Tune Book For Folk Musicians


Introduction

Here are some arrangements I have made. Some are for guitar and others are for treble English concertina or McCann duet concertina.  Some might be for mouthorgan, or maybe penny whistle.  It depends on the tune.

I don't pretend that these arrangements are very good but they might be of interest to players of those instruments who want some music to practice on.

I will try to add a piece or so a week but I might fall behind because it takes me quite a while to write the notation out. Guitar tab takes even longer.

The sheet music has been prepared using abc notation. If you haven't discovered this method of notating music yet and you are interested in writing out your own arrangements then do a search of the web for abc notation, get a copy of abcm2ps and learn to use it.  You can make a start with the abc home page. The guitar tab was prepared using a variant of abc called abctab2ps. Most of the software for manipulating abc notation is free.

The Tunes

One of my favourite folky/country tunes is Abilene. Here it is in notation for fingerstyle guitar.

Abilene notes

If you can't read notation, and you would be much better off learning to do so, then here is the same piece in tab.

Abilene tab

If you enjoy this arrangement, or any of the others to come in future weeks, then please email me, Arthur Banks, here.  I would be interested to hear from you.

Here is an Irish polka arranged for treble English concertina.  The tune came from the web.  The arrangement is pretty basic including just the melody and a few partial chords here and there to fill it out.

John Ryan's Polka

The next tune is a fairly simple fingerpicking arrangement for guitar of an old Carter Family favourite.  It is not arranged in Carter style though.  (By the way, if you find any mistakes in any of these arrangements then please email me so that I can fix the errors.)

Will The Circle Be Unbroken notes

Here is the same song in tab.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken tab

Here is another tune for English concertina.  It is more difficult than the polka because instead of just putting in a few chordal tones as an accompaniment I have tried to give it something of a counter melody.

Elsey's Waltz

This week's guitar tune is one just about everybody probably knows.  It is more difficult than "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" but nowhere near as hard as "Abilene".

Home On The Range notes

and in tab

Home On The Range tab

"Aloha-Oe" is usually thought of as a Hawaiian guitar piece.  Here it is for treble concertina.

Aloha Oe