Paul Hardy's Tunebooks

This page contains my own tunebooks of music, mainly traditional Celtic and English from the British Isles.

Session Tunebook

Annex Tunebook.

Basic Tunebook.

Sets Tunebook.

Possible Tunebook.

Xmas Tunebook.

Session

Annex.

Basic.

Sets.

Possible.

Xmas.

Introduction

These tunebooks contains traditional tunes that I have learned to play on my English concertina, They should also be playable on fiddle, whistle, flute, melodeon, dulcimer, etc. I have tried to choose the simple versions of most tunes, without decoration and interpretations, so add your own triplets, grace notes and variations. I have also included guitar chords, based on computer generated ones if not present at the tune's source. All are believed free of current copyright (unless noted explicitly), or else appear to have been placed in the public domain as part of the ongoing live folk music tradition. Please let me know if you are the owner of any that are under access restrictions and I'll remove them.

The tunebooks have been prepared using the abcm2ps software, with help from abcmus, Melody Assistant, and ABCexplorer. A big thank you goes to those creative and dedicated people who give their time to create and maintain low-cost or free and open source software for abc music editing and output.

Particular thanks also go to Greenshoots (www.greenshootsmusic.org.uk) for the slow sessions near Cambridge in England that let me learn many of these tunes; the concertina sessions at Chiltinas near Bedford in England that gave me confidence; the Ceili House Band in Redlands in California that opened my eyes and ears to the range of Irish music; to the Celtic jam sessions at Green Valley Lake in the nearby San Bernadino Mountains that broadened my repertoire; and the Ceol Galore young musician practice sessions in my home village of Comberton that are carrying traditional music forward to the next generation.

These versions are all Copyright Paul Hardy, 2004-2010, and are licensed under a Creative Commons "Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike" cc by-nc-sa licence. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. Contact Paul Hardy for commercial licensing terms.

Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook

This tunebook contains tunes that I have learned to play on my English concertina, that are played at local folk music sessions, particularly in the areas around Cambridge, England, and Redlands, California.

Most are traditional tunes from the British Isles, many of Celtic origin, particularly Irish dance tunes, but others are from an eclectic mix of sources. Many have been learned by ear or handouts from various sessions in the UK and US. Others have been based on Internet resources, some originally in abc or midi formats.

The tunes are available in several forms:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself.
An Adobe Acrobat PDF file, one tune per page - useful if you want to hand out copies of a particular tune to use in a group.
A print-on-demand orderable hardcopy, from Lulu.com for if you do not have access to a suitable printer, or if you prefer a professionally printed and comb bound copy.
An abc file for use in computer music programs - for information on abc, see the ABC resources page.

There is also

an index to tunes giving title, key, incipit, etc.
the formatting instruction file (.fmt) for abcm2ps if anyone needs to generate a variant book for different paper size.

Annex Tunebook

This contains tunes waiting to be incorporated into Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook at the next major edition. The tunes are available in several forms:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself.
An Adobe Acrobat PDF file, one tune per page - useful if you want to hand out copies of a particular tune to use in a group.
An abc file for use in computer music programs - for information on abc, see the ABC resources page.
A PDF file to update the 2009 edition of the Session tunebook to the 2010 edition.

Sets Tunebook

This contains a few tunes from Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook, grouped into sets for page printing. The tunes are available as:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file to print.

There is also

The Python script for extracting tunes to build sets.
The set definition abc template file which drives the script to create the sets tunebook.
The resultant abc file for the sets tunebook.

Basic Tunebook

This contains a subset of the simpler and more common tunes from Paul Hardy's Session Tunebook.

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file to print.

There is also

The Python script for extracting tunes to build the basic tunebook.
The definition abc template file which drives the script to create the basic tunebook.
The resultant abc file for the basic tunebook.

Possible Tunebook

This contains tunes I've encountered but not yet learned properly, that may go into my Session Tunebook eventually. The tunes are available as:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself.
An Adobe Acrobat PDF file, one tune per page - useful if you want to hand out copies of a particular tune to use in a group.
An abc file for use in computer music programs - for information on abc, see the ABC resources page.

Paul Hardy's Xmas Tunebook

This contains Christmas tunes and carols that I play on my English concertina. The tunes are available as:

An Adobe Acrobat PDF file with several tunes per page - this is probably what you want if you have a good printer yourself.
An Adobe Acrobat PDF file, one tune per page - useful if you want to hand out copies of a particular tune to use in a group.
A print-on-demand orderable hardcopy, from Lulu.com for if you do not have access to a suitable printer.
An abc file for use in computer music programs - for information on abc, see the ABC resources page.

Private Area

I also have a private area which is password protected, in which I store work in progress and private material. The Parts Tunebook and the Solo Tunebook which were here, have moved to the private area.

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