For the O'Carolan Junkie

[Nanohedron]

Inspired by a thread in the Flute Forum, I went a-Googling and found this website.

It's the complete works of O'Carolan, which is to say that these are the attestable ones with provenance according to the evidentiary criteria applied by compiler Donal O'Sullivan. There's a total of 214 tunes with dots, ABC notation, MIDI files, and something mysterious called NWC (which doesn't work for me). And best of all, it's FREE! Donations are of course encouraged.

[Peter Duggan]

Interesting... had to learn a tune on recorder for harpist Fiona Davidson's 1995 album Fonnsheen (O'Carolan's Welcome, second MP3 sample in) and have always wondered why it was missing a beat, but afraid the same quirk in the score for O'Carolan's First Untitled Piece just raises new questions... so did O'Carolan mean it (surely unlikely!) or miss it by accident (possible), is it an earlier publisher's error now entrenched by repetition, did Fiona learn the piece from a printed source and simply not question it, or could it even be a bizarre coincidence?

Edit: just found another clip of the same section from earlier in the track... scary what's floating about the 'net and curious how they should both pick the quirky bit!

[Nanohedron]

Hmm. TBH, I've never encountered that quirk before, myself, so I don't know the answer to that. The first time I ever heard that tune it was on a recording by wire harper Patrick Ball, and he played it with no such quirk. As chance would have it, whenever else I've heard it it's been quirkless, too, so I confess I've assumed that that was the norm.

There's an email addy among the additional commentary at the bottom of the page, and the site owner has solicited just such questions. Worth asking about, sounds like.

EDIT: Here's how they have it over at thesession.org:



Just as straightforward as the way I've known it...

[Tunborough]

something mysterious called NWC

Noteworthy Composer. http://www.noteworthysoftware.com. A nice little music notation program that I've used quite a bit. It'd be what they did the dots with.

Thanks for the link. More than just O'Carolan.

I notice a 'thank you' to Chuck Boody. Anyone we know?

[Nanohedron]

something mysterious called NWC

Noteworthy Composer. http://www.noteworthysoftware.com. A nice little music notation program that I've used quite a bit. It'd be what they did the dots with.

Cool. Since I don't have it, makes sense it didn't work for me. Thanks.

Thanks for the link. More than just O'Carolan.

My pleasure. The selection of O'Carolan that typically gets played at sessions is mostly what I know of him, and since most of it never grabbed me, I always wondered what more there was out there that I might like better, because I definitely liked Bumper Squire Jones as piper Mick O'Brien played it - apparently with a touch of license - and I'd never heard it before (not so easy for me to do it his way on flute, though...maybe now's the time to buckle down ). O'Carolan's Cup definitely being another one I like (thanks in no small part to Caledonian Companion's treatment of it), I had to learn it today, and out of 214 selections now available to us I think I ought to be able to find one or two more unknown to me that I'll love to bits.

I notice a 'thank you' to Chuck Boody. Anyone we know?

Not offhand. Seems to have spent some time driving a Mac for the project, though. Oh, wait: we do have a member named cboody, though, don't we. The plot thickens.

[Viking of Kiev]

Hmm. TBH, I've never encountered that quirk before, myself, so I don't know the answer to that. The first time I ever heard that tune it was on a recording by wire harper Patrick Ball, and he played it with no such quirk. As chance would have it, whenever else I've heard it it's been quirkless, too, so I confess I've assumed that that was the norm.

There's an email addy among the additional commentary at the bottom of the page, and the site owner has solicited just such questions. Worth asking about, sounds like.

EDIT: Here's how they have it over at thesession.org:



Just as straightforward as the way I've known it...

This version is obviously taken from well known Donal O'Sullivan's book. He doesn't mention there any quirks or anything strange about this melody (which is originally unnamed, in fact) though he does that when writhing about some other ones - manuscripts where the original notation was taken from might have contained evidently corrupt or mistakengly altered versions.

[cboody]

something mysterious called NWC

Noteworthy Composer. http://www.noteworthysoftware.com. A nice little music notation program that I've used quite a bit. It'd be what they did the dots with.

Cool. Since I don't have it, makes sense it didn't work for me. Thanks.

