Melodeon.net Forums
Discussions => Tunes => Topic started by: Lester on October 04, 2008, 11:54:49 PM
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How to Find Tunes
Collection of the knowledge on MelNet on how to find tunes. Each source list the format available at the site. At the bottom of the list are a number of on-line tools for converting ABCs to manuscript or midi and for changing keys.
Please send any additions/corrections to Lester by PM.
Tune Collections
- JCs Tune Finder ABC - Manuscript - MIDI
John Chamber's Tune Finder is probably the biggest ABC tune site on the web.
LINK (http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind) - The Session ABC - Manuscript - MIDI
The Session is a major source for Irish tunes
LINK (http://www.thesession.org/tunes/) - Henrik Norbeck's Abc Tunes ABC
A collection of Irish and Swedish tunes
LINK (http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/) - Concertina.net ABC - Manuscript - MIDI
Eclectic collection of tunes
LINK (http://www.concertina.net/tunes.html) - Lewes Favourites ABC - Noteworthy
Collection of mostly English Tunes
LINK (http://www.lewesarmsfolkclub.org/LAFC/LFTunes.html) - Nigel Gatherer's Collection ABC
Tunes from Scotland, Ireland, Shetland, America
LINK (http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/abc.html) - Lionel Bacon's Handbook of Morris Dancing ABC
The Morris Ring's tune bible
LINK (http://www.themorrisring.org/more/Tunes/index.html) - Lester's Tune-Day-Blog mp3
Some 450 odd tunes by yours truly
LINK (http://lesters-tune-a-day.blogspot.co.uk/p/tune-index.html) - The Contemplator MIDI
Lesley Nelson-Burns Tunes and Songs from Scotland, Ireland, Shetland, America
LINK (http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html) - Mudcat MIDIs MIDI
Various MIDIs from the Mudcat Cafe
LINK (http://www.mudcat.org/midi/midibrowse.cfm) - A Traditional Music Library Manuscript - Midi
Large and eclectic collection of tunes and songs
LINK (http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/index.html) - Village Music Project Manuscript
Transcribed versions of old manuscripts
LINK (http://www.village-music-project.org.uk/) - Diatonia.net Manuscript Midi - TablEdit
Italian site where the tunes are arranged by type (Bourree, Couranta etc)
LINK (http://www.diatonia.net/home.html) - The Fiddler's Companion ABC
The Fiddler's Companion but many tunes are not in melodeon friendly keys
LINK (http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/index.html) - Google Images Manuscript
Lucky Dip for finding images of tunes, enter the tune name and hope
LINK (http://images.google.co.uk/)
Tune Tools
- Convert-a-matic
On-line ABC converter outputs in MIDI and manuscript (pdf)
LINK (http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html) - Chords Out
Really useful tool to remove chords from ABC
LINK (http://www.lesession.co.uk/abc/abcChordsOut.htm) - Key Changer
On-line key changing programme - paste in the ABC and set number of semitone to go up or down and press Submit. Also has handy little calculator to tell you how many semitones there are between Eb and C#
LINK (http://www.folkinfo.org/songs/abcconvert.php) - MIDI to ABC
Tool to convert MIDIs to ABC
LINK (http://lotroabc.googlepages.com/)
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Great resouce ,Lester; lots of hard worK.Thank you Robin :-*
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That's fantastic. :)
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I have been using Concertina.net Tune-o-Tron lately. Its good! Nce clear PDFs and a midi version (although I have found that this plays what is literally on the dots - eg. if it displays A part, with alt. endings 1 and 2 it will play through the A part then alt1 then alt 2 without going back through the A part to get to alt 2. Other than that a good resource!
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Thanks Lester,
This will save me a significant amount of aimless puttering. Perhaps it could be linked from or located on the front page also?
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I have been using Concertina.net Tune-o-Tron lately. Its good! Nce clear PDFs and a midi version (although I have found that this plays what is literally on the dots - eg. if it displays A part, with alt. endings 1 and 2 it will play through the A part then alt1 then alt 2 without going back through the A part to get to alt 2. Other than that a good resource!
That's hasn't been my experience. Here's a file that plays the alternative endings properly for me.
