The Traditional Tune Archive (TTA) is the searchable digital library of traditional music from Ireland, Great Britain and North America organized alphabetically, by tune title, with alternate or additional titles and variants cross-referenced, music in standard and ABC notation, annotated information on history and context, along with references and internet links for further reference.
It is a curated Semantic Web Index in which the meanings (semantics) of information are organized in a way that makes it possible for the web to “understand” and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the content. Thus, the aim is to allow the semantics of traditional music pieces —their properties, historical information and musicological traits, commentaries, etc.— to be employed in an improved data structure that allows for myriad research possibilities.
The Traditional Tune Archive was originally “seeded” with the entire project Andrew Kuntz had been working on from 1996 to 2010, the Fiddler’s Companion tune index, in which tens of thousands of traditional melodies had been cataloged alphabetically by title into separate entries that also included descriptive information about the tune, including form, key, structure, fiddle tuning, source information, where it could be found in print and on sound recording.
Additionally, Andrew entered as much anecdotal information as he could find regarding how the tune was embedded in culture, its provenance, authorship, peculiarities, stories, and mention in the historical record, etc.—a pot pouri of material about the tune, whether factual, speculative, apocryphal, hopeful or simply amusing.
Initially, Andrew thought of each separate entry as simply a bin in which to store anything that was said or recorded about the tune, and he made little attempt to sort out fact from rumor, nor truth from speculation, leaving the qualitative work to others.
As the project matured, however (along with his own knowledge and experience), it became obvious that the annotated material needed organizing, and he began to employ a much more analytical and qualitative approach, attempting to discriminate between factual information and speculative, however culturally interesting, and to apply some discipline to speculative thoughts.
Andrew had no thoughts of abandoning anecdotal material, for it gives considerable information in and of itself of the cultural milieu that is the rich medium for traditional music, but rather to attempt only sorting out what was demonstrably or even reasonably certain from that which could not be verified.
One can read, if interested, the original introduction and premise [1] for the Fiddler’s Companion, which outlines him original thoughts about what the project was about and what I was trying to achieve, and judge if he has come anywhere near it.
Definitions
Jacky Layton with variations
‘Traditional music’ is loosely defined as historical and contemporary melodies that are folk-based, either in original derivation or in practical usage, and have been primarily used for folk-based activities, such as folk dance and folk song, and are also currently enjoyed by amateur players for personal enjoyment and for group playing in sessions. The body of ‘traditional music’ also provides foundational material for a thriving music industry based on interpretation and performance, adaptation, imitation and innovation in its various subgenres, supporting semi-professional and professional musicians.
In the context of the TTA, traditional music is closely associated as use or potential use for dancing, and follows musical forms that developed in conjunction with, and accompaniment to, folk dance. Traditional dance music is usually binary in form, with contrasting two-strain melodies the majority (but not exclusively) in the form AB or ABAB. The music is further categorized by types associated with different dances, including jigs, reels, hornpipes, schottisches, polkas, waltzes, etc.
Organization
The TTA is organized alphabetically, by tune title, with alternate or additional titles and variants cross-referenced. Each tune has two pages, the first for music and bibliographic/demographic information, and the second featuring annotations on history, context, and more in-depth bibliographic and discographic information.
Tune information is recorded in individual data fields of which twelve elements are relationally organized and reportable via the “Query the Archive” function found under the “Archive” menu to the left of the index page. Queries can be selected using the available fields.
Easy to use templates for recording tune entry information are provided by clicking “Add Tunes” under “The Archive” menu and are available for crowd sourcing.
The TTA is semantically organized in categories of tune characteristics:
Music
Meter/Rhythm
Time signature
Key (Tonic note, accidentals, Key/mode)
Tune structure
Description
Region
Genre/Style
Context
Composer/core source
Historical/Geographical allegiances
Alternate titles, closely related tunes
Tune Book
Citation of the earliest published or manuscript where the tune can be found
A PDF standard notation transcription, when available
Audio Recording
Citation of the earliest sound recording of the tune extent
An mp3 version of the recording, when available
Theme Code Index
Theme codes of the first two measures of each tune
The codes at TTA use the system described in Charles Gore's 'The Scottish Fiddle Music Index' (The Amaising Publishing House Ltd, Musselburgh, 1994), which is in turn based on the work of the great Irish music scholar Breandán Breathnach[2]
Theme Code Index has itself been useful in writing the commentaries to the tunes on the FARNE website, by providing titles for untitled tunes, identifying composers, and also in showing when a tune is NOT in one of the many publications listed by Gore.
Where possible tunes in the archive have been indexed using the Theme Code Index.
Annotations
Tune annotations – A section for narrative comments about the tune, focusing on history, dissemination, tune family relationships, and contextual information such as influential popularizers and recordings, and remarks on ‘placement in the tradition’.
