I have only been playing the whistle a little over a month. My wife says I am obsessed. She also says that I am cheap. I guess maybe she is right on both counts. After finishing Mel Bays “fun with the tin whistle” I wondered what book to buy next. Instead I started looking for free sheet music on the web. My gosh I can’t believe how much I am finding. I don’t know if I can ever sort through it all. I tried to search on this forum and could not find any sources of free music. So, I wonder if I complied my findings to a page on my web site if this would be of interest to members of this forum. Or, does anyone know if something like this already exists?
I can’t think how it would work to put it in a posting so I would just put up a page on my web site with links and descriptions. I would also ask for suggestions of places I have missed. My main search so far has been for sheet music but I am also finding free mp3 downloads.
Lemme just say, to any new whistler or otherwise ITM player, I’ve never bought a tunebook for money and I never intend to (except for copyrighted material, say). I’m sure I’ll break that rule eventually but I’ve been at it for a few years and it’s served me just right.
I’m sure we all appreciate your enthusiasm and your offer! However, I’d say there is little enough point in making such a list other than for your own benefit - The Session, The Fiddler’s Companion and TuneDB plus other ABC notation sites (most of which are linked from the ABC webpages) are generally pretty well known. BTW, if you haven’t got into ABC notation yet, you’ll find it is the main way that trad tunes are passed around on the Web, so it is worth checking out and (if you’re a dot-reader) finding out about converting it into standard notation and installing an ABC software program on your computer - most ABC freeware displays the dots anyway as well as offering midi playback.
The vast majority of the entire ITM tune repertory and much of the Scottish, plus a good deal of other traditions such as Welsh, English, Breton and French is already available online in ABC format somewhere or other, and there are ways of searching the Web for specific tunes if you are after that special one you’ve just heard played.
That said, there are many very good hard-copy publications that it is worth building a collection of, such as the Ceol Rince series, O’Neill’s, The Roche Collection etc. to name just a few of the best known ones. Sure, the tunes in them will be out there in ABC on the Web, but you come at them rather differently by browsing through actual books, especially if you are looking to compare versions of a particular tune. Not all ABC settings available online are well transcribed, especially on The Session!
Well, it’s your web page, so knock yourself out! As long as you pay reasonable attention to copyright considerations.
Ditto what Jem said, with the addition of the JC Tunefinder. Plus the caveat that thesession.org settings are user-contributed, and may be iffy (but the notes are often a good resource).
I usually turn to Henrik Norbeck’s ABC collection as the first go-to resource for reliable transcriptions: http://www.norbeck.nu/abc/
Of course, the best source of “free music” is your own two ears.
I read dot’s well enough to sightread and back in my teens when I had hopes of becoming a professional classical clarinetist, I read them well enough to sight read and transpose on the fly.
I never had any desire to learn ABC, but I have tried downloading ABC notation and using software to convert it to dots. I find that most of the time, the time signature etc. is so way off the mark that the only way to recognize the tune is if you already know it.
I’d say, if you can read dots, you’re much better off searching for a copy of the tune notated as dots.
Check out the website of the Groton session (thegrotonsession.com), which is very well organized with recordings and sheet music. For tune collections, I recommend the three “Foinn Seisiun” books that were put out by Comhaltas. If you know how to use Google, you can actually find them as PDF downloads on the Groton session website.
thesession.org can be iffy, but I find the ABC search incredibly useful to identify tunes that I pick up by ear. The sheetmusic is usually a good approximation, but you’ll really want to learn to acquire tunes by ear. There’s no substitute. Buy a stack of good whistle CDs like the “Feadoga Stain” by Mary Bergin. I also like Brian Hughes. Slow them down to half-speed on a computer, which will make them exactly one octave lower, so you can play along and learn. If you “just” want the music and are not interested in the CDs, then eMusic is very economical choice. You can sign up for their 30 tunes a month plan, which is $12, and you will get 50 tunes for free as a bonus. That’s 80 tunes for $12, after which you can cancel. Not bad, if you ask me.
Again, I recommend the Henrik Norbeck collection as a source of reliable ABC transcriptions. And they render fine with the Concertina.net converter for occasional use, no additional software needed (the underlying web software being abcm2ps).