X:1
T:Amelia (in D)
C:Bob McQuillan
M:3/4
L:1/4
K:D
A, || "D" D>ED | DF>E | "D" DF "G" B | "D" A2A |
"G" B>GB | "D" AFE | "Bm" DB,>B, | "G" B,2 "A7" A, |
"D" D>ED | DF>E | "D" DF "G" B | "D" A2A |
"G" B>cd | "Em" def | "A7" e>cB |[1A2A,:|[2A2a||
"D" fa>f | afd | "A" e>cA | A2f/e/ |
"Bm" d>Bd | fdB | "F#m" c>AF | F2A |
"G" GB>G | "D" FAd | "A7" e>cA | "D" d2f |
"G" g>fe | "D" af "Bm" d | "G" de> "A7" c |[1 "D" d2a :|[2 "D" d3||
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another link Lester:
http://www.novasession.org/Bog%20Kit/bwindex.htm
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Lester
This is great. Have you seen the Sheffield Ceilidh Society -- http://www.ceilidhsoc.org/music.html ?
I really like it because it makes sweet little PDF tunebooks to order, showing both the full tunes and an index with a few bars as an aide memoire (I reduce that in size to A5, and then the index prints out small enough to stick in my Moleskine manuscript book). So it's very good for the abc-challenged, although it has abc as well.
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http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/
ABC converter for those of us using Macs
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I search music mélodéon irish man Peter Coulon????
Just after John. J. kimmel ...
Eric Bonneau
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Similar to Lester's link to the ABC key-changing utility. This does the same thing, but I thought I would post it here because it's always good to have a backup! No calculator, though so you'll have to be (just remotely) familiar with semitones, or otherwise bang it out and experiment until you get the key where you want it. The webmaster also posted some links, and some of his own tunes, which are very nice.
Rats, I forgot to add the link:
http://www.8ung.at/abctransposer/index.html
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There is a new excellent tune collection made by the creators of Accademia del mantice; it's a collection of tunes from most if not all known squeezebox and other folk tune collections. Don't be scared that the site is in Italian, the search functions are in English.
http://www.organetto.info/archivio/index.php (http://www.organetto.info/archivio/index.php)
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There is a new excellent tune collection made by the creators of Accademia del mantice; it's a collection of tunes from most if not all known squeezebox and other folk tune collections. Don't be scared that the site is in Italian, the search functions are in English.
http://www.organetto.info/archivio/index.php
It's great! Thanks Suzi
AL
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There is a new excellent tune collection made by the creators of Accademia del mantice; it's a collection of tunes from most if not all known squeezebox and other folk tune collections. Don't be scared that the site is in Italian, the search functions are in English.
http://www.organetto.info/archivio/index.php (http://www.organetto.info/archivio/index.php)
Yum! great site.
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Here are a couple of melody search sites, as posted also within another thread on this forum (http://forum.melodeon.net/index.php/topic,2125.0.html):
Tunepal (http://www.comp.dit.ie/bduggan/music/matt2/index.php)
folktunefinder.com (http://www.folktunefinder.com/)
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The Lewes Favourites has moved again, it's now on http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/Lewesfav.html (http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/Lewesfav.html). The link in the Beginner's Guide still works, but not the one here.
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The Lewes Favourites has moved again, it's now on http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/Lewesfav.html (http://www.lewessaturdayfolkclub.org/LAFC/Lewesfav.html). The link in the Beginner's Guide still works, but not the one here.
Ta
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the best site I have found is called folktunefinder Its a brilliant site in which you can find just about any tune that you are looking for and lots that you didn't know that you were. It can provide music in midi and manuscript and has keyboard on which you can type the first 3 notes and then search for that tune, or enter a title it has a store of thousands of tunes and if you miss spell the title you don't know what little gem you are going to find. If you find the site try the tune Skovblomster which is Danish and my favourite of the moment (sorry D/G its in Am) but sits beautifully on the B/C
Enjoy
Sue
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the best site I have found is called folktunefinder Its a brilliant site in which you can find just about any tune that you are looking for and lots that you didn't know that you were. It can provide music in midi and manuscript and has keyboard on which you can type the first 3 notes and then search for that tune, or enter a title it has a store of thousands of tunes and if you miss spell the title you don't know what little gem you are going to find. If you find the site try the tune Skovblomster which is Danish and my favourite of the moment (sorry D/G its in Am) but sits beautifully on the B/C
Enjoy
Sue
Thanks for this Sue, I will be revising the first ppst soon (honestly) to add all the suggestions including this.
ps
Amin is really easy on a D/G :||:
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There are loads of ABCs on this site http://www.campin.me.uk/ (http://www.campin.me.uk/) Many of them historical including over a thousand from the James Aird collections.
Great fun but a huge timewaster (:)
Steve
PS There's a lot of other stuff there as well which is worth a look.
