Topic: Tune Book Database Project (Read 14340 times)

Tyker · « **Reply #40 on:** October 04, 2012, 03:57:22 PM »

Is a gmail address required . If so , Dropbox takes any email address .

Anahata · « **Reply #41 on:** October 04, 2012, 04:26:08 PM »

This is all starting to look like solutions in search of a problem that doesn't exist.

The original idea was a list of tunes in published books that you can currently buy which seems like a good idea, especially if it included information about where (online or otherwise) the book can be bought.

But a global repository of ABC code online seems pointless. It would never be complete; it would be a nightmare to maintain and there are already lots of individual collections on the web and several good specialised search sites (which trawl the web and find new stuff: JC's tune finder and folktunefinder.com don't store tunes themselves)

If I find a tune online and it's in a big ABC collection file, I download the whole file and keep it. As has been said, ABC is very compact so it doesn't take up much disk space. If I want to find a tune in my collection, I've described tools that make it a simple operation and someone's suggested an equivalent for Windows. I think ABCNavigator tries to help you manage your local ABC collections too.

We don't need Word documents. They are huge and every word has to by typed in or at least copied/pasted by hand. All we need is fast automatic indexing of what's already there, and that's being done now.

(rant over)

summerstars · « **Reply #42 on:** October 04, 2012, 04:34:56 PM »

I'm with Anahata on this - the original idea of a searchable index of tunes already published in books is what is needed, not another index of abc files. I would be happy to build and host a database repository of lists of tunes in already published books. If anyone already has such lists, then it would help the starting process if they could send them to me (preferably off list) and I will get started on the project next week.

syale · « **Reply #43 on:** October 04, 2012, 06:41:46 PM »

Reminds me of the tree swing project: http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #44 on:** October 04, 2012, 07:07:44 PM »

Quote from: summerstars on October 04, 2012, 04:34:56 PM

I would be happy to build and host a database repository of lists of tunes in already published books. If anyone already has such lists, then it would help the starting process if they could send them to me (preferably off list) and I will get started on the project next week.

I've just sent you individual Excel files for the following books:

The Fiddler’s Tunebook
Nick Barber’s English Choice
Nick Barber’s English Selection
John Kirkpatrick’s English Choice
Pauline Cato’s Northumbrian Choice
Paul Hardy’s Sessions Tunebook (this is free to download as an abc file but is also available as a printed book which I have)
Airs for Pairs
More Airs for Pairs
Scottish Airs for Pairs
Rattle and Roll - Brian Peters

Have fun!

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #45 on:** October 04, 2012, 08:58:32 PM »

Quote from: Mike Hirst on October 04, 2012, 12:34:45 AM

List of tune titles with key.

How did you do that and did the info have to be in a PDF? It's the world's most portable but least useful format!

Mike Hirst · « **Reply #46 on:** October 05, 2012, 01:12:34 AM »

Quote from: tallship on October 04, 2012, 08:58:32 PM

Quote from: Mike Hirst on October 04, 2012, 12:34:45 AM
List of tune titles with key.

How did you do that and did the info have to be in a PDF? It's the world's most portable but least useful format!

I used ABCexplorer to make a list, which I exported as a csv file. I deleted all but title and key data using CSVed. Then I used OpenOffice Calc to convert to PDF.

I've been making lists from my own collection of books/sheet music recently so I had most of the tools open when you posted. Took me a couple of mins to do the whole job.

Unfortunately lists I have been making only include tunes I know, rather than full index. Otherwise this would be an ideal opportunity for sharing.

Bill Young · « **Reply #47 on:** October 05, 2012, 09:42:20 AM »

Quote from: summerstars on October 04, 2012, 04:34:56 PM

I'm with Anahata on this - the original idea of a searchable index of tunes already published in books is what is needed, not another index of abc files. I would be happy to build and host a database repository of lists of tunes in already published books. If anyone already has such lists, then it would help the starting process if they could send them to me (preferably off list) and I will get started on the project next week.

There was a thread about a similar subject on AccordionForum recently. It included a reference to James Stewart's Index of Tunes, which contains entries for approx. 70k tune titles, the books and pages they're on, and other info like key and time signature.

His database is downloadable, so possibly a starter for 10 (or 70k)? Even at that size it's not exhaustive; I have many tunebooks which are not included.

Anahata · « **Reply #48 on:** October 05, 2012, 10:03:37 AM »

Bill's post reminds me that this wonderful resource hasn't been mentioned yet: http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/ or in its new but possibly not-quite-complete-yet form at http://www.tunearch.org/

AKA the fiddler's companion. (melodeons are allowed too...)

Mike Hirst · « **Reply #49 on:** October 05, 2012, 10:45:06 AM »

Quote from: Bill Young on October 05, 2012, 09:42:20 AM

There was a thread about a similar subject on AccordionForum recently. It included a reference to James Stewart's Index of Tunes, which contains entries for approx. 70k tune titles, the books and pages they're on, and other info like key and time signature.

Bill thanks for reminding us of this. The Index has been around for a while. (I note that the Folktune.dbf file has a last modified date of 01 March 1998). An invaluable resource that I have used in the past, but which has fallen off the radar in recent years.

