14-intro.html

BB's Irish Traditional Tune Library

Compositions of Turloch O Carolan
tunefolder 14

The CAROLAN folder contains compositions from O'Sullivan's "Complete Works
of Turlough O'Carolan" and from the "O'Carolan's Compositions" section of
O'Neill's "Music of Ireland" ("The 1850").

Tunes whose ABC file numbers begin with 141 are from O'Sullivan.
Those beginning with 142 are from O'Neill.

Original ABC transcriptions of this material were done by Chris Gilb
and Vince Brennan.

I have changed keys or added alternative measures in cases where the Gilb/Brennan
material went out of a comfortable range for a normal traditional instrument. I
have also added measure numbers at the beginning of each staff in the longer pieces.
Any changes should be shown in the accompanying "N:" notes.

The new formatting of the files was accomplished courtesy of
Michael Eskin's fine ABC Transcription Tools app. This allowed
me to keep notation, sound, and ABC in one place. The embedded
sound file will remain in place even when the file is relocated, e.g. to
the user's hard drive.

My feeling however is that anyone - harpists or others - attempting pieces of this type
will be relying more on the notation than the reproduced sound.

The tempo concepts as represented by the Q: field are strictly my own and of course can
be easily changed to suit the individual's requirements. I call users' attention
to the various tools available in the Play window that will make speed changes and
other aspects of the learning process quite simple.

For users who like working with ABC, the underlying ABC file for each tune
is also easily available from the Tool by closing the Play window and
clicking on the arrows in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
The ABCs are formatted primarily to work with ABC Tools but will
open in other ABC transcription tools like EasyABC.

In the ABCs, you can disregard any text lines that begin with % or %%. They
have to do mainly with the typesetting and sound reproduction
and won't affect the basic functions of the file.

Comments including suggestions for improvement are always welcome.

Bill Black
May 2025