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Chris Walshaw has just released the March 2010 edition of the tune search on his abc site here (http://abcnotation.com/search) this is really slick and returns all the tunes in a list with the start of the musical dots shown and the ability to play each tune from the list. I found it very quick and easy to use but a warning you can spend hours just comparing versions of tune, I was initially looking for Constant Billy, hours of fun.
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http://www.wikifonia.org/ (http://www.wikifonia.org/)
a great resource for tunes of all kinds and can be transposed online before printing off etc.
AL
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Terrifying! I tried to test it with 'egb egb' start notes of our March ToTM. OK that's a common motif in Em - 859 different tunes ??? And 'egbegb' didn't work. If you're listening Chris - fantastic work as ever. If you could get Regular Expression parsing or similar in there it would be to the good.
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Here's some more links for you to have a look at:
The Kitchen Musician : http://www.kitchenmusician.net/pages/kmmusicalpha.html (http://www.kitchenmusician.net/pages/kmmusicalpha.html)
Nottingham Music Database : http://abc.sourceforge.net/NMD/ (http://abc.sourceforge.net/NMD/) or this one http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/PIndexmick.peat.htm (http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/PIndexmick.peat.htm)
Nottingham Music Database (Midi Version) : http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/index.htm (http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ef/music/tunes/index.htm)
Happy squeezing,
Alan
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Hi Lester,
two new links for your list, both for Scandinavian music:-
http://www.folkwiki.se/Kategori/Kategori (http://www.folkwiki.se/Kategori/Kategori)
http://spillefolk.dk/nodesamling/findnode.php (http://spillefolk.dk/nodesamling/findnode.php)
loads of great tune in there :||:
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Various tune sets in PDF format from the "border Box" band may be found here,
http://www.northumbrian.info/borderbox/index.htm
The site also has a history of the band and a number of photographs.
I would imagine that Theo may well have heard of them.
Cheers
Bob
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I am gathering my useful tune sites at a google site:
Reed's tune collection
at: https://sites.google.com/site/sessioncollections/ (https://sites.google.com/site/sessioncollections/)
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- Traditional tunes from European countries - free sheet music (pdf + midi) (http://www.linkonardo.com/en/accordion/d5133/traditional-tunes-from-free-sheet-music.html) :)
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- Traditional tunes from European countries - free sheet music (pdf + midi) (http://www.linkonardo.com/en/accordion/d5133/traditional-tunes-from-free-sheet-music.html) :)
An 'interesting' collection of tunes. ;)
Quite a lot from eastern European countries, Russia and the Middle East; but only 12 English tunes, 2 Scottish and one Welsh tune.
However, presumably by way of compensation, we have quite a smattering of tunes from an 'extended Europe' which includes the USA, South Africa, Venezuela, Mexico and even Taiwan!
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Just found this thread. For Mostly English repertoire, what they say on the tin, really:-
http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tunebooks,_some_of_which_are_available_on_the_internet (http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/List_of_historical_tunebooks,_some_of_which_are_available_on_the_internet)
http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/Tune_Manuscripts_List (http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/Tune_Manuscripts_List)
http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/Books_published_since_about_1900_containing_mainly_tunes_from_the_English_repertoire (http://folkopedia.efdss.org/wiki/Books_published_since_about_1900_containing_mainly_tunes_from_the_English_repertoire)
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Here's a new (at least to me) search engine - you can just "play" the notes on a virtual keyboard - works a treat:
http://www.kooplet.com/cgi-bin/kooplet/search.pl
Enjoy!
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Here is a site that has a number of tunes in button numbers. Great info, easy read, and easy songs along with you tube links for a variety of the applicable song keys.
http://www.Tunes2play4fun.com
Kim
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As some of you will know, I am transcribing field recordings of tunes from the Yorkshire Dales and have done about 200 so far. Many of these tunes are not named on the recordings. Research on the internet often enables me to identify them, but not always, so I ask you guys on melnet - sometimes you are able to provide the names, but not always, which leads me to the point of this post.
Although there are several good websites mentioned in this thread that can help one find a tune when you already know its name, there are very few where you can type in the dots or ABC of a tune and it will tell you the name of that tune. www.folktunefinder.com is useful, but I only find the names of about half the tunes I seek when using it. There is also www.kooplet.com but it seems to be less successful in finding tunes than folktunefinder.com.
Are there any other apps or websites out there that can be used to find the name of a tune when you have its dots or ABC?
