abc tune search : collections
There are now hundreds of thousands of abc tunes available online from several hundred tune collections. This page lists the collections and links to their websites, categorised as follows:
- abc versions of historical tunebooks & manuscripts
- early & classical music in abc
- song collections
- large abc collections
- smaller abc collections
- LOTRO / Starbound abc music - pop / rock and other genres
- session tunes in abc
- band repertoires in abc
- original music in abc
- compilations of other abc collections
You can search most of these collections (or browse the titles) with the abc tune search:
Let me know if you would like a collection included on this page.
the collections
abc versions of historical tunebooks & manuscripts
- Jack Campin's tunes (various) [tune search | title search]
- John Chambers' online music books [tune search | title search]
- John Offord's John of the Greeny Cheshire Way, provided by Steve Bliven & Alice Flynn [tune search | title search]
- Ross Anderson's tune collections from the 18th & 19th centuries [tune search | title search]
- Andy Hornby's tunes, including historical sources and original material [tune search | title search]
- Fife & Drum online, with lots of abcs for fife & drum bands
- Wiki::Score, a platform similar to the Wikipedia for cooperative editing of large scale music scores - abc is the official notation chosen for this project
- The Full English digital archive of English traditional folk music & dance at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from William Clarke transcribed by Mary Humphreys and others [tune search | title search]
- Dutch & Flemish traditional music from Lusthof der Muziek (the Garden of Musical Delights) [tune search | title search]
- Chris Partington's abc transcriptions including Playford's Dancing Master and The Fiddler's Tune Books [tune search | title search]
- A collection of Australian traditional music [tune search | title search]
- Cantor Cristão Hymnal, one of the official hymns of the Baptist Church in Brazil [tune search | title search]
- A Handbook of Morris Dances ("The Black Book") by Lionel Bacon, provided by Vaughan Hully & John Maher of The Morris Ring [tune search | title search]
- The Old Music Project [tune search | title search]
- The Village Music Project (traditional English music from original manuscripts) [tune search | title search]
- Manuscripts of old popular music of Wallonia (Belgium) from Olivier Vienne
- Eric Conrad's abc repository on github [tune search | title search]
- David Jacobs' abc repository on github, including many transcriptions from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library collections [tune search | title search]
- Take 6 Transcription Programme - online access to the EFDSS archives at Folkopedia [tune search | title search]
- Stephen Darby's Open Australian Tunebook [tune search | title search]
- The O'Neill's Project, from John Chambers [tune search | title search]
early & classical music in abc
- Transcriptions of (mainly) organ pieces from Jef Moine, author of abcm2ps [tune search | title search]
- Eric Forgeot's collection of traditional & ancient music [tune search | title search]
- Renaissance polyphony from Serpent Publications [tune search | title search]
- Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, Movement 2, coded by Steve Allen [tune search | title search]
- Arbeau's Orchesographie from Nicholas Graner [tune search | title search]
- Ali Corbin's transcriptions of medieval music (some in abc) [tune search | title search]
song collections
- The Digital Tradition (hosted by the Mudcat Cafe) is a large collection of folk songs with abc versions of many of the tunes
- Christmas songs from Kevin Goess
- Tunes from the Digital Tradition compiled by Erich Rickheit [tune search | title search]
- A large collection of folk songs archived from the now defunct folkinfo.org [tune search | title search]
- Folk songs of the Aosta Valley, Italy [tune search | title search]
- The Essen Folk Song Database - a huge collection converted into abc by Seymour Shlien [tune search | title search]
- A collection of "hymns and religious songs that ordinary people sing together", some of which have abc transcriptions [tune search | title search]
- Edi Gasser's collection of (Innnerschweizer) Natur-Juiz/Juuz/Jodel/Yodel Komponisten transcribed into abc by Piush Horat [tune search | title search]
- Folk song archives of Austria and South Tyrol with abcs for some of the tunes
- Songs of the Dupont Music Circle [tune search | title search]
large abc collections
Typically with more than 500 tunes:
- Jack Campin's tunes (various) [tune search | title search]
- The Ceolas tune archive [tune search | title search]
- Henrik Norbeck's ABC tunes [tune search | title search]
- James Allwright's abc version of the Nottingham Music Database [tune search | title search]
- Sylvain Piron's French Trad abc collection [tune search | title search]
- abc tunes from Cranford Publications [tune search | title search]
- Simon Wascher's Tune Collection [tune search | title search]
- Favourite English dance tunes from the Lewes sessions, Sussex [tune search | title search]
- Nigel Gatherer's abc collection [tune search | title search]
- Peter Doyle's fiddle tunes [tune search | title search]
- FolkWiki - a wiki site with Swedish / Nordic folk music [tune search | title search]
- Steve Mansfield's abc tunes from Le Grand Session de Manchester, the woodenflute mailing list and others [tune search | title search]
- The Session - an online tune exchange with a huge collection of tunes (mostly Irish) and a vibrant community of users. [tune search | title search]
- Richard Robinson's TuneBook Live! [tune search | title search]
- Andrew Kuntz's Traditional Tune Archive wiki (formerly known as The Fiddlers Companion) [tune search | title search]
- Andy Hornby's tunes, including historical sources and original material [tune search | title search]
- Swiss folk music from Hanny Christen's collection (transcribed by Piush Horat) [tune search | title search]
- Lester Bailey's Tune-a-Day [tune search | title search]
- Bill Black's CapeIrish website [tune search | title search]
- Dan Cobb's Irish Tunes [tune search | title search]
- Colin Hume's tunes [tune search | title search]
- Seymour Shlien's Balkan & Israeli Dances [tune search | title search]
- A cleaned version of the Nottingham dataset for machine learning research
- Dance & Fiddle Tunes from around the North Atlantic [tune search | title search]
- Seymour Shlien's **kern scores (converted from the Humdrum representation) including a large number of Native American melodies and a collection of Bach chorales [tune search | title search]
- TUNEdb, the traditional music database, from Richard Moon
smaller abc collections