Mike Hirst · « **Reply #50 on:** October 05, 2012, 11:25:17 AM »

Quote from: Bill Young on October 05, 2012, 09:42:20 AM

There was a thread about a similar subject on AccordionForum recently. It included a reference to James Stewart's Index of Tunes, which contains entries for approx. 70k tune titles, the books and pages they're on, and other info like key and time signature.

I used the Stewart Index extensively when preparing the FARNE db. I found it useful to split the large db into smaller collections based on book titles. I've repeated the process to produce the files attached below. N.B. these are csv files. I have changed the ext to allow them to be attached to this post.

Mike Hirst · « **Reply #51 on:** October 05, 2012, 11:26:39 AM »

Further to the above - four more collections.

As before, these are csv files with txt ext. You can open them using CSVed, OpenOffice.org Calc, Microsoft Excel, etc.. If anyone's interested I can also provide xml.

summerstars · « **Reply #52 on:** October 09, 2012, 06:22:13 PM »

Thanks to tallship of this parish for getting me started - I have now started on a database driven website containing the tunes titles from various published books. At present there are a few book lists available to browse either by tune title or book titles. Please note, I haven't finished the search function for the site yet, but they will next, followed by populating the database with more books and tune titles. Please feel free to message me if you have any comments (rather than posting them here).

Happy searching

Malcolm

oh, finally - the URL is www.folktunebooks.co.uk

brianread · « **Reply #53 on:** October 09, 2012, 07:03:52 PM »

http://www.folktunefinder.com/ also shows itself as "Folk Tune finder" (exactly as your site does), so if you make a bookmark it is impossible to identify which is which unless you edit the bookmark OR examine the URL.

So i suggest you make your <title> tag something a bit different "Folk Tune Book Finder" for example?

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #54 on:** October 13, 2012, 10:34:44 PM »

My personal tune list now stands at 5523 titles, many will be duplicates of course and I probably have 10-12 copies of Soldier's Joy already. It's interesting though that until this afternoon I didn't have a copy of Northern Frisk and I still don't have the music for Northern Lass in the books I've dealt with so far. I've only catalogued slightly more than a third of my tune books to be fair and there's lots more still to come!

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #55 on:** October 14, 2012, 11:23:24 PM »

Quote from: brianread on October 04, 2012, 12:21:12 PM

Someone earlier mentioned tunepal, which have on my Android phone, and used last week in a session to get the score for a tune that we wanted to play, but no-one could remember how it started!

My question is - could it hold a few thousand tunes in ABC locally (i.e. on the phone)? And how would be the best way to load it up with them? I ask in-case someone instantly knows the answer, I'm willing to research this myself if necessary.

I have an iPhone rather than an Android and following Strig's earlier comments I investigated an App called Tunebook which has been on my phone for a while waiting for me to get a round tuit (not sure if you can get Tunebook for Android) and I'm now carrying a huge collection of tunes about with me. I messed about with this for a few hours becoming highly frustrated along the way trying to load the first .abc file onto the phone. I found an on-line solution suggested by the software that is ridiculously simple to use but it does require you to have WiFi on your PC.

To answer your main question, yes, thousands of tunes in dozens of abc files would take up very little storage space on your phone, less than a handful of photos in fact!

Clive Williams · « **Reply #56 on:** October 16, 2012, 12:51:13 PM »

Quote from: tallship on October 14, 2012, 11:23:24 PM

I have an iPhone rather than an Android and following Strig's earlier comments I investigated an App called Tunebook which has been on my phone for a while waiting for me to get a round tuit (not sure if you can get Tunebook for Android) and I'm now carrying a huge collection of tunes about with me. I messed about with this for a few hours becoming highly frustrated along the way trying to load the first .abc file onto the phone. I found an on-line solution suggested by the software that is ridiculously simple to use but it does require you to have WiFi on your PC.

To answer your main question, yes, thousands of tunes in dozens of abc files would take up very little storage space on your phone, less than a handful of photos in fact!

I love tunebook too; great app. The easiest way to load it with stuff I found was to use the app's inbuilt web browser; visit melnet and download Lester's ABC megafile which it sucks straight into its database. All you need is wifi on your iphone or ipad and off you go.

Cheers,

Clive

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #57 on:** October 18, 2012, 09:11:31 PM »

Quote from: Clive Williams on October 16, 2012, 12:51:13 PM

I love tunebook too; great app. The easiest way to load it with stuff I found was to use the app's inbuilt web browser; visit melnet and download Lester's ABC megafile which it sucks straight into its database. All you need is wifi on your iphone or ipad and off you go.

Cheers,

Clive

I'm finding Tunebook to be a right royal PITA to be honest Clive, worse than 'Facebook' on a bad day to be honest

Jinkers1 · « **Reply #58 on:** October 18, 2012, 09:35:39 PM »

Been using Tunebook on both iPhone and iPad for years, no problems at all.

Pete Dunk · « **Reply #59 on:** October 18, 2012, 10:15:24 PM »

Quote from: mglamb on October 18, 2012, 09:35:39 PM

Been using Tunebook on both iPhone and iPad for years, no problems at all.

What a shame that my experience is so very different.

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Author Topic: Tune Book Database Project (Read 14340 times)

Jinkers1