Information is factual with supporting citations but ‘tune lore’ (i.e. non-factual, conjectural and/or speculative remarks should be identified as such.
Source for notated version – The source for the tune cited in printed or manuscript collections.
Printed Sources – A list of all known published sources for the tune.
Recorded Sources – A list of all known sound recordings of the tune.
‘See also listing at’— Internet links for further information.
Searchability - Information in the TTA data base can be searched in three ways:
By entering keywords in the “Search Traditional Tune Archive” bar at the top right of each index page.
By clicking on “The Index” under “The Archive Menu” on the left hand side of each page. Clicking on “The Index” will reveal an alphabetically arranged list of tunes, with an alphabetical short cut at the top of the page for easier navigation. Tunes are listed by title, sans any article words (A, An, The, La, Le, Les etc.) at the beginning of the title.
By using the “Query the Archive” function found under “The Archive” menu on the left hand side of each index page. “Query the Archive” will produce a report from fields selected.
Featured Tunes
Featured Tunes are articles selected and highlighted by editors as among the best TTA has to offer. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles. A small bronze star icon on the top right corner of an article's page indicates that the article is featured.
Mobile
The Traditional Tune Archive is also mobile. One can access the site using his smartphone or tablet at the same web address getting a much more simplistic user interface, much more optimised for performance.
A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles, which are typically aural traditions—taught "by ear" rather than via written music.
A Hardanger fiddle is a traditional stringed instrument considered to be the national instrument of Norway. In modern designs, this type of fiddle is very similar to the violin, though with eight or nine strings and thinner wood. The earliest known example of the hardingfele is from 1651, made by Ole Jonsen Jaastad in Hardanger, Norway. Originally, the instrument had a rounder, narrower body. Around the year 1850, the modern layout with a body much like the violin became the norm.
"Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580, and the tune is found in several late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Seeley Historical Library in the University of Cambridge.
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo–fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.
Liner notes are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or cassette j-cards.
Niel Gow was a Scottish fiddler in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Here Northumbria is defined as Northumberland, the northernmost county of England, and County Durham. According to 'World Music: The Rough Guide', "nowhere is the English living tradition more in evidence than the border lands of Northumbria, the one part of England to rival the counties of the west of Ireland for a rich unbroken tradition. The region is particularly noted for its tradition of border ballads, the Northumbrian smallpipes and also a strong fiddle tradition in the region that was already well established in the 1690s. Northumbrian music is characterised by considerable influence from other regions, particularly southern Scotland and other parts of the north of England, as well as Irish immigrants.
"Give Me Your Hand" is a tune from early 17th century Ireland by Rory Dall O'Cahan. It is one of the most widely recorded pieces of Irish traditional music.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number.
Peter Douglas Kennedy was an influential English folklorist and folk song collector throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Irish traditional music is a genre of folk music that developed in Ireland.
The Dashing White Sergeant is a Scottish country dance, performed to a similarly titled piece of music. The dance is in 4/4 time, thus it is in the form of a reel. The dance is performed by groups of six dancers and is progressive.
John L. "Bunt" Stephens, known as Uncle Bunt, was an American Old-time fiddle player. After rising from relative obscurity in 1926 to win a nationwide fiddle contest hosted by automobile magnate Henry Ford, Stephens went on to record several tracks for Columbia Records and made several guest appearances on what would later become the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville before retiring to his farm near Lynchburg, Tennessee. His style of fiddle playing is believed to resemble a style that was popular before the American Civil War.
Cock o'the North is a 6/8 military march, bagpipe tune and jig. The title comes from the nickname of Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon, who in 1794 raised the 92nd Regiment of Foot, which later became the Gordon Highlanders.
"The Irish Washerwoman" is a traditional jig known to have been played throughout Britain and Ireland and in North America. Although usually considered an Irish tune, some scholars claim that it is English in origin, derived from the seventeenth-century tune "Dargason".
"Blackberry Blossom" is a fiddle tune in the key of G major. It is classified as a "breakdown" and is popular in old time, bluegrass and Celtic traditional circles.
"Yew Piney Mountain" is part of the canonical Appalachian music tradition which has been highly influential in American fiddle tradition generally, including its old time fiddle and bluegrass fiddle branches. According to Alan Jabbour at the Digital Library of Appalachia, the tune was called "Blackberry Blossom" until that title was taken over by a different tune. The earlier "Blackberry Blossom", as played by Sanford Kelly from Morgan County, is now represented by the tune "Yew Piney Mountain".
James Kelly is an Irish fiddler, composer, collector, researcher and teacher from Dublin. He is the son of County Clare fiddler, John Kelly, and has played with various groups including Patrick Street and Planxty. Kelly has been described by The Journal of Music as "one of the greatest Irish traditional fiddlers alive today" and by Cathy Benton, Professor of Music at Missouri Baptist University, as "one of the top 10 fiddlers in the world".
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