Occasionally, often by accident, I come upon a radio programme that is
interesting enough to make me drop what I am doing and listen. This happened
about an hour ago, when "From Dots to Downloads" was broadcast. It will be
broadcast again at 15:30 next Saturday but is not available as a Listen
Again programme.

To quote the programe description given on the BBC website -

"Tim van Eyken, award-winning young singer and squeezebox player, reveals
how today's musicians are rediscovering 'tune books', small manuscript books
of music that were in use from the late-17th to the mid-19th century. They
are now sharing them, in the way that musicians always have, but nowadays
online, so that all over the world, people are playing these tunes once
again in an ongoing global virtual session."

Although I have made use of some of the online archives, such as the Village
Music Project, I found some of the material in this programme really
interesting. Have a listen.

Doug

doug wrote:

> ... but is not available
> as a Listen Again programme.
> ...
It /is/ available on listen-again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lp15m

(It sometimes takes a while to appear.)

Dave
-- 
(Remove any numerics from my email address.)

doug@NOSPAM.harvestmouse.LOSETHIS.co.uk said:
> Occasionally, often by accident, I come upon a radio programme that is
> interesting enough to make me drop what I am doing and listen. This happened
> about an hour ago, when "From Dots to Downloads" was broadcast. It will be
> broadcast again at 15:30 next Saturday but is not available as a Listen
> Again programme.

No, it seems to be. The link from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lp15m
seems to work.

I hadn't known about it, either, till someone rang up & said "You want to
put R4 on, now". And was right. Complete with Chris Walshaw talking about
ABC, which led me to go look at The ABC Home Page, for the first time in a
while. I see he's updated it. Blogs & forums and such newfangled things.

What took me there was mention of tunes from China turning up in ABC. Now
_that_'ll give yer iso-8859-1 default a thrashing ...


I could take issue with the point that musicians used tunebooks up to the
middle of the 19th century, of course - or, more pedantically, with the
suggestion that they stopped then. 150 years when nobody ever wanted to
scribble down something they'd just learnt, or wrote it up afterwards while
they could still read their writing ? I doubt it.

This may be a good excuse to mention that I registered the domain
tunebook.org.uk a few days ago. I have no particular plans for it, apart
from the obvious subdomain, I just saw it going spare and thought it could
be a useful catch-all organising thing. So, if anybody has any stuff out
there for which a somethingorother.tunebook.org.uk address would be helpful
& appropriate, ask and I'll do it. (To clarify, just in case, I'm not
offering hosting, or space, but I can point a name within the t.o.u space to
whatever you have already).


-- 
Richard Robinson
"The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem

My email address is at http://www.qualmograph.org.uk/contact.html

On Jul 21, 3:40 pm, Richard Robinson  wrote:
> d...@NOSPAM.harvestmouse.LOSETHIS.co.uk said:

>
> I could take issue with the point that musicians used tunebooks up to the
> middle of the 19th century, of course - or, more pedantically, with the
> suggestion that they stopped then. 150 years when nobody ever wanted to
> scribble down something they'd just learnt, or wrote it up afterwards while
> they could still read their writing ? I doubt it.
>

Hi Richard,

The point was that the VMP was not _seeing_ many books written after
the mid-nineteenth century. I'm sure the musicians wrote their tunes
down - I write my tunes down - but where are the books? Do you know of
any? I've only seen two or three compared with the (nearly) two
hundred from between 1790 and 1860.

I suppose it could be something to do with how robust the manuscript
books and the inks actually are. Some of the later musicians
collections of printed books that have come into my possession have
had some flimsy manuscript books included but they are dropping apart
and the ink is fading. And they haven't had that many tunes in,
certainly not systematically  noted like the older ones. Why is that?

I'd be happy to know of anything which extends the manuscript period
significantly.

J

At 10:41:21 on Sun, 26 Jul 2009, johnny adams  
wrote in 
:

>but where are the books? Do you know of any? I've only seen two or 
>three compared with the (nearly) two hundred from between 1790 and 1860.

