Music for mandolin

[Fiach]

Hello all!

As some of you know, (most of you probably not) I am a (french) horn player in and around the Philadelphia, USA area. As much as I love it, it is very much my job along with it being a very impractical folk-ish instrument. I have played mandolin off and on over the years as my "escape" instrument.

The purpose of my post is to find out if anyone knows good resources online for celtic tunes (either tabs or notation is fine)

I have a few bluegrass books and such but I really would like to explore this medium as a part of my Bardic journey. Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!


Fiach

[Corwen]

I find the abc format tends to be the standard for sharing celtic and English folk tunes. Its a simple notation system which can be played at any speed and key for learning by ear or converted into sheet music by a suitable piece of software.

I use abc Navigator for PC, there are other programmes for Mac (Barfly?). There is a search engine which will find tunes in abc from the title or a perl pattern. (http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/tunefind)

The Session website uses abc format to share music.
http://www.thesession.org/

You might also enjoy the BBC virtual session:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/r2music/folk/sessions/

[Fiach]

awesome. I will definitely check these out. I am not familiar with the abc system.

Thanks so much

[mwyalchen]

If you read music (sounds like you do) ABC is not that hard to work out - it's basically letter names, with layout and symbols to show rhythms.

But you'll find that many sites offer music notation as an alternative. And there are plenty of free programs you can download which will turn ABC into standard staff notation; many of the ABC sites link to good conversion programs.

I suggest you Google the names of a couple of tunes you like, and see which sites come up and what else they have - there's plenty around.

[Corwen]

I have quite a collection of tunes in abc format (thousands), including some rare Welsh ones, if anyone wants them pm me your email address.

[Womble]

I find the abc format tends to be the standard for sharing celtic and English folk tunes. Its a simple notation system which can be played at any speed and key for learning by ear or converted into sheet music by a suitable piece of software.

There's a very good ABC to PDF converter on the Concertina.net website (click here).

Simply paste the ABC code into the box and hit the 'submit' button. It will then give you the option to produce a PDF file or play a MIDI file of the tune you submitted.