Tunebook ABC - Second Edition

This site contains a transcription into ABC notation of the second edition of the tunes used by Tuneworks in the workshops and sessions that they run at various UK folk festivals. While versions of most of these tunes are already available on sites like The Session, the ones here are intended to be note-for-note identical to the versions published in the Tuneworks Tunebook (2nd ed).

A transcription of the tunes in the first edition of the Tunebook is also available.

ABC Files

• All the tunes as a single file, suitable for further processing or importing into other programs.

  iPhone and iPad users might want to try out Tunebook or the Craic which seem to handle this file OK. This file also seems to work in Michael Eskin's ABC Transcription Tools which can further manipulate it and produce printed tunebooks in additional formats not included here.

• Individual tunes (or all the tunes in a Zip archive).

  Here (and elsewhere) the numbers at the start of the filename encode the number of the page in the original Tunebook on which the tune appears and its place on that page.

Other formats

This site also contains the results of processing the ABC files into various other formats:

• All the tunes converted to MIDI files (or all the MIDI files in a Zip archive)

• All the tunes converted to mp3 audio files (or all the mp3 files in a Zip archive)

• tunebook.pdf A printable copy of the tunes using much the same layout as the Tuneworks original.

• The printed tunebook for transposing instruments:
  • tunebook-eflat.pdf to E♭ (e.g. for alto sax)
  • tunebook-bflat.pdf to B♭ (e.g. for clarinet, soprano or tenor sax )
  • tunebook-bassclef.pdf in the bass clef

• One tune per page for various instruments:
  • tunebook-guitar-dwhistle.pdf with Guitar chord diagrams and D Whistle tabs.
  • tunebook-mandolin.pdf with Mandolin tabs.
  • tunebook-ukulele.pdf with Ukulele chord diagrams.

• A compact index to all the tunes, just showing the first couple of bars (handy when trying to remember the notes for a particular tune or identify a tune's name from its start):
  • cheatsheet.pdf just the tunes.
  • cheatsheet-dwhistle.pdf including D Whistle tabs.
  • cheatsheet-mandolin.pdf including Mandolin tabs.

Mistakes

The transcription is bound to contain mistakes, defined as (almost) anything that isn't the same as it is in the Tuneworks Tunebook (ignoring minor stylistic differences and the differences listed below). Likewise, the various derived formats are unlikely to be error free even if the ABC transcriptions are correct. Please report any mistakes that you find, either by creating a GitHub issue or (better) a pull request, or (if that doesn't mean anything to you) by emailing Jon Warbrick jon.warbrick@googlemail.com.

The following differences from Tuneworks Tunebook are expected:

• The D and E notes at the end of the first time bar at the end of the A part of 'Flatwater Fran' in the Tunebook are not included here as they (incorrectly) repeat the first two notes of the tune.
• The opening repeat marker in the B part of 'Dearest Dicky' has been moved to the start of the first full bar so that the leading B isn't played the second time through.

Notes

Travellers' Joy is © Squeezer Music and is included in this collection by kind permission of Janet May. Flatwater Fran is © Phil Cunningham and is included by kind permission of Phil Cunningham.

This work was inspired by Paul Hardy's Tunebooks and his tunebook process page informed the initial processing pipeline. John Hinton of John Hinton Music and Graham Louth provided much-needed music theory advice. Vince Hodgson of Tuneworks kindly provided an ABC export from the master copy of the second edition Tunebook.

The master copies of these tunes, along with the tools used to produce everything else, can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/jw35/tunebook-abc.

This transcription and the subsequent processing (but not the music itself) is the work of Jon Warbrick jon.warbrick@googlemail.com and is © Jon Warbrick 2019-2023. The transcribed ABC files and the various other files on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons 'Attribution ShareAlike' licence. This means you can "remix, tweak, and build upon" this work even for commercial purposes, as long as you credit Jon Warbrick and Tuneworks and license your new creations under the identical terms. Except where indicated, the licencing status of the tunes themselves and of their arrangements is unclear.