Music Compendium

Description

Welcome to the Fumblin' Fingers Music Compendium, Version 4 (circa 2022)!

This compendium is a reference for the band members, so if you don't belong here - bug off! This particular page is the top level, and is a quick starting point, with links to all of the more important stuff (look up there ^!)

The drop-down link ("FF Music") contains links to the organised lists of Music. Here you will find pages that list:

• Songs - music with words
• Sets and Medleys
• Tunes used in Sets (and Medleys) - These are the individual tunes used in sets and medleys. Useful if you want to dig a little deeper into the tuens themselves.
• Other Music - Anything that doesn't fall into any of the categories above or below. Mostly the tunes that we use by themselves, that haven't been used in a set.
• Old-Tyme and Spiritual Music
• Christmas Music
• New Music - Music that we are currently working up.
• Music To Try - music that we would like to try.
• Music To Try, Not Yet Transcribed - I haven't taken the time to transcribe these yet, but they have their own folders and are on their way top the Music To Try page!
• Potential Music To Try - this is actually just a list of songs that we should look into.
• Music Books - this currently includes the books that I compiled years ago for the band, but I think I will eventually add in some other books... stay tuned!

As described above, the web pages are lists of links to the individual tunes or songs, each of which include details of the status of preparation, historical and bigraphical info about the tune, and links to additional files. The most significant file for each is the pdf of sheet music, transcribed by me, in a format suitable for playing from. It usually includes playing notes, and should include an indication of how we usually play it. This file is indicated i the table as the "FF.ly" file, and clicking on the Adobe Acrobat icon will fetch it for you. It's called a .ly file becasue that is the file format used to create it. It stands for "lilypond".

If you have any questions, suggestions, errata or corrections, please let me know.

History and Technical Details

This collection started when I decided I wanted to generate my own sheet music (using the 'Lilypond' music engraving system) so that I could quickly generate new versions and sets for the Fumblin' Fingers. The added benefit of using Lilypond was that the Midi files Lilypond creates are useful for practice, etc.

I started out entering the files manually, using the 'Lilycomp' graphical note entry program for Lilypond, which is pretty cool, but time-consuming. I then discovered that Lilypond included a link to the Mutopia project website, which is a library of Public-Domain music written in lilypond format.

This got me to thinking "Why should I do all this work if it has already been done?", which didn't get me very far, because the tunes I was looking for weren't in the library... but... they are available at various websites in the 'ABC' music format (see here for info), which Lilypond can do semi-automatic translation of.

So I started out using "The Session" - a searchable database of session tunes in ABC and GIF format, as well as comments from members. As I rummaged on this website, I gradually became aware that while I could easily transform the ABC files to .ly format, the resulting tunes were not the same as what I already had, and, in fact, there are even on this website, variants of tunes (generally as suggested by members).

I then decided that perhaps this may all be useful info - so packaging it up as a series of web pages seems reasonable, if somewhat tedious. Along the way I found a bunch of other websites with music (see the "Links" page). The most useful for finding .abc files is 'JC's ABC Tune Finder', but perhaps the best of those I have found for background information is The Fiddler's Companion ("A Descriptive Index of North American and British Isles Music for the Folk Violin and Other Instruments.") by Andrew Kuntz;