Well, James "Brasser" Copper, Bob's grandfather, lived from 1845 to 
1924, and wrote down the songs he knew - with his own idiosyncratic 
spelling ("Hears a dew sweet lovelie Nancy") in his mid seventies - so 
that would have been around 1920.  His son Jim also produced a 
hand-written songbook, in 1936, with 80-odd songs (including all of 
those in Brasser's book);  and then another around 1950, containing only 
traditional songs.  And of course Bob wrote down not just the songs he 
knew but those which he collected.  The Copper Family Songbook has 
facsimiles of many entries in Jim's 1936 book, including a poem of his 
own as the introduction (I particularly like verse 5):

Here we have a little book
If through its pages you will look
You'll find the songs you ought to know
So have some beer and let her go.

Of our old songs these are a few
And none of them are really new
But if you only know the tune
They'll beat the rythme (sic) or the croon.

Songs of our Army or the Sea
Are songs which most appeal to me
Although I think I must avow
I like a song about the plough.

Odd choruses we know galore
A Hundred (yes) and hundreds more
And if we fall into a lapse
They just come in to fill the gaps.

There's one thing of the songs to day
They come.  But do not *seem* to stay
Like OK Toots and Black eyed Sue
They vanish like the century Blues.

But let the seasons come and go
Let it rain or let it snow
We'll shun all care & dam the weather
And sing these songs when we're together.

[And yes, I'm pretty sure that it's "dam" and not "darn".  It certainly 
isn't "damn".]
-- 
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

On Jul 26, 7:18 pm, Molly Mockford 
wrote:
> At 10:41:21 on Sun, 26 Jul 2009, johnny adams 
> wrote in
> :
>
> >but where are the books? Do you know of any? I've only seen two or
> >three compared with the (nearly) two hundred from between 1790 and 1860.
>
> Well, James "Brasser" Copper, Bob's grandfather, lived from 1845 to
> 1924, and wrote down the songs he knew - with his own idiosyncratic
> spelling ("Hears a dew sweet lovelie Nancy") in his mid seventies - so
> that would have been around 1920.  His son Jim also produced a
> hand-written songbook, in 1936, with 80-odd songs (including all of
> those in Brasser's book);  and then another around 1950, containing only
> traditional songs.  And of course Bob wrote down not just the songs he
> knew but those which he collected.  The Copper Family Songbook has
> facsimiles of many entries in Jim's 1936 book, including a poem of his
> own as the introduction (I particularly like verse 5):

Hi Molly,

Yes, I've seen lots of song books and have several on my shelf. They
contain a wide range of stuff from Victorian parlour songs through to
music hall and variety and I know of song books written down almost to
the present day. They are also written in fairly substantial books
which will stand the test of time. The tune books seem to be much
sparser and you don't see very many substantial manuscript books from
after the mid to late 1800s. Maybe they're around but I'd like to
know.

This whole issue also begs the question ' How will researching
musicians in 100 or 200 years time receive and view the 20thC and
21stC repertoire of tunes. Given that the archive trade recommends
that digital material be migrated every 5 years to combat
deterioration and obsolescence, how well will digital copies of abc
(or even recordings) survive? Will computer printouts survive as well
as the pen and ink of yesteryear?

wrote in message 
news:x-udnZAwsPpXXPjXnZ2dnUVZ8tqdnZ2d@brightview.co.uk...
> Occasionally, often by accident, I come upon a radio programme that is
> interesting enough to make me drop what I am doing and listen. This 
> happened
> about an hour ago, when "From Dots to Downloads" was broadcast. It will be
> broadcast again at 15:30 next Saturday but is not available as a Listen
> Again programme.
>
> To quote the programe description given on the BBC website -
>
> "Tim van Eyken, award-winning young singer and squeezebox player, reveals
> how today's musicians are rediscovering 'tune books', small manuscript 
> books
> of music that were in use from the late-17th to the mid-19th century. They
> are now sharing them, in the way that musicians always have, but nowadays
> online, so that all over the world, people are playing these tunes once
> again in an ongoing global virtual session."

At the risk of advertising, this may be of interest:
http://www.fivetrees.com/shop/index.php?shop_id=43 - look for William 
Winter's Quantocks Tune Book:

"A newly published collection featuring 376 tunes from the manuscript of 
Somerset fiddler William Winter (1774-1861), a shoemaker in the villages of 
Lydeard St Lawrence and West Bagborough who played in a church band and for 
country dances. Accompanied by a CD featuring Robert Harbron, Nancy Kerr, 
Tim van Eyken and Miranda Rutter with new arrangements of 32 of the tunes. A 
fascinating and useable collection of some great (and little-played) tunes."

Steve
--
http://www.fivetrees.com