do.

Harpgirl, I was pretty pleased to find it too.

Marion

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: j0_77
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 11:52 AM

Oh dat ...blue stuff ...hmmm
type this
a href=" "
between the quotation marks put address you want to point to for example http://www.mario.com
a href="http://www.mario.com"
then put pointy brackets at each end - I cannot do that cause Max's puter will misunderstand me:( instead using ?.

Next type your own version of, blue clicky thing

?a href="anyblurb"? mario's blue clicky things
next put one of these / and an a after it, /a
finaly put pointy brackets around that bit as well
whole line looks like
?a href="blurb"? clicky stuff ?/a?
all done phew

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: Marion
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 02:50 PM

Thanks for spelling that out J077 - I'm sorry you went to all that trouble - but the problem is that the pointy bracket symbols themselves can't be typed on my keyboard. To get them I would have to find where someone else has used them and cut and paste, but since they're not usually used in messages (as you said, because they're interpreted as commands by the computer) they can be hard to find.

Cheers,

Marion

PS And thanks for hyperizing that second link as well.

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: teller
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 05:29 PM

Paul. Not being a fiddle player, I'm not sure how helpful this might be, but you could do worse than visit the homepage of a very fine Cornish fiddle player and storyteller named Mike O'Connor, and have a rummage around. Or you could email him. homepage address is as follows www.ndirect.co.uk/~mikeoconnor/ hope that helps a little more! Teller.

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 05:52 PM

Bill T. used to have a site with a fantastic bunch of Irish tunes--I don't know what the format was--but you didn't get little midi renditions: you got fiddle backed by guitar. I still have it bookmarked but it is, alas, defunct. I don't remember what happened, but I do seem to remember Bill announcing that it was shutting down. Bill? Or Max, any possibility of picking up Bill's tunes?--seed

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 08:22 PM

Paul, a few months ago I wrote an ABC Guide for Mudcat. You'll find it at http://www.mudcat.org/thread.CFM?threadID=11114#81068.

In addition the following link has literally thousands of tunes in ABC format (Sectionalised ABC Index) http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/index/split.html

How do you play ABC tunes? My personal favourite is ABCMUS ($10 for on-line rego) or The Digital Tradition Folk Song Player (From Music Ease).

'Tunes at Ceolas' is an unbeatable site to find fiddle tunes in a variety of formats, plus lots of links to music software (a lot of it somewhat esoteric for general use on a PC). I know that the site is still in operation, but cannot guarantee the following link http://celtic.stanford.edu/tunes.html

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: John in Brisbane
Date: 26 Aug 99 - 08:48 PM

And for a fabulous site with Midi and Sheet Music (with chords)for well known session tunes (plus lots of others)check this one out: Chris Peterson's Music Library

Regards, John

Subject: RE: Fiddle tunes website
From: Lesley N.
Date: 27 Aug 99 - 01:42 AM

John,

Ceolas tunes are now at: Ceolas.org (http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/).