ABC tunebook from Lincs now online

Subject: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: johnadams
Date: 04 Nov 11 - 12:27 PM

The abc transcription of the book by 18thC/19thC musician Thomas Sands is now on line at The Village Music Project .

Thanks to Ruairidh Greig and Chris Partington for their splendid efforts.

We don't yet know who Thomas Sands was or where he lived but the manuscript has ended up in Lincolnshire and Sands is a common name in Lincolnshire and Norfolk so the guess is that it originated near to where it was found.

There are 271 tunes with some right corkers amongst the usual stuff.

Johnny Adams
Director: Village Music Project

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 04 Nov 11 - 01:27 PM

Great! Might one ask how to access them?

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: johnadams
Date: 04 Nov 11 - 01:51 PM

They are in ABC code which is used by lots of musicians to swap tunes.

Load a suitable programme from http://abcnotation.com/software

Copy and paste the whole abc file into it and you should be able to see the notes and hear the tune.

Eventually a lot of the Village Music Project collections will be also available in pdf format but it's not a priority for us. Others can take the code and put it in more accessible formats. We just do the initial work of finding and transcribing the books.

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 12:49 AM

For the moment anyway, it can be viewed in other formats from here

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: Will Fly
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 07:16 AM

Many thanks for all the hard work on this project - it's always great to see more tune books available on the net.

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: johnadams
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 07:56 AM

Thanks for that Jon. It's an excellent resource.

The Village Music Project takes the first steps of finding and coding the music and hopes that other people will do the work in spreading the tunes around. Our volunteers spend many hours poring over the manuscripts trying to make out what the original musician intended when they wrote down the notes. It's not always easy.

All we ask is that people use the tunes and if they put them into the public domain as a performance or publication, they give us a mention.

There are more tunes in preparation.

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 09:32 AM

In that case, John. I've added another (sort of random) four and added a footer to the project page I hope that is OK and that it might tempt a few others to visit your site..

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 09:36 AM

"Might one ask how to access them?"

There is a browseable version of the VMP tunes available at http://richardrobinson.tunebook.org.uk/collection/101

It doesn't include the new Sands material yet (my watch-for-changes script only told me about it a couple of days ago), but it will before long, next day or two. (John Adams - assuming that your agreement it's okay to put up a copy extends to these, too ? Which I will assume unless told otherwise ...)

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: johnadams
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 09:46 AM

Yes Richard, you've got our full agreement to include all the VMP stuff and thanks for making it available.

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 10:01 AM

Smashing. Thanks, John.

And so, having publicly said it'll be there soon, I'll /have/ to do it. I'm using this as a forcible reminder-to-self ;-)

It really needs proper names for the links, having to go by opaque id numbers isn't particularly nice or helpful. One day ...

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: Hokumsheik
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 10:04 AM

Great work Lads & Lassies!
I've been listening to the collection on ABC Navigator
http://abcnavigator.free.fr/
Thanks a lot

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: johnadams
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 12:09 PM

Jon,

I've just checked the new stuff you've put up and you need to correct one of the names. The Watson manuscript is from George Watson rather than John Watson. It's the only one we know of, so far, from a Norfolk musician.

By contrast, Lincolnshire is well represented and the Thomas Sands ms lies alongside the Joshua Gibbons (which was published as a book, one from Winterton, Eliza Tennyson (Alfred Lord's mum), William Clark of Lincoln, and Thomas Dixon from Lincoln (work in progress).

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 12:14 PM

Sorry about that. I've posted the correction.

Subject: RE: ABC tunebook from Lincs now online
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 05 Nov 11 - 06:00 PM

"And so, having publicly said it'll be there soon, I'll /have/ to do it" :-

Okay. Webblified pointyclicky lists of the Village Music Project's sands.abc, h&c in every tune, all mod. cons, and many thanks to the VMP for bringing them out into the daylight ... http://richardrobinson.tunebook.org.uk/collection/140