Frequently Asked Questions

Donation: $10.00

Media:
PDF
- 973 scanned pages of music which hold the 1739 transcribed performances of Irish Traditional Music. Here
MP3 - 23 hours of Black 47 shows from the band's second gig in 1989 thru 1990. Here.

Complete list of media All mp3s and pdfs

Statistics For the number of tunes written (transcribed) per Type (style), Instrument, Musician, Group, or Album see the Statistics page.

Why doesn't the Navagation TreeView have all the musicians, groups and albums that are listed in the book? Only musicians, groups and albums that have links within The Reel Book site are listed. For the complete list including external links, go to each main header page. Main pages are one level down from the Home (root) node.

What is a transcribed performance? Transcribing a performance as it applies to this site is taking a music recording and writing out the main theme in standard music notation. These transcriptions include details such as ornamentation of the musical line as performed by the artist.

What is the purpose of this site? The best way to use the music on this site is to listen to one of the listed albums (not included) while following along with the written transcription.
Try it

Whistle listed by itself is a D tin whistle. Otherwise whistle - C would be a C whistle.

Links start out this color, then turn this color when active, and end up this color after your visit.

How do I use the Search page?
NOTE:
The only way to get the written music on this site is from the Search page. Click on one of the hyperlinks in the Tune column.
Please consider supporting this site by becoming a donor.

 Search page screen shot
  1. "Search Only Items That Are Transcribed" checkbox: When checked - only tunes that have transcriptions are shown. When unchecked - all tunes are shown.
  2. "Maintain Album/Track Order" checkbox: When clicked, this will set the current rows to the track order of each album. The current drop-down box setting is maintained.
  3. Each drop-down box corresponds to a column in the list. Selecting something from a drop-down box shows all rows where that selection appears in that column. Only one drop-down box can be used at a time.
  4. Column Headings: Clicking on a column heading will sort that column.

How come when I clicked on a tune link, the sheet music is a different tune? The tunes are written out in the order they appear on the album. Scroll down the page until you find the tune you are looking for.

The Lists: What's in the collection?

The Musicians: This is a list of all the musicians listed on one or more pages of transcribed performance music pages. There are 298 musicians in the searchable database. There are 190 musicians which have been transcribed on one or more music pages.

The Albums: This is a list of all the albums. Albums containing more than one music group(band) are listed once for each group. There are 128 albums in the searchable database. There are 117 albums with one or more tunes transcribed from it.

The Groups: This is a list of all the groups. Gropus with more than one album are listed once for each album. Sometimes a leader's name constitutes the group name.

The Complete List: This is a list of all 3153 rows in the database. The column called 'Written' uses the word 'true' in each row to denote a tune that has been transcribed and has a music page on this site.

The Samples: Here are a few transcribed performance music pages from the collection for your viewing. Links to pages which have the MP3 links on them are provided so you can follow along with the music.

Notation Shortcuts
  1. DC goes back to the beginning of the tune you are on
  2. --> An arrow in the left margin is the beginning of a track. Sometimes the beginning of a track is marked as a 1 in a circle. A 2 in a circle is a continuation of the track from the page before.
  3. All descriptive text carries forward until marked differently including Tune, Type, Instrument, and Musician. All description, new or continued, is at the top of every page.