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click here for quick access to the alltunes site

click here for text file folder
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Welcome to the Irish Traditional Tune Library (ITTL) home page!


The ITTL contains ~11000 tunes, with additional material being added on a regular basis. If you're a composer or collector, I'm always open to contributions; you'll get full attribution for anything you send me. (My email address is below.)


If you find any of this material useful, attribution is always appreciated.

This site is an expansion (and improvement, I hope) of my former webABC site. Although the renewal project is finished, ITTL will always remain a work in progress, so suggestions for improvement are always welcome.

I'm presuming a basic knowledge on the site user's part of how to handle ABCs.  If you need to know more about the topic, a search on "ABC music notation" will provide helpful links.

There are two ways of accessing the tune file material in ITTL:
= via the "alltunes" site, which arranges the files alphabetically
= via the "tunefolders" site, which arranges the files according to the source (mainly but not exclusively printed volumes).

Both sources contain files in ABC format (as .txt text files) and in Michael Eskin's ABC Transcription Tools format (.html), which provides notation and sound files.

More details on the folder structure are here.

In both cases you can use your browser or text app's Search/Find tool to get quickly to a particular tune (partial strings will work fine - don't need the entire name. In the text files the tune's file number [e.g. X:123456] will also work.

A couple of additional notes:
# You can export tunes easily from Eskin's app ("export PDF" > browser > "save as" > hard drive). The embedded sound function stays active while the tune is on your device, but (Captain Obvious speaking here) it doesn't survive being printed.
# The various items of "tune notes and commentary" a/k/a "liner notes" are available only via the tune folder .rtf entries, NOT via the alltunes .txt links or the Eskin HTML files.
# Once you've downloaded the tune, it's yours to experiment with (e.g. change speed or key). Nothing you do can affect what's on the website, so if you mess up (unlikely, I know) you can always go back to the source and download it again.
# If you're familiar with ABC formatting and see some weird-looking additions in the tune file headers (usually preceded by % or %%), don't worry about them. They exist to do good things for the way the tune will look and sound.

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! (The Folder Key file is in PDF and sortable Excel [.xlsx] format.)

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