A particular problem occurs with tunes collected from the 1950s onwards, when the distinction between folk dance tunes and old time dance tunes becomes more blurred. Are there any apps out there that will search through old time tunes as well as folk dance tunes?
Any help would be much appreciated. In the meantime, if no-one minds, I'll keep posting requests on melnet to identify tunes for which I have no name.
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The search engine at http://abcnotation.com/search (http://abcnotation.com/search) lets you type in ABC fragments to find a tune. I've also successfully used Google to find and identify a tune by guessing at the ABC notation for part of it.
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hi Bob
I find http://abctunesearch.com (http://abctunesearch.com) handy, but mainly for Irish tunes.
When using http://abcnotation.com/search (http://abcnotation.com/search) the TuneGraph can sometimes give useful leads to similar melodies.
I haven't had much success using the Theme Code Index at https://www.tunearch.org/wiki/Theme_Code_Index (https://www.tunearch.org/wiki/Theme_Code_Index), but it sounds like an interesting option for searching a wide range of tunes using the intervals between successive notes.
Good luck!
Ian
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The search engine at http://abcnotation.com/search (http://abcnotation.com/search) lets you type in ABC fragments to find a tune. I've also successfully used Google to find and identify a tune by guessing at the ABC notation for part of it.
I have tried the http://abcnotation.com/search you suggested, but without any success. It even failed to find well-known tunes such as Buttered Peas, Castles in the Air and Huntsman's Chorus. I hadn't thought of typing ABC notation into Google, but I'll try it later today.
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I've tried typing a couple of bars of several tunes into Google, but it failed to find any of them, even the well-known ones.
I'll try Smiley's suggestions next.
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John Chambers tune finder is pretty good.
This is the MIT based link (Trillian)
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind
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I've tried Ian's (Smiley) suggestions. http://abctunesearch.com/ came up with a lot of suggestions, but none sounded anything like the tunes for which I was searching. I couldn't work out how to use the Theme Code Index of the Tunearch website.
I had not thought of Greg's suggestion of typing ABC notation into the trillian search engine, so I tried it. Pasting in the notation for an entire tune came up with no suggestions at all. Pasting in just a few bars of Buttered Peas came up with hundreds of suggestions, none of which was Buttered Peas!
This is proving frustratingly difficult.
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Should we add the Playford Omnibus dots/ABC's here? Great resource, I think via Pete?
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This is proving frustratingly difficult.
I know exactly how you feel (if that's any consolation)
The abc tunesearch (http://abcnotation.com/search) results depend on how you enter your abc search. Typing FG A2A2F2|GA found nothing useful but FG A2 A2 F2|GA found 104 hits, including Buttered Peas.
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I first used the Gore/Breathnach Theme Code Index methods for sorting traditional tunes whilst building the FARNE archive. I was greatly impressed by the effectiveness of the printed collection We tested the book working with students from the Traditional Music degree course. As a system for cataloguing 18thC and 19thC Scottish melodies the system is flawless. The failing is that the method requires massive input to widen it's effectiveness. The efforts made by John Chambers to extract Gore/Breathnach codes form abc are laudable, but need much more work to be effective.
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This is proving frustratingly difficult.
I know exactly how you feel (if that's any consolation)
The abc tunesearch (http://abcnotation.com/search) results depend on how you enter your abc search. Typing FG A2A2F2|GA found nothing useful but FG A2 A2 F2|GA found 104 hits, including Buttered Peas.
That's useful to know. Thanks, Ian.
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Currently, and for the last few years, the Village Music Project files on the main site are out of date due to technical issues. Anahata is moving the site to a new home in the New Year and then it will be up to speed again hopefully. It will have the same url. In the meantime all the revised files and new files, and some that are not VMP files, can be found on my webpage http://www.cpartington.plus.com/Links/ChrisPartingtonsLinksPage.html (http://www.cpartington.plus.com/Links/ChrisPartingtonsLinksPage.html)
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It's on its new hosting already, and has been since October 27th. Same URL, same out of date files moved unchanged from the old site.
Getting the files updated is down to John Adams. I'm willing to help, but I don't know what needs doing. I can make you a site admin, if you like...
(Edit: greengrocer's apostrophe :|bl )
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Should we add the Playford Omnibus dots/ABC's here? Great resource, I think via Pete?
All available here (https://app.box.com/s/c7lk6p60ws7fpsx5s4kv1hn282jlkaem). :D
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Learn them by ear from recordings, youtube etc. works for me.