ABC and standard notation are isomorphic, just 2 different ways of representing the same info. Every feature of ABC maps to its equivalent in standard notaion. So if you already read dots, then learning basic ABC shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes tops (I’ve taught it that fast). In return, you get a lifetime of access to this great resource. IMO, of course.
Well, me personally, I can read sheet music (is this what is being referred to as “dots”?) reeeeaalllly slowly which is 100 times faster than I can read ABC, which I can’t make heads or tails of. I wouldn’t mind if someone cared to direct me as to how to read it properly.
I think of “dots” as the pictorial way some whistle tutor books represent the correct finger position on the whistle, I’m sure most will know what I mean.
At the moment, whenever I have a tune in sheet music I busily draw in my own little finger position diagram under each note. Not the best system of course, but it saves me having to try and read the sheet ‘on the fly’ (in my case the very slow crawl), so to speak. I also source the tune from wherever I can get a hold of it i.e. C.D, internet etc so that I can learn how the tune should sound.
Probably a Barse Ackwards way of doing things, but it’s the best I got for now.
Yeah, sheet music/standard music notation is colloquially termed “the dots” by most musicians, including highly trained classical folk. Whistle fingering tablature isn’t usually so named.
FWIW, I don’t usually try to read from ABC - a handy skill if you can be bothered, I daresay, but I find it quicker to convert it to standard notation as I can already read that. I do sometimes use it to make quick notes of a tune - one soon picks up its conventions if writing tunes out in it to then generate standard notation for computer printing or visual presentation. There is an online tutorial for the basics of its conventions here and Guido Gonzato has written a far more detailed guide available here.
To me, its chief values are the amount of music that is available online in it and its usefulness for generating presentable standard notations far more easily (once you are familiar with its syntax) than can be done (at least for single voice melodies) with most standard notation software like Finale or Sibelius. Yes, we’ve noted that there are problems with some ABC sources re: standards of transcription - but that is true for material in standard notation too…and there is far, far more available online in ABC than in standard - you still really need to go buy hard-copy books if you want that directly rather than by converting ABC.
Reading/playing directly from ABC is not hard. It just takes a little practice. I can do it, though a bit more slowly than with dots. There are two big advantages.
First, you can easily fit a half-dozen tunes on a single sheet of paper, in the space of a single tune in standard notation. Or fit an entire tune on a tiny note card for ready reference. And for carrying a “cheat sheet” of incipits (opening bars) to jog the memory, the compactness of ABC can’t be beat.
Second, if you can read from ABC, you can certainly write ABC, on anything. A scrap of paper, a napkin, the palm of your hand. Great for jotting down a quick tune or phrase that you want to capture. This was Chris Walshaw’s motivation for developing ABC in the first place, and is similar to the Irish schools mnemonic notation that Peter Laban has described elsewhere.
As one who started in his 50’s with zero musical training and no natural ability, you can learn anything if you set your mind to it. (Some will argue I am a poor example of this point!)
“I don’t read dots/understand abc/get tunes by ear because I have no use for that skill” is a reasonable statement. “I don’t read dots/understand abc/get tunes by ear because I cannot learn that skill” is untrue and self-defeating. Now, sight reading a concerto perfectly, at speed, on the first pass takes a lot of practice and enormous talent as does jumping in by ear with a tune you just heard for the first time. I’m not talking about that level. Anyone can learn dots/abc/by ear well enough to figure out tunes and widen their musical horizons. You already expanded your horizons by learning a musical instrument - keep going.
At 55 I’ve been able to read sheet music since I learned the sax at age 10, although I’ve never been a brilliant sight reader. Maybe if I’d had some lessons along the way… Until taking up whistle about a month ago, I never even heard of the ABC notation. But I already find I can fumble through a tune straight from the ABCs, at least well enough to get started on it. That’s partly due to the regularity of rhythms in ITM and almost complete absence of accidentals.
I know that people who haven’t yet learned it find the “dots” very off-putting, and I have to say that my initial reaction to ABC was the same. Not surprisingly, it was just a matter of taking a few hours to actually play some music from ABC, and it quickly began to seem a lot less forbidding.