Thanks for the link. More than just O'Carolan.

My pleasure. The selection of O'Carolan that typically gets played at sessions is mostly what I know of him, and since most of it never grabbed me, I always wondered what more there was out there that I might like better, because I definitely liked Bumper Squire Jones as piper Mick O'Brien played it - apparently with a touch of license - and I'd never heard it before (not so easy for me to do it his way on flute, though...maybe now's the time to buckle down ). O'Carolan's Cup definitely being another one I like (thanks in no small part to Caledonian Companion's treatment of it), I had to learn it today, and out of 214 selections now available to us I think I ought to be able to find one or two more unknown to me that I'll love to bits.

I notice a 'thank you' to Chuck Boody. Anyone we know?

Not offhand. Seems to have spent some time driving a Mac for the project, though. Oh, wait: we do have a member named cboody, though, don't we. The plot thickens.

Yeah, that would be me... So much for the thick plot.

BTW I checked the O'Sullivan printing of the tune and the half not A has a hold over it! One "general rule" for a hold is to make the note 1 and 1/2 times as long as indicated. Guess what? That would make it a dotted half and the "error" disappears.

[Tunborough]

something mysterious called NWC

Noteworthy Composer. http://www.noteworthysoftware.com. A nice little music notation program that I've used quite a bit. It'd be what they did the dots with.

Cool. Since I don't have it, makes sense it didn't work for me. Thanks.

You're welcome.

Forgot to mention that you can get a free NWC viewer/player at the website. Doesn't give any more than the Old Music Project has already given you, but you can follow the dots while it plays. Sort of a "Sing Along with Mitch" effect.

And thanks, Chuck, for your contribution to their project.

[benhall.1]

Interesting... had to learn a tune on recorder for harpist Fiona Davidson's 1995 album Fonnsheen (O'Carolan's Welcome, second MP3 sample in) and have always wondered why it was missing a beat, but afraid the same quirk in the score for O'Carolan's First Untitled Piece just raises new questions... so did O'Carolan mean it (surely unlikely!) or miss it by accident (possible), is it an earlier publisher's error now entrenched by repetition, did Fiona learn the piece from a printed source and simply not question it, or could it even be a bizarre coincidence?

Edit: just found another clip of the same section from earlier in the track... scary what's floating about the 'net and curious how they should both pick the quirky bit!

Huh? What missing beat? All the beats are there on the track you linked to Peter - there's just a bit of modern syncopation thrown in. But no missing beats. 3/4 throughout.

[Peter Duggan]

Huh? What missing beat? All the beats are there on the track you linked to Peter - there's just a bit of modern syncopation thrown in. But no missing beats. 3/4 throughout.

Oops, yes! (Now where can I hide for the rest of my musical life?)

No idea why I thought that (heard it as a 6/8 with a 5/8 bar!), but it's so obviously as you say (and we actually played!) that I'm now absolutely cringing at myself for not only 'hearing' it wrong for nearly 18 years but advertising my stupidity here...

[benhall.1]

Huh? What missing beat? All the beats are there on the track you linked to Peter - there's just a bit of modern syncopation thrown in. But no missing beats. 3/4 throughout.

Oops, yes! (Now where can I hide for the rest of my musical life?)

No idea why I thought that (heard it as a 6/8 with a 5/8 bar!), but it's so obviously as you say (and we actually played!) that I'm now absolutely cringing at myself for not only 'hearing' it wrong for nearly 18 years but advertising my stupidity here...

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Peter. I have been told it can be quite a good place to advertise.

heh heh

[cboody]

Huh? What missing beat? All the beats are there on the track you linked to Peter - there's just a bit of modern syncopation thrown in. But no missing beats. 3/4 throughout.

Oops, yes! (Now where can I hide for the rest of my musical life?)

No idea why I thought that (heard it as a 6/8 with a 5/8 bar!), but it's so obviously as you say (and we actually played!) that I'm now absolutely cringing at myself for not only 'hearing' it wrong for nearly 18 years but advertising my stupidity here...

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Peter. I have been told it can be quite a good place to advertise.

heh heh

Particularly to advertise stupidity. I've done it several times... well, maybe lots of times...