Bill Black's
IRISH TRADITIONAL TUNE LIBRARY
update 1/24/26
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Welcome to the Irish Traditional Tune Library home page.

The ITTL contains 9000+ tunes with additional material being added on a regular basis.

This site is an expansion (and improvement, I hope) of my former webABC site. ITTL remains a work in progress. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome.


The "parent" file for individual tunes is now
www.capeirish.com/ittl/alltunes/

The contents of this site are:
[1] ABC-formatted text files
[2] HTML files (combining notation and sound)

The procedure for locating and working with individual tunes is here. It might look complicated but you'll be fine with a little practice!


The text files (.txt or .rtf) can be accessed and downloaded for use in an ABC translator program like EasyABC.

The files can also be loaded into ABC Transcription Tools (henceforth abbreviated ABCTT). This is an online app and no separate software is required once you've accessed the site via your browser.

Just copy and paste the text file into Tools and you're good to go. The app will automatically produce a page containing both notation and a sound file. You can download the result (instructions here). Note that the embedded sound file will remain part of the tune even after you download it.

ABCTT has many other capabilities and is well worth the time you might spend to get familiar with it.

There are newer translators coming along that I haven't tried. Since they all base their performance on files using the "standard" ABC format, any text file in the ITTL should present no problem for any translator.

Note that ".rtf" is an "enhanced" text format that can support links - works the same as ".txt" for ABC purposes.

FOLDERS: The "shelves" of the Tune Library
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The tune folders represent a system of organizing tunes based on their sources.

These sources might represent a printed volume (e.g. folder 11, Allan's Irish Fiddler) or a  collection of tunes by a particular composer (e.g. folder 34, Joe Liddy tunes, or folder 12, Bill Black tunes (who?)).

Each folder contains separate sub-folders for the ABCs and HTML files as described in the first section of this page. Depending on the amount of material involved, these folders may be subdivided alphabetically (e.g. A to F tunes). The subfolders will also contain ABC and HTML files.


Right now there are over 60 individual folders mainly representing various printed tune sources (O'Neill, Breathnach, Bulmer & Sharpley, etc.) Many of these are out of print or not readily available.

The folders may also contain accessory information regarding the particular volume. An example of such information would be Paul de Grae's fine explanatory notes on the Ceol Rinnce na hEireann
volumes (folder 18).

A complete list of the folders available (and links to them) are on the Folder Key page.  Feel free to "browse" - there are loads of wonderful tunes there that you might like!

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