I’ve been here 15 years and I’ve added over 400 tunes, which seems a lot to me (28 tunes per year, 2 per month). I’ve just noticed that "NfldWhistler" has been here only 11 months and has submitted 637 tunes! That’s almost 700 tunes per year and 58 per month. Cor!
Who are other prolific members? Well, there’s ceolachan, 15 years also, with 5,366 settings (358 per year, 30 per month). Wow. Anyone else?
JACKB springs to mind (1017 additions).
Just a thought - sometimes it seems that additional settings from members are nothing but variations (sometimes posted shortly after the same members posted another setting…) and sometimes the settings in other keys seem to be machine transposed…
Along with the prolific ceolachan, NfldWhistler, and JACKB already mentioned…
Dr. Dow has submitted 1,125 tune settings:
https://thesession.org/members/4763/tunes
gian marco has submitted 944 tune settings:
https://thesession.org/members/3080/tunes
Mix O’Lydian has submitted 522 tune settings:
https://thesession.org/members/48348/tunes
slainte has submitted 499 tune settings:
https://thesession.org/members/3150/tunes
Kenny has submitted 382 tune settings:
https://thesession.org/members/726/tunes
…and I am grateful to all of them, and to everyone who has every submitted a tune setting!
And Nigel, you’re no slouch yourself with 416 tune settings! 🙂
https://thesession.org/members/11834/tunes
I’ve never submitted a tune, or a comment or a question - but would like to take this opportunity to those of you who do. You have enriched my life beyond measure, and I suspect thousands of other people too.
Sarah, I’ve never submitted a tune either. I think your comment is thoughtful and heartfelt. I thank you for having the courage to say what you did.
Thanks Nigel, and thanks to everyone who has posted tunes, info, discussions, and comments over the years. This community is tremendous for Irish/Scottish/etc. traditional musicians, and I’m sure has helped all of us in one way or another.
^^^^^ DITTO!!^^^^^
I love ceolachan.
I could care less how many thousands of *tune settings* he or anyone else has posted here.
That is the least of what I appreciate about him.
love ya, c.
I’ve only managed 76.
However, most of the well known tunes are already here and I don’t see the advantage of submitting too many different settings. Of course, there are occasions when this is helpful but for the more simple and standard tunes it can sometimes just confuse the issue. Generally, if a setting is to my liking, I will learn that one and adapt it as and where necessary if it gets played differently(Or has to be) at a particular location.
I also know many tunes which aren’t really appropriate for this site or are a little obscure. However, I’ll still post a few of these that I particularly like if and when I feel that they are worthy enough.
I’ve apparently managed 190 in just under 13 years.
However, some of those "tune submissions" were alternative settings and partial settings posted in the comments that were then picked up by the algorithm that Jeremy set up when he decided to allow multiple settings. This reminds me that I (and perhaps other long time members) should go through those early "submissions" and make sure that they make musical sense.
JACKB’s settings are the first I always look for/at, they are consistently excellent, and of course almost always pipe-friendly. Ceolachan’s are a close second.
Thanks to all who submit ITM tunes, song airs, and settings.
And my thanks as well to all you wonderful people who have taken the time to make this such a wonderful resource!
I’ve probably spent far too many hours browsing through the tunes section but just the same, I suppose, there are worse things I could be doing like ironing, study, laundry, cutting the grass, washing the dishes………life is awful hard sometimes.
Ha ha!
I’ve found 16 "settings" of mine, lifted from the comments, that I shall need to alter so that they make sense out of context.
What I like about JACKB’s settings is the fact that he uses a consistent and tidy notation. It’s easy to read and interpret my own way. And, it is apparent that he is working things out for an instrument that doesn’t go below D.
Occasionally you see settings where all the articulations have been notated, which makes them harder to read, or (Yikes!) ones where the hornpipes show all the dotted-notes.
I’ll confess that the last time I complained about someone over-specifying the articulations, it was pointed out to me that some of those settings were an effort to show a particular version by a particular musician. (Can’t remember if it was ceolachan or slainte, who does that.) I understand that you might not want to say "This version is note-for-note from Keven Crawford’s version of XYZ", but it would be nice to know when someone is trying to do that.
I’ve only submitted 13 tunes!
If only we had a website for Old-Time music that was just like thesession…
Dia dhaoibh! Greetings all!
It is indeed wonderful that The Session has this section.
I was wondering if there was a way for tunes submitted not having the right time signature to be automatically corrected. I don’t know how these things work on a computer, but wouldn’t the addition of the value of the notes submitted auto correct the time signature?
An example is "Don oíche úd i mBeithil"
A setting submitted by JACKB gives it as a reel in 4/4, but if you add up the value of the notes in the bars, it’s actually 2/4
There are others I can’t bring to mind just at this moment, but I recall seeing other settings with incorrect note values in bars.
All the best
Brian x
Hi Brian, that’s because JACKB has copied janglecrow’s original setting note for note (copy and paste job) but omitted the sneaky wee L: 1/4 at the start of the abc submission. Perhaps JACKB preferred it written in 2/4 but didn’t put the time signature change in his submission.
Oh, and while we’re at it, JACKB has 2314 submissions, not 1017 (that’s the number in his tune book).
> I was wondering if there was a way for tunes submitted not having the right time signature to be automatically corrected.
The philosophy of ABC is that the user knows what they intend to write and that’s what you get, just as if you took a sheet of blank manuscript, give a time signature of 3/4 and wrote out a jig. One can argue whether this is better or worse than a system that prohibits musical error, at the expense of having to know how to wrestle it into submission when you really do want to write something messy (for example, I recently submitted a tune called Mairi’s that I transcribed with irregular bars, and writing that with something like Lilypond would have been a real pain).
What is annoying is to see simple errors like these and be unable to edit them - the example you cite would be easily fixed with the addition of [M:2/4] to JACKB’s setting, but only JACKB can do that.
Although written in June 2004, I think this is still valid:
"Please don’t post minor variations to the existing settings. Suggesting subtle variations is something that’s still best done in the comments."
(Submitting different settings of tunes - https://thesession.org/discussions/3788#comment77057 )