- James Allwright's abc tunes [tune search | title search]
- Stephen Klein's fiddle tunes
- Bill Anderson's collection of Macedonian, Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish and Kurdish tunes [tune search | title search]
- Aubrey Jaffer's tune collection [tune search | title search]
- Tunes collected by John Relph [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Dominique Renaudin [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Mandozine [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from the New Mexico Folk Dance & Song Society
- Briezh Partitions - free Celtic sheet music [tune search | title search]
- Wikimusica - Tom Keays' Irish & Scandinavian tunes
- O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat [tune search | title search]
- The WaterPig Hurdy Gurdy Sheet Music Project
- Tunes from Terry Traub [tune search | title search]
- Gutenbrunner Nachlese [tune search | title search]
- Transcriptions from abcplus.sourceforge.net [tune search | title search]
- French tunes from Neil Brook's hurdy-gurdy site [tune search | title search]
- Shape notes from Raphael Finkel [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Thomas Bending [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Tous aux Balkens [tune search | title search]
- Briezh Partitions - free Celtic sheet music [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann [tune search | title search]
- Luis Miguel Escalona's Music from Huesca in Aragon [tune search | title search]
- Irish tunes from Alan Ng [tune search | title search]
- Scandinavian Folk Music [tune search | title search]
- Australian tunes [tune search | title search]
- Dr Gary Smith's Hornpipes [tune search | title search]
- Steve Allen's Morris library [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from José João A. G. Dias de Almeida [tune search | title search]
- Ian Hayden's abc repository on github [tune search | title search]
- Chris Spencer's abc repository on gitlab [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Ben Paley [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society [tune search | title search]
LOTRO / Starbound abc music - pop / rock and other genres
Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) and Starbound are multiplayer online role-playing games which have adopted abc for their music system - visit the Starbound / LOTRO page for links to tutorials and other resources.
The following collections of abcs are highly eclectic and include rock and pop classics as well as classical and folk. However, some of them are generated by users from quantized midi files, so although the playback is generally OK, the staff notation can look a little odd (e.g. no bar lines, strange time signatures, etc).
session tunes in abc
- Tunes from the Irish Heather session [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from the Celtic Arts Center of Southern California slow session [tune search | title search]
- Milwaukee Slow Session Tunes [tune search | title search]
- Irish Session Tunes in Eastern Massachusetts from John M. Sullivan, Jr [tune search | title search]
- The Northern Virginia (NoVa) Irish Session [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from SessioNite [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from slowplayers.org [tune search | title search]
- Old-Time Jam Tunes transcribed by Josh Larios [tune search | title search]
- Alton Steady Session tune of the month
- Paul Hardy's Tunebooks [tune search | title search]
- New Zealand Irish Session Tunes
- Session tunes from the Almeley Steady Session in Herefordshire
- Tunes from the Chorley Trad Music Sessions [tune search | title search]
band repertoires in abc
- Standing Stones
- The Bassett Street Hounds Tunebook [tune search | title search]
- Contradance tunes from All the Right Notes [tune search | title search]
- Pat Palmer's tunes
- Celtic tunes from Slainte [tune search | title search]
- Termen [tune search | title search]
- Winterbourn Down Border Morris
- Dance tunes from Red Herring Morris [tune search | title search]
- Dance tunes from MOTley Morris [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Peter Jenkins - original and repertoire from the band Kafoozalum [tune search | title search]
- eTuneBook featuring BoxPlayer.abc - piano accordion tunes played by Martin Fleischmann
- Jazz & rock music from Luis Pablo Gasparotto [tune search | title search]
- Belfagan Women's Morris [tune search | title search]
- The Big Round Band from Cambridge [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from the Carp Celtic Jam Tune Book [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from the Cumbrian Gaita Band [tune search | title search]
- French tunes from Cam-French [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Contra Dan's [tune search | title search]
- Traditional And Old Fashioned Songs, Dances And Tunes In Mid-kent [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Monty's Maggot
- Tunes from the Cooley-Keegan San Francisco branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from SPUDS, a pickup band from Philadelphia [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Michael D. Long [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Mary Humphries & Anahata [tune search | title search]
original music in abc
- Greg Anderson's orginal contradance tunes
- Original tunes from Contranella [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Kiwi Folk, New Zealand [tune search | title search]
- The Stephen Foster abc fakebook
- Tunes from The Kaubells [tune search | title search]
- Tunes by Mits Ota [tune search | title search]
- Andy Hornby's tunes, including historical sources and original material [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Peter Jenkins - original and repertoire from the band Kafoozalum [tune search | title search]
- Original tunes from Bart Brashers [tune search | title search]
- Original tunes from Larry Mallette [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Andrew Swaine [tune search | title search]
- Tunes from Paul Gitlitz [tune search | title search]
- Original Tunes by Sarah Gowan and Bill Quern [tune search | title search]
- Tunes by Bruce Shawyer [tune search | title search]
- Taz Tarry's abc repository on github, with his own compositions [tune search | title search]
compilations of other abc collections
These are collections of tunes, compiled from various sources all over the web; usually they are huge, typically with 20,000 tunes or more
- John Chambers' abc collection [tune search | title search]
- French and other tunes from Michel Bellon
- Fiddle Fork - an online fiddling community site
- A large compilation of abcs from José A. Oliveira [tune search | title search]
Let me know if you would like a collection included on this page.